How Flint's Water Crisis Happened, And Why It Isn't Over

The book is BS, and written with a political agenda. Republican and Democrat is meaningless to the analysis of what went wrong. The decision was not made by the State appointed Emergency Manager. The decision was made by the Flint Water Authority, an unelected board of commissioners appointed by elected officials in the the Flint Water Authority's service area. Those elected officials were without exception Democrats. But party affiliation may have correlation it does not in this case equal causation.

The plain and simple fact is that a string of unpaid civil engineers and unpaid old-timer plumbers familiar with cast iron and oakum pipe systems told the water board, in public hearings, exactly what would happen. EVERYTHING they predicted came true. The board chose to ignore those people, and went with the recommendation of paid water quality consultants, who had little or no experience with the existing cast iron and oakum water distribution infrastructure.

Cast iron and oakum uses molten lead to complete the seal at pipe joints. Older systems are still viable and safe, BUT as correctly stated in the article under-utilization, of a system designed to service a far larger population, resulted in biologic contamination. The chemicals used to combat the biologic contamination and the chemicals used to control corrosion were not chemically inert in respect to each other. The unfortunate and unintended consequence was the removal of scale that prevented heavy metal (lead) contamination of water passing through the system.

The state should not be fully exonerated, the Emergency Manager made the fatal error of assuming that the Flint Water Authority exercised due diligence. They did not. When so many unpaid subject matter experts came forward with dire predictions, at EVERY level, regardless of party, officials should have taken a few deep breaths and re-examined the risks.

It's going to be a real long time before the water is truly safe.

Thanks for sharing