Yeah, the Flint water crisis is not a science problem at all, it’s something that could just be solved plainly by fixing infrastructure. Obviously, great accomplishment for the high schoolers, but right now this news is just becoming another excuse for institutions that actually have power to do anything about this to keep doing nothing about it.

There are entanglements - to remove and replace some of the pipe requires removing and disposing of asbestos, or updating or replacing materials or structural elements of a house. A contractor or homeowner can't simply replace plumbing and ignore everything else, and property value is garbage for those houses even if they fix everything up.

They could waive code requirements and grandfather in exceptions that would allow focus on the plumbing but there isn't necessarily a simple answer to the issues facing these people. Who wants to spend a ton of money on a property declining in value in a notorious market? And even if there was a clear and easy path to fix things what effect is lead exposure having on their cognition?

Gotta solve for potential pathologies, obstinacy economics, labor rights, and so forth - it's not a simple home project even if it should be. Filters start to look like a better solution in the face of politics and bureacracy.

I mean if the government wanted they could identify homes that are too expensive to repair, put the residents up in temporary housing, remove and replace the home with a simple new one, and put the residents back. The federal government gives hundreds of billions to big corporations every year in tax breaks, incentives, contracts, and protection, but we would balk at giving individuals safe homes.

This is the way. Habitat for Humanity does this with donations, governments can do it too. Put families in brand new, safe, modest homes, demo and landfill old homes like you would handle a superfund site (and safely dispose of the asbestos, lead, and god knows what else is in these homes).

There seems to be this unwillingness to imagine better. We can't fix the lead because there's also asbestos and we can't fix the asbestos because of shoddy construction and we can't fix the shoddy construction because even if we did the house wouldn't be profitable. Insanity -- the house valuation isn't the point, human safety is! Fix broken things! If things were fixed as you went, there wouldn't be huge reputational problems and infinite constrained loops, there'd just be one isolated issue!

(As corroborating evidence, Montreal has a problem with lead in some pipes. So, they're replacing the pipes, in every residential building, on the island. The mains past the property lines have already been replaced. On the private side of the line, there are two options: You either have it done yourself or the owner pays $3000 for the government to do it. There is no opt-out. It's been going on for two years, and in three more years, there will be no more lead. Problem solved. No reputational hazard. No valuation considerations. It just gets done because it's the correct thing to do.)

>Insanity -- the house valuation isn't the point, human safety is! Fix broken things!

Ok, are you going to pay for it?

Well we could start by making sure super wealthy corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and using that tax money to improve American infrastructure. This “who is going to pay for it” question is nonsense. No one ever asks this when we release massive and inflated military budgets. No one ever asks this when we give tax cuts to the super wealthy, who have more than enough wealth to pay for important infrastructure work while maintaining a lavish lifestyle. Remember that corporations do well when Americans are not falling victim lead poisoning. Corporations do well when young children have their full mental function due to a lack of heavy metals in their water supply.

Who is going to pay for it? Well if we don’t pay for the infrastructure work needed, it will continue to be the innocent children of Flint Michigan who are paying for the shoddy infrastructure with sacrifices to their health and well being.

Yes, sure. That is what taxes are for.

Waiting for 'an act of god' like a tornado or a great Chicago fire event to force the issue appears to be the default option.

Wow, yeah I didn't even think about the asbestos in older houses. Imagine having some people come in and check your pipes for lead but check for asbestos (because they'll have to tear out walls to fix it) and then you find out that you now have two problems :(

And depending on the area, the local government, local banks, and contractors could be working hand in pocket, arranging things such that you'll need to pay out the nose, and/or go into debt to resolve the problems.

Honestly, I'd probably sneak a pex run and pay a friend of a friend and not notify the authorities if faced with lead issues, but my exposure to lead might have my brain mangled to the point that I don't care or can't effectively plan a surreptitious fix. Flint is just all sorts of fucked.

Take a look at homes in Europe built before indoor plumbing. The plumbing is added to the outside of the house. Doing this in Flint would greatly reduce the expense.

Or at a bare minimum, add a lead-free faucet for the drinking water.

I've only heard about external water pipes when somebody wants to rant about how bad some british houses are. Pipes on the outside, separate taps for hot and cold, carpeted bathrooms, poor insulation with drafts. I've never seen it done in reality even in houses several hundred years old, and in Michigan they would freeze as soon as winter arrives.

