Does this water drawn today look safe (Flint water declared safe)

It is outrageous.

I'd still like to know exactly what the problem is.

Adequate corrosion controls have been flowing through the pipes for years now.

There really shouldn't be a problem anymore.

No, the State govt made a deliberate decision not to add the appropriate non-corrosives to the water to save money. The city of Flint was switched from a clean water source to the polluted waters of the Flint River, and now the children who were exposed to the water will be tested for lead poisoning. There is no way back for children exposed to dangerous levels of lead in their groin years.

None of this is a secret, Google Michigan's lead crisis.

That was yeas ago. The water in Flint has had the proper anti-corrosion treatment for years now.

The decision to not add anti-corrosion treatment has not been traced to any source that I know of, so there is no justification for blaming the state government.

I recommend placing all the blame on the Obama-era EPA, which is the organization that should have been protecting people.



That may be so, but it doesn't explain claims that the water is still unsafe even after years of proper anti-corrosion treatment.



I live in Michigan. I am well aware of the issue.

If you live in Flint, and have been drinking the water..............everything is now starting to make sense.

I don't live in Flint or in any other city. I don't even live in a village. Too many people. Ugh.

My water comes from my own 200-foot well, and any water that I drink is purified by reverse osmosis.

The problem was first discovered by DEQ in 2014, hardly "years ago". The Pb /Cu rule had been in effect since Jan 1991.
Following requirements for use of anticorrsion as stated in the EPA's Pb/Cu "Rule" in an area where the water pipes were ancient lead soldered and lead jointed is critical, so to change to the Flint River while ones head was up ones ass should have resulted in CRIMINAL CHARGES against the DEQ as well as Flint's Water Dep.

Stuff like this reinforces my belief that without adequate regs and monitoring, NOBODY ever does "the right thing".

Flint didnt get its **** together till 2017 and until ALL lead piping is out, the problem wont be resolved fully. Right now people are drinking water with MCL level Pb in the water , even with changing water purveyors, some rehab pipe coating polymers(which have their own water quality problems) and newer corrosion tech.
This coulda all been resolved had the City been up front and had the DEQ, and the EPA done their jobs. Water Authority was acting criminally, DEQ looked the other way, and EPA didnt push DEQ like it should have . EPA has pretty much lost it "institutional memory" .

Why? What is wrong with the lead pipes now that there are adequate corrosion treatments in the water?

You still get lead dissolved from the pipes - water travelling along the network of pipes has to be effectively lead-free (at least here).

You're not supposed to. The corrosion treatments provide a coating in the pipes that seals the lead away from the water.

Might be so. Nevertheless, we don't have lead pipes here anymore because the limit value with lead pipes is generally no longer to be observed.

water treatment is a "Batch science" . They had water corrosion treatment with the Detroit system, When Flint changed its source ater, did it assume that all those polymers and treatment schema happened "By themselves?".

It needs to be carefully monitored. As you recall, they water company was FAKING its routine sampling. Fortunately it was some EPA wag that saw the impossibility of the data that was being presented. (PH, alkalinity, and corrsion index numbers just didnt jive).

I was always amazed at how dumb the water dept was to think that they could get away with it. THEN , I was more amazed when they did get away with it for so long.
Have any indictments come forth ??
Ida fired the chemistry and engineering staff of the water dept as well as the public health officials (I feel that there hadda be criminal collusion somewhere, too much **** was covered over by Water Dept or DEQ)
The DEQ needed to clean house and the EPA regional "Safe Water Staff" needed to be punished or fired. ( Ever since Bush and Obama began cleaning house and not filling in retirement positions any longer, the EPA doesnt seem to inspire public health actions and nobody seems to give a **** what the EPA even is all about) We can always go back to the 1960's when ,with no environmental agencies, this was a common thing.

PS, lead piping is where it all starts, The water quality can change and I know that Flint hqs "hand feed" polymers and chemicals. Ive looked at their early data and it was evident that cost control (not public health) was their goal.
Im sure the folks are still drinking MCL level lead and copper. No matter what the newspapers say.
Little kids are the ones who suffer most. Thwir little brains can develop lead plaques that drop IQs over 5 years.
Id want to have the kids drink orange juice cocktails with chelation agents in the juice,something like Ca/Mg EDTA.
Newspaper reporters are on the dim side of knowing anything that doesnt have to do with a cell phone, so Im sure that once they fire up a story and get everyone all afraid, they want to resolve it so they write the **** they are fed by the parties involved.

We sit around on our asses debating "Infrastructure maintenance abd replacement), that includes water distribution systems. I have a 270 yer old house and one of the first things I did was replace ALL the copper/lead sealed water lines with double batch plastic pipes.
All the "corrosion control in the planet wont give you lead or copper free water. Itll still leach because treated water needs to buffer itself a bit and Pb and Cu are some of the easiest to go into solution. Then, when the batches arent monitored during a shift, it flows into our kids brains.


The ultimate solution of pipe replacement in Flint will take about 15 more years (if they dont crap out on the money)

Yes. Including a few involuntary manslaughter charges because this caused an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that killed some people. I don't think there have been any trials yet.

Wow, legionella is probably all over the town in humidifier tanks and AC units, hotel hot water tanks , etc. Uninformed opinion is that I think Legionnaires may be hard to point exclusively to the water company .

Unfortunately, there are still regions in Germany where there are still lead pipes. They have not been used e.g. in Bavaria and (today's) Baden-Württemberg since the 19th century, but in larger cities in northern and central Germany there are some.

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/04/12/michigan-aclu-sues-flint-over-arrests-at-meeting-to-address-water-crisis

Michigan ACLU sues Flint over arrests at meeting to address water crisis

Flint was trying to cover up their criminality at first. When they found put that they couldnt duck, they started acting more responsibly.

WITHOUT good regulations NOBODY would do the right thing. I have never been disproven on this statement by folks who really know.