Flint Municipal water 89

[moon161]

So, Flint has been MI lead poisoned and exposed to legionella bacteria because the water supply was switched from Detroit municipal to the Flint River. Since the polluted river is corrosive and iron rich, lead was leached from pipes and solder into the water of thousands of homes, and legionella bateria (legionaire's diseased) apparently thrived on the dissolved iron.

It was done to save money, it stayed that way because people who knew of the crisis sat on the information and obstructed inquiry.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/14/e...nation-for-months-without-telling-the-public/

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/15874

There HAS to be a (ir)responsible engineer in that chain. What are their duties, did they fail to perform? Would whistleblower action have been appropriate?

 

[bimr]

"Could that be because the more affluent/educated folks are more likely to take an interest in the day-to-day runnings of the machine they live in, at least compared to the less affluent/educated?"

This is so wrong on any number of counts. Example: What do you know about the water system in your own community? Probably nothing.

 

[bimr]

"But, they're hired to run an organization have subordinates who are all supposed to know their stuff. The CEO of Boeing isn't necessarily going to know the ins and outs of the navigation system on a 787. If he ignored expert advice, then sure, he should be canned and blacklisted."

Isn't Boeing the company with the overheating batteries? Did the CEO get canned for that? What a role model they are. Tombstone engineering in practice.

 

[IRstuff]

But, the CEO of Boeing has ZERO oversight of a component of a component of a component of an airplane, particularly given that the CEO isn't even in the same part of the country as the plane manufacturing facility, and is nowhere near the manufacturing facility of the battery maker. There are probably 15 levels of people between the CEO and the battery engineer; he presumably has people that he thinks are relatively competent below him, as do the people below him think about their subordinates. Boeing is known as a "system of systems" integrator and they tend to subcontract almost everything, including batteries. So, even the actual responsible engineer might not know all the bad news that his subcontractor tried to hide from him.

Sure, you can make him fall on his sword, but that's just for spite. To apply the converse, any successful product must make that same CEO an utter genius, which we know is not true either. There are very few companies where the CEO makes day to day decisions on products; Steve Jobs, was both an exception to that rule, as well as someone who managed to have a successful company while doing it. 30 years ago, any "secretary" who wanted to have a job had to know "Wang," which was one of the first word processors built by Wang Computers. An Wang was famous for being a micromanager, and he micromanaged his entire company into oblivion and abyss of history. We had a similar situation with a general manager at about the same time. He was a seriously techie, and would argue fine points about technology or math that flew over the heads of most of the audiences at design reviews where he did that. But, that engineering fervor made him a crappy manager, whose subordinates were loathe to interact with him, which resulted in the division spinning out of control and eventually being taken over by another division and disappearing from history.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[bimr]

The bottom line is that this utility was selling a product (water) and the customers were unhappy with the product that they were buying. Ignoring the problems (real or supposed) did not make the problems go away.

 

[SwinnyGG]

I see a lot of talking going on in this thread, by people who have obviously been getting their information from the national news. I'd like to make a couple of points here. For reference, I went to college in Flint, still have deep ties to that area, and still live in Michigan now.

1) Please don't attempt to push your own personal political agenda by making this a partisan issue. It isn't one. I would go so far as to state that there are people in certain parts of the media network that are seeing this as an opportunity to erode support for the Republican government that is currently in place, and have not been squeamish about misrepresenting certain facts to make that happen. See below. In short, please keep the politics out of it. If you want political discussion there are other boards where you can get it.

1a) There were many failures in government that lead to this problem developing- but not all of them were Republican state officials. Former Flint mayor Walling contacted the (recently resigned...) EPA administrator for the Flint district and was rebuffed.

2) It is 100% true that there has been a recent outbreak of Legionella in the mid-Michigan area that corresponds with the change of Flint's drinking water source. What the national media is NOT reporting, however, is that a significant portion of the people who contracted Legionnaire's disease, including some of the resulting deaths, during this period are not residents of the part of Genesee County where drinking water is provided by the river. The highest peak of the Genesee County Legionella outbreak still represents fewer cases than in other areas of the state, including Oakland county, which does not get its water from the Flint River system. (55 cases in Genesee County in 2015; 51 cases in Wayne County and 65 cases in Oakland County in 2013) Point is, was (is..) there a Legionella outbreak in the Flint area? Yes. Does it represent a huge outlier relative to Legionella cases in other parts of the state? Not really. Can the Legionella outbreak be CONCLUSIVELY tied to the change in source of Flint's water? NO.

3) Someone has already covered this, but the source of lead contamination is not the Flint river water, or the city mains- it is the drops that connect the mains to individual buildings and homes. Some of the children who have suffered extreme lead exposure live on the same block as other children whose blood tests resulted in zero lead found. This is obviously a huge problem, and in no way am I attempting to downplay that, but it is a huge problem that has to be diagnosed on a case-by-case basis- it is not nearly as simple as the media is depicting it to be.