You can put insulation and siding over the pipes outside what is currently the house (and remove insulation inside if necessary). That way the pipes will stay at the same temperature as the inside of the house. Or, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30878006, heat tape. As an extra bonus, if they do freeze, they'll leak outside the house instead of flooding inside the house.

> The plumbing is added to the outside of the house

Does it not freeze in Europe? If they did that in Flint the pipes would freeze in the winter.

Glad you pointed it out, there was something that didn't quite add up there. Yes it freezes in europe, those pipes would get destroyed if they were on the outside.

It's probably easier to replace pipes in an older European house anyway; less insulation / less layered walls, less things embedded in concrete, sometimes even wood beam floors. I lived in a >100 year old house that was renovated at some point, newer pipes and electricity was put up against the walls, then a layer of drywall was applied everywhere to make things look tidy.

I am not aware of pipes outside the house here in Germany. Maybe he is referring to southern Europe?

I live in southern Europe and there are no pipes outside the house either.

Not in the east either, they would get frozen very quick.

There are lots of ways to stop pipes from freezing. A couple are mentioned here.

Another way is to put the valve below the freeze line in the ground. Opening the valve to the water would close a drain valve in the pipe leading from it to the faucet, and closing the valve would open the drain valve.

I have a setup like this at my house, although the two valves are not linked. It works fine.

That can probably be solved with some insulation and a variety of optional ways to add heat sources.

It really wouldn’t. Unless by insulation and heat sources you mean… by putting the pipes inside the house.

Otherwise you’re just building a house around your outside pipes.

No amount of insulation is going to help your pipes outside overnight under a certain temperature. The water isn’t moving because you aren’t using any of it.

We had some pipes inside under the floor of an old addition of an older farmhouse which regularly froze despite being inside, our wellhouse had hundreds of watts of heating. There’s no chance of pipes exposed outside in a northern US climate not freezing.

Insulating and heating outside pipes is a solved problem and adding a small layer of insulation around a pipe with electrical heating elements is much cheaper and energy efficient than insulating+heating an entire house. Short term anyhow.

Keyword is "self-regulating pipe heating cable".

I don't know why you're making it out like it's rocket science and with such confidence.

I've never seen this anywhere but in the UK. I guess it works there because of relatively the mild winters? Michigan on the other side, has a continental climate.

Drain pipes on the outside are fairly common. I'm not sure about water lines though.

Pretty standard in trailer parks. You'll need some heat tape in the winter to keep it from freezing, but I'd say that's a good trade off for less lead.

Most new plumbing is done with plastic pipes (blue for cold, red for hot) that can be snaked and fished less destructively than metal pipes. While these don't contain lead, they may contaminate the water in unknown ways.

The type of plastic used for water pipes (cross-linked polyethylene, or PEX) has no known safety concerns as far as I am aware, mostly because it doesn't require added plasticisers. This is in contrast to PVC, which often contains phthalates and polycarbonate, which often contains bisphenols.

For all the concern about Flint and lead in the water, I was shocked to learned that despite lead levels in the water increasing, lead blood levels in children were still much lower than a decade earlier. They did increase, but they were still less than half the level in 2006.

The study, which appears in the Journal of Pediatrics, found a decrease in Flint childhood blood lead levels, from 2.33 micrograms per deciliter in 2006 to 1.15 micrograms per deciliter in 2016 — a historic low for the city. The mean blood lead level in 2015 during the height of the water crisis was 1.3 micrograms per deciliter, up from 1.19 in 2014 before the water source switch.

https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(17)31758-4/fulltext

Could that be due to the long decline of blood lead levels after the phase-out of unleaded gasoline?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7969125/#t2

Incredible that lead in the water had such a relatively small effect, though.

People were complaining to the city council about water quality 8 months after the switch to the water source that caused high water lead levels (and were likely concerned well before that).

The lead isn't an immediate problem if the water chemistry is correctly maintained, the pipes develop scale and there isn't a lot of material being dissolved into the water. The presence of lead infrastructure of course requires that the water chemistry be correctly maintained so that it does not disturb the pipe scale.

So it can be the case that the total exposure from the problem was somewhat limited.

This is blood lead levels in children, so it more likely exposure at home through things like lead paint.

Im sorry, but using consumable filters instead of installing few meters of PEX inside a house sounds insane.

