People exposed to lead in Flint, Mich., water will get a $626M settlement | Hacker News Reader

People exposed to lead in Flint, Mich., water will get a $626M settlement

npr.org

145 pointsauthed101 comments

So after poisoning thousands of people (including children that will suffer for life), somehow nearly no punishment to those responsible. Imagine how corrupt a system must be to allow those involved in poisoning thousands of people to get away with it.

Then to add insult to injury, instead of justice, throw a handful of cash at the victims. While a huge payday for the lawyers, the money will barely be anything for the victims. Especially for those whose children are affected for life, or those dead and dying from drinking and bathing in contaminated water.

Nobody intentionally poisoned anyone, and the EPA had certified the water source. The pipes leached lead, and it was a tragedy, but heads on pikes aren't going to fix much.

A more comprehensive process for certifying water which includes a full accounting of the pipes, additives, and water source would help. Restitution to the victims helps.

Many many water systems around the country are vulnerable to this kind of thing, as long as the pipes are lined with lead. That this particular city experienced it is awful, but it could easily happen to dozens of other cities, and likely already is affecting many.

Mayors don't control funding. City councilors and voters generally do.

Maybe let's lock up all voters who failed to adequately fund water.

> Nobody intentionally poisoned anyone,

Once the local governing authority began shipping in bottled water to their office, without immediately sounding the alarm, is the moment the liability begins.

I'd like to see an infographic of the number of micrograms of lead consumed as:

* Someone living near an airport where avgas is used

* Someone living in flint during their lead trouble.

* Someone who lives in an old house with lead paint & roofing.

* Someone who licks 'highly lead comtaminated' toys made in China...

Knowing the scale of these issues would surely make things better, and all the news articles I can find don't even have estimates for number of micrograms...

Who would you personally hold responsible?

Let's look at a similar case - Volkswagen. The CEO ?

This very brief article is about the civil settlement. You are clearly unaware that there are pending criminal charges against nine public officials involved in the matter, including former Gov. Rick Snyder.

Isn’t this the same thing as the Sackler family and Purdue pharmaceutical and them getting away with paying a penalty for getting millions hooked on opiates and killing thousands more? America is corrupt to the core now and money buys you anything. Most people don’t even remember Vioxx. So much negligence is routinely swept under the rug.

With a population of about 95,000 (circa 2020), and assuming 50% of that goes to the lawyers, that's about $3,294 per person.

Ouch. I'd like to think "not having lead poisoning" would be worth a bit more than that.

Not to sound callous but maybe they incorporate future expecting earnings of someone living in Flint, MI in their calculations somehow.

EDIT: I know there is a rule against discussing downvotes, but this is a factual statement and the notion that this comment isn't relevant or doesn't enhance the conversation (for anyone who downvoted me) is an affront to any semblance of being capable of reasonable discourse in civil society - any downvoters should really reflect on what makes you feel like a statement made by a poster is actually what the poster thinks may or may not be right vs. your feelings of the post upsetting you.

Wow, yeah, that sounds pretty callous.

Yeah, that's the point of the legal system. Even though the non-callous thing would be to treat life/health as priceless, you can't really be giving the victims infinity dollars for their suffering.

surely there's some middle ground between infinity and a paltry $3500. in our legal system there are concepts like damages, emotional damages, pain and suffering. it's not just about how much wages you missed out on. or does all that just go out the window because these are members of society who aren't paid a lot for their labor?

The problem is it's a class action against the government that the people elected. The victims are both the petitioner and the defendant. Regardless of the amount paid, the only beneficiaries are the lawyers.

Did someone run on an agenda of making the water more acidic?

"Regardless of the amount paid, the only beneficiaries are the lawyers."

If government destroyed your house through negligence, say military plane dropped a bomb on it, would you want to be made whole, or would you still believe that "the only beneficiaries are the lawyers"?

I think you might be failing to take into account that the population of Flint (the ones getting paid) is slightly less than 1% of the population of Michigan (the ones paying).

It is essentially equivalent to a retroactive insurance system. It is as if everyone in Michigan had been required to buy "State appointed manager mishandles water system causing lead poisoning" insurance, and Flint is now having a claim paid under that insurance.

