EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2017/03/17/flint/99301466/

by dionmanu • 9 years ago

183 188 9 years ago

detroitnews.com

overcast3• 9 years ago

"The state of Michigan is contributing matching funds of $20 million for a total award of $120 million."

So, not really matching?

dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

"matching funds" can (and very often do) have matching ratios other than 1:1; it's the general term for a required proportional cobtribution.

ihaveajob• 9 years ago

They can also be capped to a maximum amount. You can see this often on NPR listener donation rallies, when companies match funds up to something like $5k for the duration of a show. If more than $5k is reached, the company still donates only $5k.

overcast3• 9 years ago

Then I would have clarified that sentence, by saying matching funds UP TO $20 million. If my employer says they are matching my 401k contribution, I'd expect that is 1:1, not a hidden, oh we really only meant 20%. I'm just being pedantic.

shshhdhs• 9 years ago

Ya, more importantly this is strange. This is more of a city/state issue than a federal issue.

arthur_pryor• 9 years ago

is this statement implying that you don't believe in federal disaster relief for local emergencies?

no_wizard• 9 years ago

I think I'm gonna to go ahead and assume what you are saying is 'why isn't the state and:or city already handling this' just more poorly worded.

I'm going with that because I want to take a moment to highlight this is one of the things that is very wrong with American infrastructure. You see most states aren't like the federal government in that they are often competing with other states for things like industry, job creation, and this in turn has a very high curbing away from infrastructure projects from say a town like Flint which isn't really a thriving economic center like to once was. The state itself is going to choose rightly or wrongly to dump money into places like Ann Arbor, which is much more of a thriving place in Michigan. Cities also are competing more wholly in this regard and it's unlikely Flint could even come close to paying for this being caught up with all the other services that city has to run. This is before we factor for political favors, corruption, ill fated projects and the like.

For all but the biggest metros/cities and most populous and still thriving states like California, New York, or San Fran, LA, NYC, hell your thriving and well run Minneapolis-St.Paul and the like. You have a great inability for cities and even entire States that without influx of Federal funds would be unable to do even minimal investment in infrastructure.

It's a huge problem. One of the reasons that calls for a Federal Infrastructure Investment Act is so broadly supported in both sides (though what infrastructure that would be built isn't and it is always about Roads it's seems before anything else)

pstuart• 9 years ago

And how much did the city originally "save"?

This affair should be poster child for being pennywise and pound foolish with our infrastructure.

maxerickson6• 9 years ago

Framing it that way misses an important part of the story.

It was the institutional and regulatory failure during the switch away from Detroit city water that made the lead an emergency. Part of the reason that happened is that Flint had depopulated and was basically a failed city. It's not acceptable that it happened, but it didn't happen just because Flint was trying to skimp on infrastructure 40,50,60 years ago.

toomuchtodo4• 9 years ago

They skimped (ie entirely did not use) on corrosion inhibitors when the water supply was switched. I believe those are the "savings" OP was referring to.

"By not adding a corrosion inhibitor, Flint was going to save about $140 per day. "

http://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-the-flint-wate...

"Replacement of Flint’s lead service lines, which is the only permanent solution to address its lead vulnerability, is estimated to cost up to $1.5 billion, according to Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver."

diogenescynic• 9 years ago

You're acting like this was forced on them from budget cuts. The city manager was warned about exactly this happening and still went ahead and did it because it was the city manager is appointed by their corrupt Republican governor [1]. The city manager should not have been able to make those decisions without a much more thorough vetting process.

1: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_wate...

rayiner5• 9 years ago

It's even bigger than that. Detroit had to raise rates on Flint because a combination of depopulation and terrible management left its water system in dire straits.

civilian• 9 years ago

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/...

That option was projected to save the region $200 million over 25 years, according to City Council meeting minutes.

Flint has already taken $250mil in state funding, and it will be taking another $120mil in fed+state funds now. So I guess that this whole thing will break even in 45 years?

maxerickson6• 9 years ago

That $200 million is only vaguely related to the situation, there isn't any technical reason that the long term plan to switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority supply required the short term switch to the river water.

It's not even clear it represented real savings. This article is written sort of after the fact, but it sounds reasonable to me.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-c...

timmaxw• 9 years ago

I suspect the primary cause was engineering incompetence rather than a desire to save money. The water quality problems were caused by a lack of corrosion inhibitors; corrosion inhibitors would have cost $140/day, which is cheap compared to the $4 million that Flint spent upgrading the water treatment plant. It seems most plausible to me that the Flint engineers simply weren't thinking about the need for corrosion inhibitors.

refurb• 9 years ago

where lead-contaminated water damaged service lines.

