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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

Has nobody in the conversation around the Flint crisis paid attention to Detroit Water's part in the issue? They terminated their contract when Flint decided it had long term plans to move and that termination forced the issue of finding an alternative water supply until the long term solution was ready.

If not for that, there never would have been a problem, Flint would have eventually had its long term new supply without ever needing an intermediate option.

When I sat down a finally looked over the details of this story it's the one glaring omission that I noticed from all of the news coverage.

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As I understand it, the direct cause of the crisis wasn't that they changed water. It was they changed water and were totally incompetent in doing it. The basic PH levels in the new water are easily compensated for. Flint just didn't.

It's like if an uber driver canceled your pick up and the next one you got was drunk driving. Sure that first driver was a but-for cause, but not a direct cause. They have no moral culpability for the reckless actions of the next person.

edit: edited to correct the ph level as suggest by max.

The river water has too low of a ph, the correction is to increase it.

Yep. And it wouldn't have cost much. Emphasis mine:

> Marc Edwards, a professor at Virginia Tech who has been testing Flint water, says treatment could have corrected much of the problem early on — for as little as $100 a day — but officials in the city of 100,000 people didn't take action.

> "There is no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements under federal law that none of this would have happened," said Edwards, who obtained the Muchmore email through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/internal-email-mic...

Interesting. Although I tend to attribute things like this to ignorance and not malice. < Helps me pretend people aren't so bad.

The people who make decisions often don't know what they're deciding about (how can the same person make a good decision about child education, policing standards and public hygiene?) and I think our modern philosophy that a "bad decision made early is better than no decision" amplifies this.

There are some decisions in life that have to made carefully so we don't ask for forgiveness.

The importance of pipe scale and water chemistry is something that the person making the decision absolutely should have known. It's a huge systemic issue if the decision has been taken away from someone with that basic technical knowledge and handed to some administrator.

It really is pretty basic knowledge for someone making decisions about a water system.

...which is why the trend of conservative-run states usurping power from cities is so disturbing to me

The governor appointed an emergency manager to manage Flint's affairs. He decided to move to Flint river water to save money. But the Flint water department was woefully inadequate to handle the change and state interpreted EPA rules to allow them to not add chemicals to the water.

Coincidentally the state is currently building a water pipeline from Lake Huron for Flint that the new mayor announced that she will not use. The mayor wants to stay on Detroit water and the state may sue Flint to get them to change. Note I am in East Lansing an hour west of Flint.

Detroit offered a reasonable long term contract before Flint started using the river water.

http://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2016/01/25/new-...

What I saw on CNN said that they offered a lower long term price as an alternative to Flint making the long term switch. When Flint announced it was making the long term switch, Detroit Water announced that they were terminating their contract which started a 1 year expiration clock. The permanent Flint solution wasn't due to be ready until a little over 2 years...which forced Flint to find an intermediate water supply.

Detroit waters offer was only good if Flint agreed not to move essentially.

The low long term rate was only good for a long term contract.

It's unlikely they refused to provide water in the interim. This article states they made a short term offer at a 10% price hike over the existing contract:

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-c...

So Flint may have choose the river to save money (or not, it appears that the new system doesn't do that), they likely weren't in a pinch to actually be able to continue providing water.

Here's the CNN timeline: http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-fast-fac...

> April 16, 2013 - On the city council's recommendation Andy Dillon, state treasurer, authorizes Flint to make the switch. One day later, the DWSD terminates its water service contract with Flint, effective April of 2014. There are further discussions, however, between Flint's leaders and the DWSD about options that would allow the city to purchase Detroit water after the contract ended. Flint resumes buying Detroit water in October of 2015.

That termination the day after the announcement following a period of negotiation just screams retaliation when I read it.

What's your point? Are you suggesting that Detroit Water is some how to blame?

Yep, at least partially. They terminated the contract.

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