> The deal makes money available to every Flint child who was exposed to the water, every adult who can show an injury, certain business owners and anyone who paid water bills.

After you subtract own money going to non-local property owners like large coporations, and then average out, yes.

All you have to do is send a request letter of no more than three hundred words to [address] by December 1, 2021. Envelopes must be #11 and the requestor's address must be centered on the back over the seam of the flap in a typeface no larger than 14pt. The front of the envelope should have [address] and a stamp. Any other markings or creases on the envelope will void the request.

Me and family were poisoned a few years ago, severe negligence by a rental company. Probably half a million in medical bills so far and counting. Insurance covered most of it.

One thing we leaned is doctors have zero interest in helping you to show injuries or claims. Something like posion is outside their domain.

They treat symptoms and want nothing to do with you as person. Claim forms send them running.

Was functionally blind and stuck in bed for a year. No doctor would fill out paperwork.

Disability literally just laughed at me.

By the time we got lawyers involved we started hitting deadlines for suing. So now layers have zero interest.

Unless it’s a very clear thing like “piano fell on head” your going to have a rough time getting justice.

> They treat symptoms and want nothing to do with you as person. Claim forms send them running.

They treat medical problems, not legal ones.

They treat medical problems by causing legal ones would be a far more accurate statement.

Family almost became homeless because they didn’t want to fill out forms. I absolutely would have died due to loss of coverage.

And it's being paid by the state, presumably in no small part by tax dollars the victims themselves contributed to state funds. It's a slap in the face all around.

Who’s it supposed to be paid by?

Insurance

The premiums are paid by the government. No sorry that doesn't shift the cost to anyone else.

Premiums and payouts are very separate pools of money.

Life insurance payouts for example can in theory be consistently be larger than premiums.

The people that were ultimately responsible. Which I would argue is the voters.

It's a neat trick. Lawyers take 600m out of the voters back pocket, hand back 400m, and the people rejoice.

>It's a neat trick. Lawyers take 600m out of the voters back pocket, hand back 400m, and the people rejoice.

and that's fine, because you're not taking $60 out of everyone's pocket and giving back $40, they're taking $60 out of everyone's pocket and giving $4000 to the people affected. The point of the lawsuit is to force redistributing wealth to compensate the people affected, not as some sort of money-maker.

Who do you think should pay for this? Canada? The Republican Party of Michigan? Rick Snyder?

I think it should be dismissed.

Criminal lawsuits should be allowed to go forward.

> I think it should be dismissed.

So you're against compensating the victims financially?

>Criminal lawsuits should be allowed to go forward.

You do realize that this judgement doesn't preclude criminal prosecution? The criminal courts and civil courts operate independently.

The state of Michigan was responsible for damaging the health of the people of Flint, Michigan.

If the people of Michigan elect clowns to run the state, who cause harm to <some group of people>, the people of Michigan should be responsible for making amends. It doesn't make one whit of difference that the harmed people were, or were not part of Michigan.

This creates an incentive to not elect clowns.

Why is the state responsible? Isn’t this infrastructure squarely the responsibility of the city?

Not in this case.

An emergency financial manager from the State of Michigan was the one who made the call to switch Flint water source from the original source to the more alkaline (and cheaper) alternative source. It was this alkaline water that wore away the mineral buildup lining the lead pipes, exposed the lead to the water, and then began to dissolve the lead pipes themselves.

Edit: Initially I wrote "acidic". Thinking back more, I think the water source they switched to was actually alkaline. Same end result, but different actual pH.

Got it, thanks. And was that to save the city from insolvency? The original article here also phrased things as the state allowing the city to switch sources. The reason I am probing is it seems wrong in a sense for state taxpayers to be punished for attempting to help a mismanaged city, although I recognize it’s complicated. I also am probably missing key background information here.

"it seems wrong in a sense for state taxpayers to be punished "

The problem with that logic, is no-one would ever get compensation from the government, as in the end it's all taxpayer's money.

> And was that to save the city from insolvency?

