Detroit collapsing into third world status as water supply becomes too toxic to drink
 

Detroit collapsing into third world status as water supply becomes too toxic to drink... America's infrastructure imploding


Already pressured by a collapsing economy and a financial state of emergency, the people of Flint, Michigan, were also deprived of clean water in 2014, when the state decided to switch the city's water source to the notoriously mucky Flint River in a bid to save money. In the absence of proper treatment, the water eroded the lead service lines and put all residents in danger. Although the lead-poisoned locals and children are now forced to deal with the consequences of this reckless act for the rest of their lives, the city and state officials responsible have yet to pay any noteworthy price.

As another man-made disaster quietly turns into past, the nearby rundown areas of Detroit are faced with a similar threat. Alongside miserable poverty, bad pipes and neglected water treatment systems are dragging Detroit into third-world status.

Was Flint only the beginning?
After almost two years of drinking toxic water, the people of Flint were finally acknowledged in October 2015. In the meantime, the high levels of lead found in drinking water translated into brain damage, learning disabilities and pregnancy issues for the residents. Children have been permanently hindered in their natural development. But it took until January 2016 for the government to mobilize the National Guard and begin distributing bottled water and filters in Flint.

What lesson do we have to learn from this? Wouldn't the residents of Flint be much healthier today had they listened to their own instincts and stopped drinking tap water when it started smelling funny? Most importantly, has the government done anything to help prevent this from happening elsewhere in America?

People in Detroit living in third-world conditions
Not only are the residents of Detroit on the brink of facing the same disastrous water situation, but it seems that most of them can't afford running water to begin with. According to Detroit census records, 60% of households with children under 18 live in poverty. Of the 200,000 water customers in Detroit, 108,000 are 60 days past due on bills, and their water has consequently been shut off, leading many to collect rainwater for daily use.

The horrible truth doesn't stop here. Darrel Earley is the emergency manager who oversaw the switch of Flint's water source. The same Darrel Earley is now in charge of Detroit's public schools.

Recently shared photos taken by teachers from Detroit are shocking, to say the least, but speak a thousand words for the current status of the city. Five days a week, children and teachers are faced with black mold, toilet water leaking through the ceiling, mushrooms growing out of the walls and extreme cold.

Elsewhere, in America...
Flint and Detroit are not singular cases in America, where the entire infrastructure is headed for collapse. From 2013 to 2014, city officials in Sacramento, California, were literally experimenting with a cheaper water treatment option on the unknowing residents. The result? For almost a year, Sacramentans were exposed to toxic chemicals that raise the risk of cancer, miscarriages and birth defects.

Not long ago, much of central Texas found itself on the brink of a similar disaster, when local officials uncovered the fact that their drinking water tested over federal legal limits of radioactive radium, so much so that the local scrapyard turned down the steel water pipes because they were too radioactive. It seems that the water was so contaminated, that it would result in one additional cancer patient for every 400 people.

Whether in Texas, California or Michigan, it seems that the people are the last to know about the health hazards they are exposed to. In light of all these events and possibly many to follow, we strongly recommend that every citizen should be prepared to filter, purify and store their own water.

Detroit collapsing into third world status as water supply becomes too toxic to drink... America's infrastructure imploding - NaturalNews.com

....already done collapsed a long time ago.

I can tell you that I will not even let my dogs drink the tap water here in L.A. it smells bad, is very hard (full of "minerals") and is unpleasant in all aspects.

and in return they got wal mart and its endless mountains of consumer garbage in return.

seems like a fair trade.

Go to a third world country like India and then come back and tell me how it compares :)

I find this amusing from someone who pisses in their own mouth. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Not to be an ass but ... I've never gotten free water. Have you?

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh

Jeb Bush had this to say recently: Jeb Bush: Don't Blame Governor Snyder For Flint Crisis, Blame Regulations | ThinkProgress

sigh.

he's saying finger pointing doesn't solve the problem, admitting the problem and addressing it does, like what the Governor is doing. and he's right.

meanwhile, the EPA did in fact admit culpability in the disaster.

Mine is free other than the electricity I have to pay to pump it out of the ground.

So, guess it's still not free.

I guess well water or a spring on your own property would be the only "free" water. All other sources cost money and you are directly billed for it.


.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Too bad for them, we needed regime change and nation building in some other country.