This is wrong isn't it? My understanding is they changed water sources, which changed the pH, which resulted in lead being leeched out of pipes.

lisper• 9 years ago

Yes, you're right: the original piece got the causality backwards.

ocschwar2• 9 years ago

Not just the pH. The salinity too. Plain old road salt in the water messed with the calcium plaques that were protecting the pipes.

joshmn• 9 years ago

Anyone feel like this is a political move to say "hey, we're good people, keep us around and make sure your congress(wo)man knows hears about it"

Not a bad thing by any means, but heaven forbid it took them this long.

hawkice• 9 years ago

This was put into effect under Obama, it seems, by the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016, an act introduced and sponsored by a Texan Republican.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/612...

d--b2• 9 years ago

I definitely agree with that. Even though this was initiated by the Obama administration, they probably could have scrapped it as part of the drastic budget cuts they are making.

My guess is that they will remove everything that is to protect the environment (deregulation of anything oil-related), and spend what's left on creating federally-funded jobs in de-industrialized regions like this.

clumsysmurf• 9 years ago

Flint is one of thousands of places in the US with poisonous levels of lead. I wonder how this administration plans on dealing with it:

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead-...

stouset2• 9 years ago

I wonder how this administration plans on dealing with it.

That's a pretty bold assumption you're making in that statement.

huehehue• 9 years ago

fwiw I don't really see anything inflammatory in the parent's statement, or any indication that they feel the current administration is any more/less equipped than previous ones to deal with the water crisis.

Svexark2• 9 years ago

How is it an assumption? The administration just gave $100M to help repair the pipes in Flint. It's in the title of the article.

Also in the article is this quote from the administrator of the EPA:

especially focus on helping Michigan improve Flint’s water infrastructure as part of its larger goal of improving America’s water infrastructure.

nindalf• 9 years ago

This expenditure was approved by the previous administration. As for the current administration... I'm sure the free market will figure out ways to improve water quality. High taxes are the only thing preventing that from happening.

socialist_coder3• 9 years ago

I'm sure the free market will figure out ways to improve water quality.

OK, I'll bite. So how would the free market possibly improve the water quality in Flint?

douche• 9 years ago

I would imagine one of those places is my apartment. Lead is bad, but it's not that bad... Removing lead from gasoline is probably 100x times more important than other hand wringing

CalChris2• 9 years ago

Lead is that bad and we didn't remove lead from just gas (except for avgas). We also removed it from paint.

The EPA's action level is 15 ppb.

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm

For a few homes in Flint, lead levels reached 4,000 ppb to nearly 12,000 ppb.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/03/16/what-le...

dmode• 9 years ago

Good thing this was approved by the previous administration. The next Flint will most likely receive a tank to protect itself from rioters, given the EPA cuts and further bloated defense budget

d--b2• 9 years ago

Flint is the symbol of mid-West's de-industrialization. Since this administration has vowed to give these people's jobs back, you can be sure that they're going to make sure Flint is better off in 4 years than it is now. So giving them federal money to fix their water pipes is a great way to be the good guys. They're going to be able to hire a bunch of people to fix it, and solve a health problem at the same time.

I'd be more worried about my water quality if I lived in a region with a lot of shale oil drilling...

polack• 9 years ago

I think you have missed the fact that this money was given during the Obama administration. Since Trump have cut funding to the EPA it's hard to believe that all the "Flints" out there will have it better after 4 years...

nafizh• 9 years ago

As I suspected this was signed by President Obama.

perseusprime11• 9 years ago

This is great news from my vantage point. a +1 for Trump and his team for taking care of this mess. Throwing a lot of money may not be the right solution but it does fix a lot of pipes.

mattnewton2• 9 years ago

From the article: > The funding was approved by Congress in December and signed into law by President Barack Obama, but the EPA had to review and approve a formal request from state officials detailing how the city intends to use the grant money.

rayiner5• 9 years ago

This is a disaster happening all over the country. The EPA estimates we will need $385 billion by 2030 to modernize water infrastructure.

