Flint Water Advisory Task Force issues final report – yet another government failure?

The Flint Advisory Task Force had three main charges to accomplish.

• determine the cause of the crisis
• identify remedial measures
• safeguard Michigan residents

They failed in their primary task of identifying the cause. Safeguarding residents? A bit late for that wouldn’t you say? You can read the report here.

I only wish to highlight two key points as everything else has been covered ad nauseam. There is a tremendous push to assign blame to the emergency managers. Primarily this is coming from those who wish to repeal the emergency manager law in Michigan. That’s a debate for another day. As far as how it impacted the Flint water crisis, the answer is not at all. Detractors will point out that the emergency managers approved the switch to Flint River water. Doesn’t matter. There isn’t a reason in the world that the Flint River can’t be utilized as a safe source of drinking water. The key, of course, is proper treatment. Treatment is a subject the emergency managers or the Flint City Council play no role in whatsoever. The mere fact that anyone approved the switch is just semantics. Had the Flint Water Plant properly treated the water this story would have never happened. Bureaucrats shouldn’t receive any of the blame or credit for the end product delivered to residents.

The second point is absolving the City of Flint from its position as the primary cause of the crisis. This point bears repeating as no one is discussing it. The EPA sets the rules regarding safe delivery of drinking water. They assign responsibilities throughout the process. In EVERY case, it is the responsibility of the water utility to provide safe drinking water. NOT the regulatory authority. Agencies that oversee water utilities certainly have a responsibility to do their best to ensure laws, regulations and standards are followed. But it is the utility itself that bears the responsibility. there are many analogies one could make to illustrate this. Take your taxes. Make a mistake on your taxes and you are held responsible, not your tax preparer. Find a major defect in a home you just purchased and your home inspector you paid to find such things is not on the hook. In virtually any industry you can imagine, inspectors and other compliance type entities are always tasked with the responsibility to enforce, but never with primary responsibility when you don’t.

The fact is that the City of Flint should have properly treated the water. Bad advice from consultants or regulatory agencies doesn’t absolve them of the blame. The point can’t be overstated because liability is paramount. However, this is where the water gets muddy. The Flint Water Advisory Task Force makes the point that “Flint Public Works personnel failed to comply with LCR requirements, including the use of optimized corrosion control treatment and monitoring for lead”. Or did they? I refer you back to my post from Feb. 15, 2016. In it, I covered the EPA memo that was issued to help clear up the confusion in Flint. The EPA admitted that the LCR (Lead and Copper Rule) has differing possible interpretations. The EPA wants it both ways. They state that corrosion control should be maintained at all times. Yet they also say a utility should NOT use the same treatment when changing sources. First, a monitoring period must be conducted to determine the optimal process.

Basically, you can’t win. The EPA says you are responsible at all times no matter what. Yet they admit confusion and the LCR contains language in direct contradiction from one section to another. So at the end of the day the burden lies at the feet of the City of Flint and ultimately the EPA. Unfortunately, that isn’t where the focus will be. The state of Michigan blames the DEQ. Congressional democrats blame the Governor. Congressional republicans blame the EPA. They are right but are disregarded as partisan hacks intent on poisoning the air, water and soil.

The bottom line? Will the Flint water crisis fallout result in preventing a similar incident in the future? Not likely. Assigning blame to the proper recipients doesn’t seem to be on the agenda. Assigning blame for partisanship and maximizing taxpayer dollars does. Business as usual in government.

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The Obama not in labor force record now exceeds the population of 33 states!

The Obama economy continues to break all-time records.

Record Average of 93,671,000 Americans Not in Labor Force in 2015

Average participation rate lowest since 1977

Very impressive! So much so that it’s time to update our post from 2012.

Number of Americans no longer looking for work exceeds the total population of 32 States

Yes sir, we can now add another state to the mix. The big winner? Washington! Yes, the entire population of the state of Washington has now been added to raise our total to 33 states. That’s the ENTIRE population of 33 states that are no longer even looking for work! That’s an economy to be proud of isn’t it democrats?

The answers to the Flint Congressional testimony before it even happens

Tuesday, March 15th, another round of testimony begins on the Flint water crisis in front of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley are scheduled to testify among others. Current Flint Mayor Karen Weaver has a wish list.

“We’re looking for the questions that will give us the answers to who should be held accountable … across all levels.”