:2 cents:

Depends how you look at it. Public municipalities charge for the treatment, storage, upkeep, etc. but not the water itself unless they buy it from another source. But that's not really the point. Peter Brabeck is an advocate for water to be controlled by the free market thus allowing corporations to sell, distribute and profit from the sell of tap water.

There is water at walmart - I can't remember the brand, could be Nestle, but if you look at the source on the bottle it says "Public water source, Allentown, PA"

you should watch this

Home - BOTTLED LIFE ?*The Truth about Nestlé's Business with Water (Documentary)

Try walking around some Detroit neighborhoods. If you survive, tell us about your experience.

Suck a whole entire bag of dicks, you clueless fucking waste of life!!!

1. Governor gets elected.
2. Governor appoints emergency managers to "fix" flint, thus bypassing local elected officials.

Thus, Governor caused issue.

Now, go copy and past random shit that has nothing to do with the issue and give yourself a big pat on the back for being so fucking smart.

Nice big space I setup in that cavern of a head you have assnugget exlax


Ahahahahahahahaahahahahaha.

Make up all the shit you want assnugget exlax, the governor's still on the job and the epa admitted culpability with the epa region director stepping down.

I'm right and you're an assnugget.

Deregulation solves nothing. What the Governor should be saying is, "How the fuck are people drinking water from lead pipes in the late 20th and 21st Century, how the fuck did the water get so bad and who should be going to prison?"

This is 100% down to bad regulating.

Still, so long as they cut taxes all's fine. :Oh crap

What does deregulation or those questions have to do with it?



I'm all for an investigation. But fingerpointing the governor now only distracts from fixing the problem asap.

Yes of course.. finger pointing is bad unless it's to blame Obama, Hillary or some other Democrat and then there is truck loads of tax dollars to spend on investigations with Republican lead special committees.

i don't expect you to get reality. no one does. but the fact is this crisis is ongoing. firing the people in charge in the middle of fixing it is the essence of libtard fingerpointing.

besides the fact you have no idea what you are talking about. what have i blamed Obama for? what have i blamed Hillary for? what have i blamed "some other democrat" for?

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh



you've already confessed you have to make up the fact that there are conservatives here for you to troll. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

You know the emergency managers did this, to save a million dollars a year? They were aware of the problem before the epa was involved. GM would not use the water at their flint plant and the gov ignored it. People complained about the shitty water and it was ignored. They stone walled a doctor who first saw the lead problem in the water. The Gov should be thrown in jail . But since he is a righty he gets a pass. lol

Once he get's his one track mind on said track, there's no convincing him of anything else.

I wouldn't bother engaging with that one. He doesn't have anything better to do than argue on a message board day in and day out.

It's comical and pathetic at the same time.

heads up, you're confused to think i look at this in terms of righty lefty, i leave that shit to people like you and ********** and assnugget.

i'm more concerned about the water crisis. you can stick a republican governor up your ass for all i care.

complaining about the Governor does what about the crisis in progress? not 1 single fucking thing other than disrupt the effort to solve the crisis.

there's plenty of time for libtard finger pointing, let's try and save some lives first, then y'all can string up the republican.

gofuckyourself shitstain. it's like you think your piece of shit driveby comments are better, you can't even figure out how to carry on here.

fuck you. all you do is yap your shit about how you've "pre-ordered" the next big bad camera and make drive by trolls

Michigan is fucked.

you're too fucking stupid to even realize tony286 was the one starting in on me with the "righty gets a pass" bullshit.

you stupid fuck.

yeah have the Governor resign and keep the infrastructure.

libtard solution.


"But it’s not one emergency manager, or one bad decision about pumping water from the Flint River that has led these problems—and that might be the scariest part of all. Neglected infrastructure is really to blame, but it’s not quite as satisfying to blame old pipes as it is to blame the people in charge."

Contaminated Tap Water Could Become More Common Thanks to Failing Infrastructure - The Atlantic

it's absolutely bizarro ville that if i don't high 5 the lynch mob on nailing the Governor i'm a right wing apologist that's giving the Governor of a state i've never been to a free pass on an environmental and human disaster just because he's a righty and don't waste your time trying to get me to join the lynch mob because i have a one track mind.

you fucking rejects, i'm glad, no i'm fucking stoked i'm not a part of your shit squad.

Yep.

We were on well water up north at the lake while growing up. Natural aquifer ran directly under the house.