More or less, yes. Flint has struggled for several decades. The decline of the auto industry in Michigan hit several cities very hard, including Flint. As businesses and people left and unemployment climbed, tax revenue plummeted and crime soared. That encouraged more people to leave. Sometimes even if they abandoned or foresook their homes.

The causes of the crisis are fairly complex. But the management after it had been identified by the population was absolutely criminal. There's a very good reason that criminal charges have been filed. Making the switch was somewhat defensible. However, they ignored the signs of problems, ignored complaints, didn't test appropriately, etc.

they switched the water source and didn't add enough hydroxide to adjust pH to level to maintain the caco3 coating the pipes, so the water ended up being too acidic

Attorneys have been seeking as much as $200 million in legal fees from the $626 million settlement.

-TFA

Better than some class-action settlement splits, I suppose.

It also depends on how strict the claim process is. Do they need a signed doctors note from 2014 to take part or some other obnoxious legal roadblock?

I agree that at least it at least isn't a spit in the face like those "coupon for 5% off your next purchase of bottled water" while the lawyers pocket hundreds of millions.

>as much as

do they typically get what they ask for? or does the judge strike it down?

How do they justify that? Or is it part of some agreement with the primary claimant that they'll take the case for free but get some % of the winnings?

Either way, mixing justice and profit feels slimy.

>Either way, mixing justice and profit feels slimy.

It's slimy but it's still the least bad system. The alternative is the state having sole authority in compensating the victims (judging from the fact this went to trial, my guess is that they would have paid the victims far less), or leaving it to non-profits (which have limited budgets and are up against tax-payer funded lawyers).

Ah, what I meant was that lawyers should be paid for their billed hours, but shouldn't be able to earn percentages of settlements.

If they lose, then there’s no one to bill. The percentage makes them willing to take on the risk and millions of dollars it costs to try the case.

That just incentivizes lawyers to go after the most complex (more billable hours) and sure-to-win (greater expected value) cases. If you want to maximize justice delivered (ie. victims getting their compensation), using dollars seem way better than any of those two metrics that a flat-rate system would incentivize.

Compensation of $3,000 if you can prove you've been harmed is barely justice.

Your proposed change would likely bump the per person payout from ~$4,400 to ~$6,300. In such a case I'd dare to guess you'd still feel the same way about whether receiving $6,300 for being poisoned is justice.

Yes, good point.

Considering adults also have to ‘prove’ they were injured by the lead… much of this money likely won’t be making it into the right hands

At the minimum, they will have costs associated with bringing fresh water to their home.

They will have costs from going to the doctor to get diagnosed with "proof."

Too bad it doesn't include 1 year of free credit monitoring.

Jesus, don't remind me. What a joke of an outcome for the Equifax fiasco.

*health monitoring.

Yep. It's disgusting.

Kids should have got at least 100 times that amount...

I don't believe the whole city was exposed since not everyone had lead pipes between the source and their house.

At least this time the execs can't escape through their standard "i didn't know" (and if it were up to me i'd criminally charged any related city employee who hadn't filed a whistleblower complain about the water quality):

https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2018/01/city_of_the_state_f...

>Flint has had a total of four emergency managers: Ed Kurtz, Mike Brown, Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose. Both Earley and Ambrose are currently facing charges of criminal wrongdoing in relation to the city’s lead-in-water crisis, which occurred after the DEQ failed to require the city to treat Flint River water to make it less corrosive to lead.

>A March 13, 2014, order signed by former Emergency Manager Gerald Ambrose for a water main cut-in at the water plant cleared the way for the switch to the river, according to emails released previously by the state Treasury.

>Water quality complaints began to pour in almost immediately from city residents following the switch.

Did anyone expect the state to fix flint after fifty years of mismanagement?

the ultimate power is with the state, the state grants the city charter, so the state (We the People) is ultimately responsible for any prolonged and known mismanagement. Whether the state, i.e. We the People, is capable of fixing the Flint i guess is the question of what kind of People constitute that state. So far it looks, to me an outsider, like the People there don't give much of a damn about Flint.

