(07-15-2017 09:57 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Ohhhhhhhhhj God. You want to double down on stupid heh. I need to copy and paste this. You need to go and research the problem. You have ZERO understanding of the issue. The homes and lead pipes. The water that was being pumped to them would be safe to drink but it was slightly corrosive. It disintegrated the calcium carbonate lining around the lead pipes in the homes. Those lead pipes leached into each individuals home. You are NOT SMART enough to talk about such issues off the top of your head. You can't wing it UofM. Now go back and try to educate yourself before you embarrass yourself yet again.

Actually, you are wrong. The pipes developed a phosphate coating. Calcium carbonate has nothing to do with it.

More importantly, the lead is not in the homes, it is in the service line between the water main and the house itself.

You can disagree with UofM's tone, but that is what happened. Flint was going to change water sources (from Detroit, to their own line from the lake). Detroit got pissed and shut them off early. So, Flint decided to use their own mothballed plant and take water from the Detroit River. They did not add phosphate to the water which is a bandaid approach to not fixing/removing old lead supply lines. The new water removed the accumulated phosphate coating and allowed lead to leach out. EPA actively covered it up until it couldn't be covered up any more.

Flint should have added phosphate. They clearly weren't up to running their own plant. That being said, the plan construct their own pipeline and stop using Detroit water was initiated before the state took over the city.

If Detroit doesn't cut off the water, this never happens.

At its core are two broke Democratic cities that didn't take care of their infrastructure for decades. Other cities have removed those lead lines, which eliminates this problem. Crappy cities, like these ones, (Chicago too), have no plan for dealing with/fixing the problem.