 

[oldestguy]

Well said jgKRI. it is the drops that connect the mains to individual buildings and homes.
These drops were there a long time ago.

 

[seaaggie]

Could a charcoal filter on each of these homes (<$200/home) stop the problem?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[bimr]

Interesting that you post "Please don't attempt to push your own personal political agenda by making this a partisan issue.";

and then your place some blame on the regional EPA administrator.

Just to be clear, this person was the regional EPA administrator responsible for serving Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin and 35 Tribes.

That area has a population of over 50 million and you hold her partly responsible?

No sir, the republicans managing Michigan are responsible.

If you want a better source of information, go to the Flint website. It is all there.

https://www.cityofflint.com/public-works/utilitieswater/water-treatment-plant/

 

[bimr]

"Could a charcoal filter on each of these homes (<$200/home) stop the problem?"

Yes, you could install devices in homes. However, what happens frequently is that the devices are not properly maintained by the homeowners, so this remedy is not the preferred approach to solving these types of problems.

 

[SwinnyGG]

So the EPA, whose responsibility, specifically, is the quality of things like drinking water, is not culpable at all because Flint represents a very small part of their area of responsibility?

Well, the government of the State of Michigan covers about 10 million people. So they must not be responsible either.

Read this part carefully:

It is a simple fact that the EPA District 5 administration knew about potentially dangerous water contamination in the Flint system as early as April. Instead of warning the population of the area in question, she downplayed her staff's analysis and waited on advice from the legal team about her own vulnerability because of the problem- allowing residents to unknowingly drink contaminated water for almost 6 months.

Does that sound like ethical, blameless behavior to you?

The fact that the government is currently Republican has nothing to do with the fact that Flint is struggling to survive, and that budget cuts needed to be made. This isn't poli-tips.com. Take your divisive arguments somewhere else.

 

[cranky108]

The bottom line appears that those who caused the problems are either gone, hiding, or somehow won't be taking the blame. That seems to be the operating procedure for many insects.

I have to give some thanks to anyone who admits they made a mistake. They should be held accountable yes, but less than the insects that run from there mistakes.

As for private companies, they do often hold the people accountable. But because of the laws of this country, the files on employees must be closed to the public. So what happens is the news people can't report on what happens to those people. Also the CEO of most private companies are not technical people, they are sales people, sort of like the head of most government agencies are political heads (or hacks).

 

[bimr]

Assume you are not familiar with the drinking water business and get most of your news from the corporate media.

For your information, the State of Michigan is the responsible enforcement authority for drinking water.

"The DEQ has primary enforcement authority in Michigan for the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act under the legislative authority of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act. As such, the division has regulatory oversight for all public water supplies, including approximately 1,500 community water supplies and 10,000 noncommunity water supplies. The program regulates the water well drilling industry. Michigan has nearly (1.12 million) households served by private wells, with approximately 15,000 domestic wells drilled each year. The DEQ also investigates drinking water well contamination, and oversees remedial activities at sites of groundwater contamination affecting drinking water wells."

http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3313_3675---,00.html

The Governor of Michigan appointed someone with zero environmental experience to oversee this progam.

 

[SwinnyGG]

While I am not in the drinking water business, I understand what has actually happened during this crisis more than a lot of people, because I actually live and work in the area where it is happening.

The EPA's responsibility, by definition, is the protection of human health.

If you're the head of an EPA district, and you hear that an area under your jurisdiction has a drinking water condition which will potentially have a huge negative impact on the long-term health of the residents of that area, what is your response? Is that information you feel you should sit on for 6-8 months without notifying anyone?

My point in bringing up the EPA was to point out that there are many parties involved- some of them Republican (the governor), some of them Democrat (the city council that voted for the change in supply, the emergency city manager who proposed the change in supply to the city council, the list goes on) and some of them non-partisan (the EPA, at least in theory).

I'm sure there are people on this board who know more about the specifics of drinking water supply systems than I ever will- and I have no problem with admitting that.

What I do have a problem with is people applying a political agenda where it doesn't belong. Republicans didn't create this problem by simply being Republicans.

 

[bimr]

So your point is that the federal government should have stepped in. Appointed an emergency manager in place of the Michigan governor. Same thing that the governor did to Flint. Everything would then have been great.

When Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order, politicians of all stripes agreed the US needed reforms, even if it cost a small amount of economic growth. Yet, after four decades of the EPA's helping to improve our land, air and water quality, ask whether we need federal regulation and the answer depends on whom you question.

Ask ordinary people in the US and, according to a 2011 Pew survey, 71% respond, across the political spectrum, that they agree with the statement, "This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment."