Putting municipalities in charge of utilities is basically a failed model. Municipalities are too small a unit to be able to effectively take on the long term obligations that come along with infrastructure like this, or cross subsidize from richer residents to poorer ones. Even major cities like Chicago are poisoning their kids (to a lesser degree) due to inability to properly maintain infrastructure.

wavefunction• 9 years ago

All that I know is we were able to afford the infrastructure originally under a higher tax regime. That suggests to me that we can afford to solve this problem, even if it means that the wealthy are contributing back to the country that provided the business and social environment to do so.

erikpukinskis• 9 years ago

That suggests to me that we can afford to solve this problem

I don't think that follows. It's certainly not true in software.... it's cheap to add things in the beginning of the design process, but gets exponentially harder as you add more complexity. And in general in homebuilding remodels are at least a factor of two more expensive than new construction.

Putting down a water main while you're building a street and before you've built any houses seems substantially easier than replacing a water main while dealing with traffic and a block full of customers who need continuous water supply. Not to mention more stringent building codes and such.

I think it should be done regardless, because it's generally impossible for people to run their own water lines, so the State has a moral imperative to do it. But I can easily see it being much more expensive than the original build.

rayiner5• 9 years ago

Most of the infrastructure was built on taking out debt based on optimistic projections of future growth. Flint and Detroit are poster children for this.

yummyfajitas3• 9 years ago

In this country we've lost the ability to build things at a reasonable cost (or at all). A single mile of track in NYC costs about half as much as the entire Delhi metro system, or a typical Spanish rail line (not just a small track extension), etc.

The problem is costs, not revenue. Charging more money will merely divert funds from productive and valuable investments (e.g. self driving cars) into less valuables ones (e.g. tiny extensions to NYC subways). If you want to fix infrastructure, fix the cost problem.

bsder• 9 years ago

All that I know is we were able to afford the infrastructure originally under a higher tax regime.

Actually, we couldn't.

Cities can actually afford their infrastructure--they're dense enough.

The problem is that we built a whole bunch of suburbs that people moved into. Suburbs can't afford their infrastructure once they quit growing. And, if they drain the critical mass out of the city, they also make the city not able to afford its infrastructure.

BurningFrog3• 9 years ago

Controversial opinion: Governments are inherently bad at managing anything that stretches beyond the next election.

electricEmu• 9 years ago

With that simplistic logic, public corporations are inherently bad at managing anything that stretches beyond the next quarter.

funkyy• 9 years ago

Then create an independent organisation handling things with a fixed budget based on % of federal revenue.

This should solve this.

Spooky232• 9 years ago

So people say.

Yet in my city, for all its warts, clean water has come out of the tap since the mid 19th century, and the poop and rainwater flows away.

pje• 9 years ago

Whereas startups are inherently good at long-term sustainability.

badsock2• 9 years ago

...in America. There's lots of developed countries where municipal governments are generally well run as a rule, and while there's always grumbling things never get this out of hand. Lead is posion, for pete's sake. Where else in the developed world would poisoned drinking water be allowed for so long?

In Canada we had what we consider a big disaster 17 years ago:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada-s-wors...

The Premier (equivalent of a governor), was investigated by judicial inquiry, his offices searched, people went to jail, there were payouts for damages - and this is something that only affected a town of 5,000 people. More importantly, it was fixed as fast as possible.

My point being: it's not that there aren't screw-ups elsewhere, it's just that they're so rare that they cause a huge scandal and everyone runs around trying to fix things. In America everyone just seems to just get angry at each other and then do nothing.

So don't tar governments. They work well elsewhere. America's just doing it wrong.

stephen_g• 9 years ago

that's a common idea, but really there's no inherent quality of Governments that make that the case - I think it's more to do with how various Governments are set up. Interestingly enough, I think that regulatory frameworks set up by people who have the idea that Governments are inherently inefficient can actually make it a self-fullfilling prophesy.

It's what I've seen, for example, in the Australian telecommunications and electricity markets. The parts that have been privitised are now run 'more efficiently' by underinvesting on maintenance, upgrades etc., all the time with rising cost to the consumer and rising profits, and now when Government intervention is required (you may have heard about the SA blackouts after Elon Musk offered to build them a 100MW grid scale battery within 100 days recently), the Governments can't really do everything they need because they are limited by law of interfering with the 'efficient' markets.

Of course, the idea that you could have a competitive power generation market when the cost of entry is so high is ridiculous.

Spooky232• 9 years ago

They overstate this stuff, all of the time.

My wife was a finance director at a municipal water utility in an old city. Water supply infrastructure wasn't a ticking timebomb -- many pipes last literally centuries, and utilities can proactively use sensors and robots to find weak pipes to repair without digging up half the city. They had a capital program that worked, lines were replaced based on risk and there was a reserve for breaks or other failures.

