Michigan's Ex-Gov. Snyder Knew About Flint's Toxic Water – and Lied About It | Hacker News Reader

Michigan's Ex-Gov. Snyder Knew About Flint's Toxic Water – and Lied About It

vice.com

Of course he was, the only way this was possible in the first place was by falsifying water test results. You don't just not notice that your city water supply is testing multiple points below the required pH level. And the only people who gain anything at all by falsifying water test results is the state government who forcefully took control of the Flint government via Emergency Manager in order to cut the budget. If they failed to cut the budget they would be called out because both the state and local populous voted against emergency manager takeover, so they forced a way to cut the budget, thinking they wouldn't ever get caught. But they were too stupid to realize managing the water's pH level is what prevents the entire water system from corroding away.

Where it not for the leaded joints spiking lead levels in people, they probably would have gotten away without anybody noticing. Nobody would have noticed anything was off until years later when the water system is leaking like a sieve with nobody to blame for it.

The Gov. is an ex-COO from Gateway. I guess this is what they mean by making government run like a business.

EDIT: Sorry, I had the wrong company down as Dell and CEO before. Don't post from memory folks.

It's worse than that: he was the ex-COO from Gateway (not Dell). They were essentially a Dell wannabe that was even more poorly run.

Thanks for the correction.

Gateway 2000 -1998 name change-> Gateway -2007 acquisition-> Acer

eMachines -2004 acquisition-> Gateway

Wikipedia is wrong: not Gateway in 2000, but 1997 saw several sub-$1k computers, and possibly the first was the Compaq Presario powered by the Cyrix MediaGX. I recall taking some community college computer course in sophomore(10)/junior(11) year of high school about 1994 and the lecturer predicting the sub-$1k computer.

https://www.cnet.com/news/the-secret-history-of-the-sub-1000...

Except... That's not what happened.

The switch was essentially forced by a broke DWSD trying to squeeze a broke Flint system. When Vice writes

  Despite DWSD’s cheaper offer to Flint

it's a damn lie. DWSD was already charging TWICE ($12M) what the KWA contract was to charge, even for the larger supply and the wider pipe... and they were increasing their charge for the subsequent contract.

Neither the governor nor the special manager chose the switch singlehandedly -- it was passed by the council on a 7-2 vote, including a majority of its Democrats. Similarly, Obama's EPA voiced no objections to the switch when it happened.

The "heavy metals" and other nonbiological contaminants issues were not in the supplied water -- they leached out of the crappy Flint city and individual homes' pipes. As for the Legionella, that I haven't researched, but it seems really odd that if it was in the water supply at or before the treatment plant, it should have affected all neighborhoods equally, if it entered later.

The water draw directly from the river after the switch was only part of the supply, and even that was only temporary until that pipeline was finished.

Sure, if if had been known or assumed from the outset that past FWD governance had allowed such crappy and poorly maintained pipelines to be so unusually vulnerable to lower pH water, they could (and should) have been proactive in adding buffering chemicals... but again, none of this happens without DWSD gouging the hell out of client water systems like Flint. When you're broke, $6+ million a year is real money (nearly $200/year per family).

And he won't suffer any severe consequences because of it...

We wish. I just had a similar political discussion with a close friend. Why is there no accountability in politics/government? How could we go about changing that?

You can’t. The political machines of these areas need to have significant political issues (think bankruptcy and stewardship to a larger organization Detroit being taken over by the state for example) to cause a change.

Places like Illinois are financially insolvent and are cutting back on all sorts of things.

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