We can answer those questions right now without waiting for tomorrow’s tap dance around them. Who should be held accountable? First and foremost, the city of Flint. That’s not the direction the mayor or the ever growing list of celebrities and activists want to go. They, as well as all leftists and other fans of ever expanding government, need Flint to be the victim. That’s the only way to keep the spigot open for federal relief dollars to pour into a dizzying array of social programs, education programs, health and welfare programs, infrastructure programs and legal funds, etc. If the truth is promoted and Flint is found to be the primary cause of its own problems, that tends to limit relief funds to local and state levels at far less amounts. The international feelings of sorrow for Flint’s citizens will lessen.

But wait you say, wasn’t Flint a victim of an inept DEQ and a Governor hell bent on austerity? Absolutely not. Let’s review. Some say that Flint was doomed the minute it decided to switch to river water. That the Flint River is a toxic soup that can’t be properly treated. That’s 100% false. The science of water chemistry tells us that there are only a precious few water sources on the planet that can’t be cleaned up for human consumption. It may get complicated and expensive but it can be done. That includes the Flint River just as it had been done in the past. The narrative that Snyder forcing a switch to river water is the cause of the lead poisoning is groundless unless someone can produce documentation confirming that he directed a state run agency to force Flint to omit corrosion control.

That’s because the decision to omit corrosion control was Flint’s responsibility. Not the DEQ. Not the EPA. Not Snyder. Not the emergency managers. It is always the responsibility of the water utility to put forth a water treatment plan for the regulatory oversight agency, in this case the DEQ, to review and rule on. The DEQ doesn’t propose a plan for Flint. Nor does the EPA. Regulatory agencies regulate. They can provide guidance and input if requested, but the primary responsibility was Flint’s. Even if the DEQ blows its review of the plan, which it did, and allows the utility to proceed with a treatment plan which fails to meet legal standards put forth by the EPA, it was still Flint’s requirement to adhere to the law. The DEQ failure doesn’t give Flint a get out of jail free card.

While Flint is clearly at fault for poisoning its own citizens, the EPA is every bit as complicit in creating the atmosphere which allowed the debacle to occur. My previous post covered this so I won’t rehash it here other than to say the EPA does not put public safety above all else as it would have you believe.

This was a bureaucratic failure at all levels of government. Flint’s motivations have always been financial. Switching from Detroit water to the future Karegnondi pipeline supplying Lake Huron water is about money. Temporarily switching to river water was about money. Getting someone else to pay for their past financial sins and the fallout from the source water switch is about money. State of Michigan appointed emergency managers were about money. Even the EPA exceptions and allowances to its Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) are also about money.

The focus tomorrow will be about assigning blame from a partisan perspective. You won’t see a focus on forcing the EPA to immediately issue a revision to its LCR in the interest of putting public health above all else. You won’t see a push to hold water utilities feet to the fire to do what’s right rather than just what they can get regulators to sign off on.

As we see time and again, we have government creating a problem and then selling itself as the only one capable of solving it. As long as people continue to buy into this dog and pony show, disasters like Flint will continue. Are there any winners resulting from Flint? Just the usual. The legal profession and our ever expanding bureaucracy. Losers? The victims of Flint to be sure and some will pay for a lifetime. Also the American people who will likely look completely past the real problems that allowed Flint to happen and will pay for it in perpetuity.

The E.P.A. memo to clear up the Flint water crisis is even more confusing

The focus in Flint, MI has been getting residents clean water, identifying the lead service lines and securing the funding to replace them. Behind the scenes the battle is over liability and assigning blame. It should start and end with the E.P.A. from a legal standpoint. It is the agencies Lead and Copper Rule that has created the confusion and allowed the debacle to occur. Why? Because the E.P.A. continues to write and enforce legislation that factors in ‘feasability’ in its equation. This is why the allowable limit for lead is 15 parts per billion rather than zero. After all, everyone now knows that no amount of lead is safe. Yet enforcing that number would be very expensive and require the nation to remove all lead pipes and other sources of lead in our drinking water. Not even the socialist Bernie Sanders is promoting the massive undertaking it would be to fix the nations water infrastructure. How and who should pay for that is a debate for another day.

The E.P.A. took the extra step to release a memo on Nov. 3, 2015 to specifically address the confusion in Flint.

After reviewing the rule with our Office of General Counsel, it appears that there are differing possible interpretations of the LCR with respect to how the rule’s optimal corrosion control procedure’s apply to this situation, which may have led to some uncertainty with respect to the Flint water system.