If the remaining lead is caused by the pipes inside the houses, how come this problem is isolated to Flint? Shouldn't there be the same level of lead all over the US? Maybe they are only measuring lead levels in Flint, because it was they were very high at the beginning.

Flint switched their water source to one that was more corrosive, which resulted in much more lead entering the water. It was down to water chemistry. Water without the corrosive elements won’t pick up much lead.

Most places are smart enough to not falsify water test reports so they can skimp on pH balancing treatment so the water isn't acidic to save literal pennies. The water coming in was acidic enough for the local hospitals to complain about their stainless steel sinks rusting from it. Even if there was no lead in any of the pipes they would have had to replace the entire water system because it ate right through their steel pipes which otherwise had been coated in mineral deposits to protect it.

I have seen a technique where they line old pipes with newer plastic, like pumping an inner tube into an existing line; is that possible with the pipes in the house or would that cost too much of its diameter? Could they make a <1mm lining like that (which may need to be reapplied every once in a while), or some other kind of treatment to stop the lead from leaching?

I mean that would still cost a lot of money and time to implement in every house that still has lead pipes, but it's probably cheaper than replacing all the pipes.

I think most of those technologies are point to point linings. I also assume curves in the pipe cause 'issues'.

The other side of this is, if these houses have lead pipes and need a full water system gut (and probably the replacement of every device that touches the water); why stop there and just seal everything else back up. You're _going_ to find all of the horrific issues that existed but no one had seen in the light of day before. Or make all new issues. (For a good reference program on this, watch any of the highlighted construction / make it right shows made by "Mike Holmes" (OK, just the Canadian ones, in the US he's been in new build series only.))

When going that deep to fix the problem there's a substantial risk the whole thing is going to just have to be demoed and something new build to really fix the problem.

They've been using that lining technique for sewage and stormwater pipes near where I live.

I'm not sure how it will translate to much narrower pipes with tighter bends.

>There isn't a will among state government to tear up the houses to replace all the pipes.

Nor is there money to fund such a project.

Sorry to sound cynical but it's a question of priorities. Michigan just gave General Motors $2 billion to build two EV battery plants, one in Lansing and the other in Detroit which will create 3,000 jobs.

The billions are coming from Federal COVID money. The state caused Flint's problem by discontinuing water from Detroit and pulling from a local river without adding a required chemical.

This decision was made by an emergency manager appointed by the then governor to save money. This manager took power away from the elected mayor and city council.

I can't believe paying 750 000$ for a job is ever considered a good idea. If your goal really is only to provide jobs you might as well start a public works program instead of shoveling money to the private sector.

If it is a one-time sum, it may actually make economic sense over some reasonable time period. Consider:

1 industrial job may lead to : - 1-2 jobs in private services in the same area - 1-2 jobs in public services in the same area - industrial activity that can be taxed later - in the case of electric batteries, there may even be some environmental benefits that have value - once the facility is located to some location, it may be expected to grow over time, creating even more jobs and taxable corporate profits

In other words, each direct job can easily be around 4 jobs total. Future taxes from 4 jobs + corporate profits (and other taxes) + expected growth + the value environmental benefits may very well be worth the $750 up front investment.

Public works projects do all of that.

Also, there are not going to be environmental benefits, the only difference is that the batteries would be getting built somewhere else.

Who is going to pay you lobbying money if you do that? Much better to pay 750k and get 10k back as campaign contributions.

Sorry to sound cynical but it's a question of funding. Flint city council (Democrats) almost unanimously voted to switch the water source to the Flint River to cut costs because they did not have funding for a renegotiated contract with the original water source. The city was effectively bankrupt.

>Michigan just gave General Motors $2 billion to build two EV battery plants, one in Lansing and the other in Detroit which will create 3,000 jobs.

This is fake news, Michigan state did not give money out to GM.

>The state caused Flint's problem by discontinuing water from Detroit and pulling from a local river without adding a required chemical.

>This decision was made by an emergency manager appointed by the then governor to save money.

Voted almost unanimously by the city council. Everyone loves to leave that detail out.

>This is fake news, Michigan state did not give money out to GM.

Yes, seems like its just $666Mil (such an odd number lol)[1].

[1] https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2022/03/michigan-lawma...

I didn't make the original claim. I was just curious. And it's still a lot of money, but I have no skin in this game.

The United States is still the richest country in the world. There is plenty of money, they just don't want to give it to people because capitalism.