I live in Michigan, and I gotta say that this has been one of the most disappointing cases of state-level incompetence I've ever seen. This took nearly 7 years to sort out, in no part thanks to Rick Snyder dragging his feet in the mud the entire way. No matter how you feel about him politically, his treatment of this situation bordered on criminal negligence, and stands as a testament to how little your representatives actually care about your well-being. I fear that there is no way to prevent this from happening again if commercial interests continue to mar the goals of public office.

It's absolutely a replicable scenario. A test case to show exactly how minimal the consequences will be of government abandonment of public resources.

What are you describing?

In Flint, the state took over the management of the city and failed to properly operate the municipal water system.

There's moving parts, Flint moving from Detroit for water supply to the regional authority, but they are government entities.

Is the idea that the switch away from Detroit water wasn't really motivated by cost and was instead motivated by graft or something like that?

It's happening in Benton Harbor. Will be interesting to see how it plays out

https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-environment-an...

Is BH also state managed?

The incentives of holders of public office are completely warped. If you represent taxpayers, the last thing you want is for your city / state / county to face a huge settlement bill, so it's all denials, all around. This makes it impossible to fix the underlying problem -- it's the opposite of a blameless postmortem culture that should underlie productive systems design.

I mean, yes, but... we only got here because Flint itself failed so utterly it could not even provide even basic services like running water to its residents, so the state took over.

The state should have done better. But in reality, cities should not abdicate all responsibility for their own municipal services and expect anyone else to do it better.

The disaster happened only after the state took over. It was caused by a cost cutting measure on the state's part and ultimately ended up being way more expensive than the anti-lead leeching additive they decided to not use.

Yes. But the state took over because Flint was not financially able to run their own municipal water supply.

I'm not saying the state was right. They were very wrong. Lead is awful. But if Flint had been a functioning city, we'd never be here.

A state or federal government is never going to care as much as you do about your own lives and children. If you abdicate that responsibility and assume that "someone up there" will take care of you, you'll be bitten. It sucks, but it's reality.

> If you abdicate that responsibility and assume that "someone up there" will take care of you, you'll be bitten. It sucks, but it's reality.

Even if that “you” is a poor, less literate, possibly descendant of slaves, whose communities are poorer for obvious reasons and have to work multiple low wage jobs with low income security because cheaper labor from other countries outcompeted you on the price of labor and environmental externalities.

Then we find out how much of a “we” we really are.

There are plenty of majority-black cities in the country which run effective municipal services, and it's kinda racist that you believe otherwise.

I did not imply that all majority-black cities run ineffective municipal services.

I did imply that it might be reasonable to expect a community of people that are tired from working all day and may not have grown up with the best education and influence to have given them the necessary experiences to be able to evaluate a city’s financial situation and vote accordingly.

They probably are not spending the couple hours of free time checking government budgets and reading minutes from city council meetings, much less attending them in pre internet days.

I even keep up with many of the local political happenings, but quite frankly, I rely on the good will and good luck of the decision makers in my community doing the right thing.

Half of American kids have lead in their blood[1] and I don't think this is only happening in the US. I don't think governments are inclined to fixing this either.

[1] https://futurism.com/neoscope/half-american-kids-lead-blood-...

Is there similar data for other countries for comparison?

I mean lead naturally occurs and we can detect it down to parts per trillion, so saying “half of kids have lead in their body” doesn’t tell me much.

There is no safe threshold for lead exposure. [1]. Nearly all toxins have some threshold, it becomes toxic at parts per million. For lead, this is zero.

All toxins also decay/degrade over a period of time, the effects aren't long lasting. Not so for lead, it is forever!

"Unlike such carcinogens and killers as pesticides, most chemicals, waste oils and even radioactive materials, lead does not break down over time. It does not vaporize, and it never disappears."

"modern man’s lead exposure is 300 to 500 times greater than background or natural levels. " [2]

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27837574/

[2] https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2000/03/02/...

Please stop. You’re twisting facts to suit your own purpose.

Let’s say there is no safe limit for lead. Regardless you’d have to agree that at some point the harm caused by lead becomes irrelevant? If someone has 1 ppt lead in their blood the harm isn’t actually measurable?

And no, you’re wrong. Lead is excreted (why measure in urine/feces otherwise?). Lead exposure isn’t permanent just like all the other toxins humans are naturally exposed to.