The higher risk area from a cost point of view is sewers. They don't age as well and as we pave move stuff, many older sewers and combined storm/sanitary systems are unsafe and vulnerable.

The Flint issue isn't about old pipes. It's about incompetent engineers who should be criminally charged for incompetence.

kakarot2• 9 years ago

It's more abouy failed leadership than failed engineering. It has to do with how Flint spread responsibility over their water source so thin that no one was to blame and no one had the full picture. Laziness gave way to corruption. I'm sure there were protests from the engineering team.

rmason• 9 years ago

They already are being charged and sentenced. They will pay for the crime if you count probation for those in charge;<(

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-c...

billions• 9 years ago

One could argue the Coca Cola company pushed bottled water on US residents in the 1990's. Alternatively, one could argue government standards did not keep up with filtration technology. Unfortunately, US government innovation since the 1960's has failed the test of time. Statistically speaking, the majority of quality of life improvements in the last half century, was seeded by American startups and small business.

AnthonyMouse5• 9 years ago

Municipalities are too small a unit to be able to effectively take on the long term obligations that come along with infrastructure like this, or cross subsidize from richer residents to poorer ones.

I don't understand the first point. Do water systems have some great economies of scale beyond the municipal level? The cost of the water system and the ability to take on debt are both directly proportional to the population size. If you have twice as many people in a unit then you can borrow twice as much money but have to pay twice as much to cover them.

And as to the second point, it's not clear that the cities in such dire straits that they can't even pay for their own infrastructure are worth saving. Concentrated poverty is poisonous in general. It may make more sense to relocate the people in failed cities to other places than to spend billions of dollars bailing them out every year until the end of time.

rayiner5• 9 years ago

If you have twice as many people in a unit then you can borrow twice as much money but have to pay twice as much to cover them.

Right, but you can spread out the repayment risk. Michigan as a whole is struggling, but as recently as 2000 it's per-capita GSP was at the national average, compared to places like Detroit and Flint where the bottom dropped out decades ago.

paulmd4• 9 years ago

The cost of the water system ... [is] proportional to the population size...

Absolutely not - unless you assume every municipal area has equal population density.

You figure water pipe installation costs per mile. There are a lot more miles to get to people's houses in Podunk Nebraska. Overall - trivially disprovable.

The ... ability to take on debt [is] directly proportional to the population size.

Absolutely not. Trivially disprovable. Compare tax revenue per-capita between Podunk Nebraska and New York City and see what you come up with. And then figure that out over the actual cost to deploy services to that population. Density of tax revenue per square mile is orders of magnitude lower.

Pro tip here: Podunk Nebraska doesn't have water service. They don't have sewer service. They have a well and a septic field, buddy. Because there isn't revenue to provide real services.

I lived in that growing up - and you don't have an accurate picture of what rural life is like at all. We had well water and septic, just like anyone who lived within 5 miles of us.

paulmd4• 9 years ago

It can't be overstated. All metro areas need their actual residencies checked, because the lead service lines are everywhere.

There's been a lot more checking (under the Obama administration - goodbye EPA) and there are many million+ resident municipalities with very bad lead levels because of lead service lines.

patrickaljord• 9 years ago

Or maybe just privatize it? In France (one of the most socialist country on Earth) we've been privatizing more and more of our water infrastructure (we're around 30% private by now and it increases each year) and the quality of water is still one of the best.

the_mitsuhiko2• 9 years ago

And how much do you pay for it?

ThrustVectoring• 9 years ago

The subsidy isn't going to be from rich residents to poor ones. It's going to be from urban cores to the suburbs. Spread out a bunch of people over a large area, and there's much more pipe per capita.

svsjc2• 9 years ago

Looks like Trump administration is really doing something for the poor of flint.

gloverkcn3• 9 years ago

Except it was Obama pressuring congress. The legislation was passed in December

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/epa-100-million-flint...

svsjc2• 9 years ago

If he had done this in last two years when the problem came out, the election result may have been different.

dbg31415• 9 years ago

Relevant:

* The Real Reason Your City Has No Money — Strong Towns || https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

* Why Many Cities Have No Money | Hacker News || https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13370310

CountSessine3• 9 years ago

Strong towns makes a compelling argument that the reason we've invested so poorly in infrastructure that we can't possibly hope to maintain is that we don't conduct government business using accrual accounting. I wonder - do local governments anywhere use accrual accounting? It would be so much harder for government to spend money we don't have with good accounting practices in place, which leads me to believe that this is uncommon.

Dowwie• 9 years ago

Is anyone using an under-sink water filtration system? If not, why?

EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

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