It's ironic as well given how they spend a trillion in the military which seems like an unprofitable investment. They coax kids into joining the army to get or pay for an education, instead of the much cheaper and more profitable option, just pay the kids' education directly.

>There is plenty of money, they just don't want to give it to people because capitalism.

Capitalism is the best system ever invented to get money into the hands of people. It's done more to take people out of poverty than any other system in human existence. Capitalism isn't to blame here.

>It's ironic as well given how they spend a trillion in the military which seems like an unprofitable investment.

Military is federal, Flint water is municipal. This is basic civics. The military is not designed to be a profitable investment.

>They coax kids into joining the army to get or pay for an education, instead of the much cheaper and more profitable option, just pay the kids' education directly.

They do both, federal government backs student loans, grants, etc. that literally pay for kids' education directly. And again, most education is State, not federal.

> Capitalism is the best system ever invented to get money into the hands of people.

I would like some citation for this one. Pretty large claim. For example China brought out 2/3rds of their population from poverty to middle class, pretty large number. Now there can be a debate on whether Chinese system is communism or not, but it definitely is not capitalism the way people in US like to define it.

>I would like some citation for this one. Pretty large claim. For example China brought out 2/3rds of their population from poverty to middle class, pretty large number.

Yes... Thanks to capitalism. Communismn killed tens of millions in China when they attempted to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes.

>Now there can be a debate on whether Chinese system is communism or not,

There is no debate. There are billionaire capitalists in China.

>but it definitely is not capitalism the way people in US like to define it.

It is 100% the way people in the US define capitalism. Sure it has it's Chinese spin, but it is undoubtedly capitalism.

I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty than capitalism. And capitalism is only like 250 years old. You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty, and yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.

>I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty

Thanks to capitalism!

>And capitalism is only like 250 years old.

And the rate of humanity leaving poverty in that time span is greater than any other time in history.

>You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty

Err, no? If anything, that pushed even MORE people into poverty. No one sane would ever make that argument.

>yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.

Because you're inventing a fictional strawman. Feudalism did the opposite of your claim.

It seems like you think all of history was complete garbage for people until the last 200 years and neither technology nor living standards ever improved until then. Serfs worked an average of 40 or less hours per week. The luddites came about because capitalism made their lives worse instead of better. How much of our world is now polluted with heavy metals and toxic chemicals because of unfettered growth at all costs? Capitalism didn't give people public schooling or public infrastructure, and most important technological breakthroughs have come from the military, university grants, and government programs. Without those, capitalism wouldn't have managed jack. You can look at all the areas of the world with little to no government interference within business or economic matters. They haven't sprung to the forefront of technology and living standards because of free enterprise, in many of those places their lives have gotten worse. Russia was industrialized under a communist model, and no matter what flaws the corruption and struggles from within their government brought, the fact that they went from subsidence peasant farms to an industrial power in less than a generation is proof that capitalism isn't the only way forward nor the source of all economic gains.

You realize the US is the richest country because of capitalism?

And other countries that do give out money are capitalistic?

Richest country in the world, and yet life spans have been stagnant and recently been dropping, infrastructure has been crumbling, and American lives have become completely dependent on abusive labor practices and dirty industry of foreign countries to keep the bottom of their economy from collapsing.

I mean a lot of countries have seen reduced lifespans due to Covid. Not sure why you’d call out the US or blame capitalism.

US life expectancy started dropping before covid though.

And? The countries with the highest lifespans are capitalist.

That doesn't explain Cuba, China, Malaysia, and other countries with huge amounts of state controlled enterprise.

China and Malaysia are capitalist, and none of those aforementioned countries are in the top 25 for life expectancy. China isn't even in the top 50, and Cuba is ranked below the US. Swing and a miss.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...

US gained a lot of world power after WW2 when other western countries were rebuilding. Do we know for certain it because of capitalism and not that US had lots of virgin resources to exploit in relative isolation while the other powers rebuilt.

I mean what economic system do you think Western Europe has?

Hint, it’s capitalism. High tax rates to pay for social programs but it’s still capitalism.

All the major powers are capatilistic now. There is a spectrum but it is capitalism. In some governments will push their weight around to get what they want but it's still capitalism

A good portion of that wealth came from stealing good land and forcing people to work as slaves.

Not the most capitalistic wealth creation