In other words, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality may not be to blame for misinterpreting the rule as the E.P.A. admits here. The problem developed when Flint switched water sources from Detroit to the Flint River. The LCR dictates that large water systems must develop what is called ‘optimized corrosion control’. Basically, this means they must treat the water so it isn’t corrosive to the pipes which may release metals and other toxins poisonous to humans. The Michigan DEQ allowed Flint to conduct two consecutive six month monitoring periods before deciding upon a corrosion control plan as is allowed under the rule. Enter the confusion. The E.P.A. rule says that if the area being served has over 50,000 users than corrosion control must be maintained even during the monitoring periods. Apparently the logic is that any mistake made will affect a large number of people and can’t be risked. So if your city has only 49,000 residents sorry about your luck?

Yet the very same rule dictates this.

It is important for large systems and primary agencies to take the steps necessary to ensure that appropriate corrosion control treatment is maintained at all times, thus ensuring that public health is protected.

Please bear in mind that these quotes are all from the same so-called clarification memo. Yet it doesn’t clarify anything other than to say that their rule is confusing and they acknowledge that it may be misinterpreted.

You see, the debate in Flint prior to the switch was whether or not to simply continue on with the same corrosion control program that Detroit had been using during the year long monitoring period. The quote above states that it must be maintained “at all times”. Seems pretty clear. Until you read on.

Primary agencies should work with systems that plan to disconnect from a supplier that had installed corrosion control treatment to determine the OCCT for the new source and establish WQPS for that treatment instead of using the OOCT and WQPs established for the previous source.

Clear as mud? In other words the DEQ should work with Flint to determine the appropriate corrosion control program and not simply use what Detroit had been using. Yet the rule also says corrosion control must be maintained “at all times”. It also says that Flint must conduct the monitoring periods to accumulate data to be able to determine just what an optimized corrosion control program should be.

So Flint shouldn’t use what Detroit was using just because and it shouldn’t not use anything because the rule says so and it also should wait until it completes its monitoring period to ensure it implements the correct corrosion control program. All at the same time. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was all from a memo designed to clear up confusion. If anyone ever needs a clear example of why bloated bureaucracy doesn’t work, I give you the E.P.A.. They write a confusing rule and a follow-up memo to clarify that only makes it worse.

As I’ve stated previously, the fault still goes to the city of Flint. It is the water utility that is responsible for proposing methods and changes to treat the water supply. The DEQ is tasked with ruling on those proposals. Flint and their expert consultants and engineering firms are all well aware of what was to happen with no corrosion control program in place. Doesn’t matter if they had legal ‘cover’ from the DEQ or the EPA. They had ample time to study what effect using the river would have on the distribution system. Detroit had notified them a year in advance they would be dropped and the city knew even before that as the emergency manager had told Detroit they wouldn’t renew their contract.

Flint also waited until February of 2014 to begin the hiring process to staff the water plant for full-time operations. By the time those new hires were vetted and actually started working, it was only a couple of weeks before the water source was to take place. Not nearly enough time to properly train new hires on water plant operations. In fact, the lab manager agreed and voiced his protest here.

It isn’t ‘sexy’ to blame Flint for its woes. Flint is all about the victim mentality. They are victims of republican austerity. They are victims of GM relocating. Victims that need federal bailout dollars to spread their pain across the country so everyone can share in it. Taking responsibility for their plight won’t result in somebody else paying for it. The E.P.A. is to blame for creating the scenario that allowed the Flint water crisis to occur, but Flint should shoulder a moral and ethical share of the blame for not doing what’s right regardless of the letter of the law.

Barry just had a thought

Surreal stories surround the Flint water crisis

Wow! I mean wow! Every time you think the Flint water crisis can’t get any worse…

Boil water advisory adds to confusion over how to make Flint tap water safe to drink

Now the boil water advisory is nothing new. That’s just due to a water main break. Happens all the time. However, as I read the story, a couple things caught my eye. First was this.

Michael Hood started going door-to-door in Flint last month. The wilderness guide from the Ann Arbor area was part of a newly formed group called Crossing Water, and they wanted to see what they could do to help people in Flint.

“Most folks have heard that the water is not safe to drink, but not everybody,” Hood said.

It might seem crazy, Hood says, with the Internet and 24-hour cable news, that some people in Flint still don’t know about potentially dangerous levels of lead in their drinking water. But, Hood points out, there are a lot of people who can’t afford Internet or cable, who don’t speak English, who cannot read.

OK. Seems reasonable. What’s the solution when you have people that don’t have media access, don’t speak english and don’t read?