LOL, Dynamo. You are one stupid douche.

Lynch mob!

Kill righty!

High5!

When they fuck up something as needed as much as water there should be heavy jail times for the people who made those decisions. It's not like the fucked up the ability to buy BMW's....they fucked up water....heads should roll.

The Flint Water Crisis Is the Result of a Stimulus Project Gone WrongShikha Dalmia

Liberals are wrongly blaming Flint's lead poisoning crisis on austerity measures imposed on the city by a fiscallyconservative Republican Governor Rick Snyder, as I wrotehalast week. (Snyder had appointed an emergency manager in 2011 to help the city balance its books and avoid bankruptcy.) However, I didn't quite realize just how wrong they were. As it turns out, the debacle is the result of Snyder's efforts to stimulate the local economyâ??the exact opposite of the liberal line.

The whole mess occurred because Flint decided against renewing its 30-year contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) and switched instead to Karengondi Water Authority (KWA). KWA was planning to build its own hugely expensive pipeline, parallel to DWSD's, to harness water from Lake Huron and service the Genesee County area where Flint is located. This left the city in the lurch for a few years when its contract with DWSD ended but the new facility had not yet gone online, prompting it to reopen a local mothballed facility that relied on the toxic Flint River as its source (more on the rank stupidity of this decision later).

The rationale for the original decision to switch Flint's water providers was that, in the long run, KWA would generate substantial savings for the cash-strapped city. Not only was this false but Snyder had very good reasons at that time to believe that this was false.

Documentshathat have just resurfaced show that the then DWSD Director Susan McCormick presented two alternatives to Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz that slashed rates for Flint by nearly 50 percent, something that made Detroit far more competitive compared to the KWA deal. "The cliff notes version," shehasaidhain an internal e-mail to her staff, is that the "proposal offers a today rate of water for Flint/Genesee of $10.46 as compared to $20.00 paid currently per Mcfâ??48% less that could be realized nearly immediately and even more when compared to the increases coming with KWA." In fact, when compared over the 30-year horizon, the DWSD proposal saves $800 million or 20% over the KWA proposal, she pointed out.

That works out to over $26 million in annual savings for a city in precarious financial shape.

So why didn't Flint jump at the offer?

If McCormick had been corrupt and untrustworthy like herpredecessor, who was indicted in the scandal involving former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (for, among other things, illegally steering contracts to friends and cronies), it would have been one thing. But McCormick has a stellar reputation as an administrator and was brought on board after a federal court ordered a reorganization of the DWSD to clean up its operations and ensure that it was complying with federal water regulations. (Despite opposition from the city's powerful unions, shehamadehaa nearly 80 percent reduction in staff while improving operations, all of which ended 35 years of court oversight of the department!) In fact, she even offered the city representation on the board and a say in "facility operations and capital investment" in order to guard against unwarranted future rate hikes, removing an issue that has long been a bone of contention between Detroit and its municipal clients.

What's more, lest one dismiss McCormick as a biased party with a fiduciary interest in pressing DWSD's case against its competitor's, ahastudy commissionedhaby Snyder's own treasurer from Tucker, Young, Jackson & Tull, a prestigious engineering consulting firm, confirmed that the KWA's plan to supply Flint didn't make any financial sense. It estimated that KWA was lowballing the project by at leastha$85 million. "Cost overruns and delays in completion will both negatively impact Flint's final costs," the reporthaconcluded.

The Genesee County Drain commissioner at the time went on a jihad tohaimpugnhathe study, accusing it of relying on inaccurate data, but the question is, why did Snyderhaâ?? aka one-tough-nerd who prides himself on his business acumen and wonkery â?? fall for it?

Snyder's office did not return my call, but sources close to the situation at the time tell me that it was essentially because Genesee County and Flint authorities saw the new water treatment as a public infrastructure project to create jobs in an area that has never recovered after Michigan's auto industry fled to sunnier business climes elsewhere. And neither Snyder nor his Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz nor the state treasurer Andy Dillon had the heart to say "no," especially since to hand Flint to DWSD would have made the whole project less viable.ha What's more, they felt that just as Detroit was receiving an infrastructure boost post-bankruptcy (with the state-backed$650 millionhaice-hockey-arena-cum-entertainment center that I wrote about here) it was only fair that Flint get one too.

All of this shows two things:

One, the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.