> Let’s say there is no safe limit for lead. Regardless you’d have to agree that at some point the harm caused by lead becomes irrelevant? If someone has 1 ppt lead in their blood the harm isn’t actually measurable?

How does the harm from lead become irrelevant? It takes the role of calcium. Deposits in the bones, slowly and continuously gets back into the bloodstream. Takes the roles of calcium in all of its pathways. It isn't a one time exposure, we are all exposed to it, 300 - 500 times more than earlier humans.

> And no, you’re wrong. Lead is excreted (why measure in urine/feces otherwise?). Lead exposure isn’t permanent just like all the other toxins humans are naturally exposed to.

Digestive system is not 100% efficient at extracting nutrients. Absorption is 10 - 90%, varies on a number of factor. Everything ingested is excreted. Excreted doesn't mean it is explicitly selected for filtering. Fats, vitamins, proteins, everything is excreted to some degree.

> Please stop. You’re twisting facts to suit your own purpose.

Looks like you are. I haven't twisted any facts.

The harm is irrelevant because it’s such a small effect. That’s why the EPA threshold for lead in water is not zero it’s 15 ug/L. There is no value in aiming for zero because of diminishing returns.

And I’m not sure how incomplete digestion is relevant? Lead is excreted naturally. Sure it can have a very long half life but that doesn’t jive with “it only accumulates”.

Something like this can happen anywhere, not just lead. Highly suggest you invest in filtration systems in your home. They generally fairly easy to install and aren't that expensive.

For perspective on how much lead Flint children were exposed to I suggest:

https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/body-work/study-examines-bloo...

The actual paper is here, complete with graphs: https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(17)31758-4/fulltext

Well that puts it into perspective. Looks like lead exposure was a small blip on an other downward trend.

Kids in Flint during this crisis had less lead in their blood than kids a decade earlier when there was no crisis?

Why am I not surprised the folks who will make out the most from this are the lawyers?

Coming soon, late night TV ads from legal firms à la Mesothelioma..

This paper tracks lead blood levels of Flint kids from 2005-2016:

https://www.jpeds.com/pb/assets/raw/Health%20Advance/journal...

Over this time range lead levels steadily declined with the exception of increases in 2011 and 2015. The 2015 increase brought lead levels back up to where they were in .... 2012 (and still 1/3 of the 2005 level). I'm guessing people just don't drink much tap water.

It's hard to reconcile this relatively small change with the calls for intense punishment for those responsible.

I wonder how much that water tower cost: https://img.lemde.fr/2021/10/26/0/0/3500/2289/664/0/75/0/423...

$600m from the state of Michigan, so tax payer money? So the people are paying for their own settlement?

My guess is this shows up as an extra line item in the utility bill, like the San Bruno pipeline explosion a few years go.

I don't have a solution but isn't this kind of crazy?

It'll have to come out of somewhere, if it wasn't the government maybe some insurance company would pay, but unlike the Fed they can't print money either, so premiums will go up regardless, everyone pays in any case. Flint, MI is functionally bankrupt anyway so I don't think they'd have been able to charge higher premiums anyway.

The people of Michigan voted for the leaders who decided to neglect the mess until a lawsuit was filed. Why shouldn't they be liable for the damages?

Slightly off topic but what I understand the recently passed Infrastructure bill has monies for addressing lead / water issues nationally. The issue is sad enough. But for it to take 7 yrs to be addressed by Uncle Sam is unconscionable.

There will be huge special education needs going forward. I hope the city and state and federal govt step up and fund it.

We know lead poisoning contributes to crime.

Have they fixed the problem though?

https://www.abc12.com/2021/07/22/testing-shows-least-amount-...

There was a switch back to the Detroit water supply and a program to replace lead service lines:

https://www.cityofflint.com/gettheleadout/

That doesn't necessarily address any houses with lead pipes inside the house, which are owned by the homeowner.

(service lines are also generally treated as a homeowner responsibility, Michigan passed a law requiring cities to proactively swap them out)

This level of negligence merits custodial sentences, not just a financial settlement.

That's pursued via the criminal courts, and is largely independent of the civil courts (which deals with monetary settlements).

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Criminal_pr...

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