The river water has too low of a ph, the correction is to increase it.
> 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...
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.
It really is pretty basic knowledge for someone making decisions about a water system.