Two, emergency managers are not always a panacea for fiscally mismanaged cities. The assumption behind handing them control of city finances is that they are grown-ups who, unlike politicians, are immune from special interest pressure and therefore more capable of making tough cuts. In reality, they can have their own political grand plans that don't always overlap with the city's fiscal interest.

But to add insult to Flint's injury, while the rest of the Genesee County continued to be served by DWSA before the new system became operational, Flint was switched to its old, moribund facility. That's not because Detroit refused to cut off Flint, as the governor's office and local authorities have suggested. It's because Kurtz and the then Flint mayor, Dayne Walling, sources say, believed that this facility was an underutilized asset that ought to be put to good use to save money.

This was a penny wise and pound foolish decision given that Flint had neither the in-house scientific expertise to assess what would be required to adequately treat the water nor thehaeconomic expertise to judge whether this made any financial sense. They expected to get all their scientific guidance from the DEQ, but the agency was clearly in over its head (and is, not unfairly, taking the fall).

Snyder has called Flint his Hurricane Katrina. In reality, it is far worse because at least Katrina represented a botched response to a natural disaster. The Flint disaster, however, is wholly man-made




.

Yes but he's a Republican so that means we shouldn't point fingers. Didn't you get the memo, it's only ok to blame Obama, Hillary or the Gov, but only if he is a democrat.

Don't worry, Dyna will be here shortly to fill you in on the blame game rules. It will likely require 4 or 5 posts by him but he'll eventually get it all in.

Heads up libtard, that fucking nitwit exclaimed I gave a free pass to a guy implicated in a tragic environmental and civil disaster that will ultimately destroy lives and kill people because he's a righty.

Rest mother fucking assured I'll handle that fucking bullshit in as many mother fucking posts as I fucking feel like.

you, that motherfucking piece of shit candyflip, and that fucking walking logic failure ********** can get your fucking panties twisted up over that and high5 eack other all you want, you're in the same shit squad.

Did you ever think that people are getting that idea because of your use of the term "libtard"?

If you are having a problem with non-trivial comprehension such as that, what makes you think you are going to understand anything that actually requires a little more thought process?

You are such a fucking hypocrite as well. In one thread you use Cher buying bottles of water as the basis for some lame ass joke, then take jabs at people by saying they must have been drinking some of the Flint water, and then have the nerve to act like you care about the well-being of anyone who lives in the Flint or Detroit area.

You copy and paste random facts about things that have nothing to do with the actual situation, and then claim they have some meaning, yet you never follow up with any of your own words to reveal what that meaning actually is.

Then, when anyone does post anything of substance, you follow up with rambling of replies that always seem to start off with childish name calling, which always comes in the form of a post that has absolutely no grammatical structure. Next thing you know, you have muddied up an entire thread with one bullshit flame laden post after another until nobody wants to even be involved in it anymore.

Nobody wants to fucking play with you anymore. The fun and games are over.

Eat a bag of dicks assnugget exlax, you think I'm going to waste 1 single second reading your fucking ramblings, you're a dumbfuck.

Go high 5 your dumbfuckwad Lynch mob bros over the governor of fucking Michigan and stick chers water up your piece of shit ass.

Exfuckingactly.


The libtards are too busy making this about me not joining the Lynch mob to read it. Not that they could comprehend what they read.

Pretty sure they mainly drink Orange Drank over there and that's imported so all good. :thumbsup

How much of that is your own words? I am going to assume it wasn't you who tried to contact Synder's office for comment. Citing your sources is not just for college essays.

By the way, Kilpatrick (democrat) got what he fucking deserved and didn't do the city of Detroit any favors, however handing out contracts for political favors happens all the time on both sides of the fence. Dayne Walling was another shit stain democrat that had no interest in the people he was elected to represent.

I have never denied that Snyder was trying to save money, but he gambled on it with people's lives.

You said...Exfuckingactly. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Try saying that out loud and listen to how dumb that sounds.

You can't even comprehend the English language. It's no surprise that is all you could muster up over an article that just made your empty head explode.

We should just give Michigan back to France.

say goFUCKyourself outloud assnugget exlax and dream about having a clue about why there was no need for me to add to that article. And why I liberally use the word fuck.

And this is your example of a high quality statement.

Ahahahahahahahaahahahahaha.

You're lucky I don't run that through a writing level checker.