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Comment by WarOnPrivacy | Hacker News Reader

officials from Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration decided against adding the inhibitors, even though the practice was mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency for cities over 50,000 people.

Apparently, the liberty buzz - the one that states get from refusing federal health orders - comes with a nasty hangover (one that can damage health and/or end lives).

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There need to be criminal penalties for the sort of things he did.

Neglecting infrastructure and poisoning water despite warnings?

Did you read the article?

"Former Gov. Rick Snyder and eight others have been charged with crimes related to the Flint water crisis."

Yes, that’s the first step. Let’s see through to the penalties.

I got $1000 that says no time gets served, nor financial hardship (like reduction to a middle-class life) to him. Happy to lose this bet.

When it comes to public health/public safety related mandates, normal people don't benefit from living in a state that refuses those orders.

Politicians however can build a whole career out of it. They don't even have to stay in those states if a cushy role in Congress opens up.

This stuff makes for great quips and lots of internet virtue points but odds are this was just a line item among many that "needed" to be done to Flint's infrastructure to meet federal guidelines. They're not rich enough to do it all. There's no way for anyone with any authority to actually do things decide what is and isn't important because a) politics and b) every department thinks their stuff is most critical. Most of the time most of the stuff manages to get done without causing any sort of crisis but there's always the risk.

Construing this as the inevitable result of some ill-advised liberty binge is simply lying. Flint didn't care about thumbing their nose at the EPA. Their mistake was being poor, incompetent and unlucky simultaneously. If they were rich they could have out spent their own stupid. If they were smart they'd have figured out there was a problem and treated it before it god bad. If they were lucky there never would have been a problem.

Seems pretty clear that whoever was responsible for this specific cost/benefit calculation was wrong though?

Everything is 20-20 with hindsight. If a school bus went through a rusted out guard rail killing a bunch of kids you'd be hearing about that instead.

There is no winning in these kinds of situations, you just try your best and hope to not be the unlucky one who presided over something that went south. Of course sucking at your job makes it harder to get it right but even if you're good the risk is always there.

The ironic thing is the people of Flint can probably relate to this dilema a heck of a lot better than a bunch of HNers who have no frame of reference for this kind of thing.

Putting morons in charge of critical water infrastructure is literally a case study in municipal fuckups. "Don't poison your town" isn't a hard call, especially when the incremental cost is on the order of thousands of dollars per year, not tens of thousands.

Full wiki background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak

Case study: http://scceh.com/Portals/6/Env_Health/consumer_protection/dr...

Literally everyone who has been within 100yds of a muni water system knows the stakes for this stuff.

The only winning move is to live in a rich city.

Something to keep in mind the next time HN starts ranting about working remotely.

> They're not rich enough to do it all.

But we're not talking about doing it all, we're talking about meeting its minimum legal requirements. If a city doesn't have enough money to do that, then presumably it should declare bankruptcy.

There are plenty of municipal entities who can't afford to meet various minimum legal requirements. Furthermore, it's not always clear what severity is attached to various compliance requirements.

Bankruptcy can cancel debt, but it can't create new funding. If the money isn't there, it isn't there.

Flint switched water supplies then failed to properly treat the new one. Severe budget constraints would have had them staying with the already not-poisonous supply.

In general, it would have... Except in this case, a larger municipality more or less bought out Flint's stake in the old water supply.

Flint didn't have the money to not get the old supply turned away from them.

I just love the way markets self regulate.

Appreciate the additional info.

That still sounds like somebody went on a liberty binge.

Why are towns competing for clean water sources by how much they can pay to a provider?

Because in the United States, in absence of law forcing a different arrangement, we can assume that this problem is solved by a capitalist marketplace.

I don't know enough about Michigan state law to comment in detail on this topic. I can only extrapolate from the local situation where I live, where our water is provided by a corporation, that corporation works to minimize its costs to maximize its revenue (within a safety framework established by the state), but the corporation is private. It maintains its own reservoirs, and I don't doubt a price point could be found where, if they were willing to pay, it would sell the water from the city down into neighboring towns, possibly to a level that decreases the odds that can satisfy demand in-city during a drought.

This is the scenario I would anticipate unless there is law to the contrary.

Old supplier was City of Detroit (Lake Huron/Detroit River water), new supplier was themselves (Flint River water), eventual supplier was regional municipal corporation (Karegnondi Water Authority, Lake Huron water).

Detroit cut off the water, seemingly out of pettiness, with a year of warning. They did that after offering lower rate though.

Thank you for adding that.

> There are plenty of municipal entities who can't afford to meet various minimum legal requirements.

Many people are saying this. I'd be interested to know how cities get into situations where they stop complying with legal requirements, and what consequences they face, if you have some examples.

> Furthermore, it's not always clear what severity is attached to various compliance requirements.

I don't think a city should be deciding which laws to follow based on how big the punishment is for not complying. If it is ever economically rational to pay a fine rather than obey the law, then the fine needs to be higher, and if it is ever unclear what the punishment is for breaking a law, then the law needs to be made clearer.

Again, if you have an example of a city mistakenly believing that the penalty for non-compliance with a legal requirement was smaller than it actually was, I'd be interested to know.

> Bankruptcy can cancel debt, but it can't create new funding.

You're absolutely right. I think I was assuming that bankruptcy would automatically trigger a process of the state taking control of the city, which is sort of what happens in Michigan[0]. In some cases, a city can also be dissolved.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_emergency_in_Michiga...

[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/what-happens-if-your-ci...

I think you have not been following this situation. It wasn’t something overlooked — there were plenty of alarms ringing (articles in the local and national press, posturing by the governor and certain legislators etc).

I agree what you mention can happen. That’s not the situation here.

> They're not rich enough to do it all.

That kind of indicates Flint shouldn't have switched their water supply if they couldn't afford to do it w/o lead-poisoning the population.

It's sad that you would classify liberty as "buzz." I take it you've never lived in an authoritarian dictatorship before.

Neither has Rick Snyder.

Not nearly as sad as pols who are only interested in liberties that generate a political high.

How much lead is in the water you drink?

This was purely performative, though. Any concept of liberty which allows for such neglect of critical public goods like water supply is morally bankrupt.

It's sad that you would compare "federal health orders that prevent children from being exposed to levels of lead that cause permanent brain damage" to authoritarian dictatorship.

Oh these pesky dictatorships that insist in keeping poor kids safe from brain damaging poisons… Who will pay for that?

The problem with preventing harm to children is eventually you run out of other people's money.

/sigh

The key to maintain a healthy capitalist society is to run out of children before you run out of money.

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