Ask most Republican politicians, some Democrats and the polluting industries that provide them substantial funding, and you'll get a very different answer.

The majority of the right wingnuts running for President want to do away with the EPA. You can't have it both ways.

An independent task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to review the situation placed the bulk of the blame for Flint’s crisis on the DEQ.

 

[SwinnyGG]

No, that's not my point at all.

My main point is that the Governor being a Republican, and not a Democrat, is not a root cause of the problem. Full stop. That's all I'm saying.

Other posters in this thread implied that if the Governor was not a Republican, this would not have happened.

A secondary point is that in my mind, someone at the EPA should have informed the population of the affected area IMMEDIATELY when it was confirmed that the drinking water was dangerous. That would have been the ethical thing to do, regardless of what steps were taken up and down the bureaucracy after the fact.

With regard to the chain of command in solving the issue, absolutely the DEQ is the organization that should be managing this type of local crisis. That doesn't make it OK for those in the know at the EPA to not inform the affected citizens.

 

[bimr]

It is as simple as this:

An independent task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to review the situation placed the bulk of the blame for Flint’s crisis on the DEQ.

Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Dan Wyant as Director of the DEQ.

A state lawmaker whose district covers a part of Flint says he appealed to several high-ranking officials, including Gov. Rick Snyder, within the last year warning them about water quality.

"More than a year ago, we knew something was wrong when the residents of Flint began seeing their water come from the taps in their homes cloudy and brown," said State Representative Sheldon Neeley (D-Flint) in a statement Friday. "We didn't know it at the time, but this was the first indication that lead was leaching into the water supply for the entire community, causing a health hazard that has spurred Flint into the national spotlight and caused decades of health problems for our citizens."

Neeley's letter to Snyder, dated Jan. 29, 2015, starts out by saying the city of Flint "stands on the precipice of civil unrest."

 

[moon161]

What can we do to promote the ethical action when the decision that almost certainly came to a technical professional comes to one of us or a colleague? Could one person or a group of people spoken up or refused to execute a harmful act? How many kept their head down because they couldn't afford to lose their job?

A local former police officer, Cariole Horne lost her job and pension for intervening when a fellow officer started to strangle a suspect. She is raising money for a whistleblower fund to mitigate the financial impact of similar ethical actions on those to commit them.

 

[MartinLe]

A few thoughts:

Responsibility is not a zero-sum game. The MDEQ and the emergency manger screwed up but it does'nt follow that the EPA is without blame. Or vice versa.

A recurring question in this thread is, if more technical knowledgeable people had been involved as decision makers, the fiasco would have been prevented. I'm not sure, but how to find out? Where I live and work (Germany) management culture is different and most federal/state/municipal agencies tasked with water or environment are staffed and lead by engineers and the like (I've once worked under three layers of management, all geologists). But the whole culture around environmental protection is different over here.

I think moon161's question is valid: What can we do to promote the ethical action when the decision that almost certainly came to a technical professional comes to one of us or a colleague? Could one person or a group of people spoken up or refused to execute a harmful act? How many kept their head down because they couldn't afford to lose their job?

First, this should be a non-issue - if you work at an EPA or MDEQ or whatever, the ethical option should also be the one that has you keep your job.
It seems in Flint a bad decision was made. Maybe without expert input, maybe despite expert input, or maybe because the expert delivered the input desired by the decision makers.
The first 2 possibilities raise the question if said experts could have raised the issue with the public or professional organizations or the EPA sooner.
The last raises the question: Why did it happen that way, what did the management do to produce this result? What would you or I do in this situation?

 

[LittleInch]

This has now made news in the UK. See and at the bottom are more stories.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...water-crisis-lead-poisoning-families-children

Not easy to piece together who actually "signed it off" or what studies were actually done to see what impact changing water source would have. However there is a body of evidence that it has taken a long time to get some action.



Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[bimr]

MartinLe,

The MDEQ is acronym for the Michigan environmental protection agency. The MDEQ is a state agency and has primary responsibility for drinking water. The federal EPA has oversight responsibility over the states' activities, and is not responsible for day to day supervision of the state agencies.

In general. there are usually technical personnel involved in these agencies. However, political appointees populate the upper levels of management. The Michigan Governor appointed a person with zero environmental experience to lead the MDEQ.

As to Flint, the people involved in making the water decision underestimated the scope to change the water supply. One of the reasons that the scope was underestimated was the lack of technical expertise of the people making the decision.

The existing backup Flint water treatment plant was taken out of service over 50 years ago. The water treatment plant was a lime softening filtration system that was considerably more complicated to operate. Since the plant was taken out of service over 50 years ago, the Flint water department activities have involved just the pumping of water in a distribution system, not operating at treatment plant.

Knowing that the Flint was lacking funds, it is difficult to imagine that the City had the management and organization skills to put the 50 year water treatment facility back on line.