Hood was dumbfounded that no official agency seemed to be addressing this common misconception. So his group jumped into action, working with some billboard companies, TV and radio stations, to get the message out: Boiling your water will not remove lead.

Post billboards they can’t read, run TV ads they can’t see and air radio ads they can’t understand. Way to go guys. Great plan.

Then the story tried to personalize the issue and interviewed a local painter, James Todd. The DEQ had stopped by his house and left info about lead poisoning. Todd was a bit skeptical.

“I read something about vacuuming your floors. That vacuuming your floors will actually cause lead dust now. Well, where’s that coming from on my floors? How’d it get on my floors?”

Todd flips through some paperwork on his kitchen table that the state officials left.

“Maybe it was in here I read it,” he says, pausing to read from a pamphlet about lead exposure.

“Oh yeah, here it is, it says ‘use doormats, take your shoes off when indoors. Vacuuming carpets may pull more lead dust to the surface, so use a non-motorized sweeper to clean carpets,” Todd reads from the pamphlet.

“I don’t have non-motorized carpet cleaner. Maybe they’ll have them at the fire department pretty soon too, you know?” Todd says, laughing a little, before continuing, “clean window sills and wipe play areas down with paper towels and soapy water.

“This is the paperwork from the guy who just left my house, just before you got here.”

Todd owns his own painting business. He served in the Navy. He watches the news. He got the results from his first lead test after spotting a map of the city’s latest test results on social media and searching for it. He’s even had multiple visits from various officials and volunteers. He’s no dummy. And still, he’s confused about how to protect his family from lead in Flint.

What? This guy owns his own painting business and has never heard of the hazards of lead paint? The hazards of lead dust and the methods of transmission throughout a home? And he’s no dummy? He’s making the assumption that the lead in his water is somehow making it to his floor and window sills? Scary!

Lead is known to impair cognitive thinking. It would appear it’s had an effect.

Blame for Flint is everywhere but not in one very obvious place

Former senator calls Flint water crisis ‘monstrous dereliction of duty’

Did you think the story of MDEQ malfeasance could not get worse? Wrong again. MDEQ’s negligence quite possibly killed a few of the very people they were paid to protect

PR expert: “No turning point in sight” in Gov. Snyder’s handling of Flint water crisis

What did Snyder know and when did he know it?

Those are only a few of the seemingly endless articles concerning the Flint water crisis. They all tend to assign the blame on the Governor, the emergency managers, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality or the EPA. I wonder why one other player, the elephant in the room, doesn’t seem to receive their share of the blame?

I’m talking about the city of Flint. After all, it was their half-century of financial mismanagement that led to the reason the emergency managers were brought in. Agree or disagree that the em’s were an appropriate response, Flint can’t blame any of the other players for the position they got themselves into.

And this fact seems to be overlooked by everyone. Yes, it was the DEQ that failed to enforce the Lead and Copper Rule correctly allowing the city to delay implementing a corrosion control program. However, nothing was standing in the way of the city still doing the right thing. It is in fact the utility, the city of Flint in this case, that has the responsibility to formulate a corrosion control program. Then that program is submitted to the DEQ for final approval. They may consult with the DEQ during the process, which Flint did, or simply go on their own and seek DEQ approval.

Unfortunately, the city went with the minimalist approach and sought to do the least amount possible as required by law. They could very well have submitted an optimal corrosion control program to the DEQ regardless of what the minimum threshold was. It’s the same sort of logic that the deeply flawed Lead and Copper Rule allows. The allowable limit for lead is 15 parts per billion and that is what encourages utilities to bend the rules (or sometimes outright commit fraud) in an attempt to stay just under it so they don’t have to go public and take action. They could take it upon themselves to reduce it to zero but the law doesn’t require it.

Flint may not have had the authority to make final decisions, however they could have introduced the right ones. They also shoulder the blame for electing to switch their primary coagulant to ferric chloride, which caused to corrosion problems, and not fuly vet its effects in real world conditions using river water as a source. This could have been done well ahead of time utilizing standard industry practices of bench testing, pipe loops, jar tests, etc. There is no reason other than negligence to not complete sampling under the distribution system conditions they knew they would face. Flint also benefited from the fact that they operated the plant approx. 20 days each year using river water as a source while in a backup capacity to Detroit water. A perfect opportunity to assess what effect no corrosion control would have upon the lead service lines. Some simple valving could have targeted a specific test area to use treated river water in place of Detroit water and measure its effects.

The left will have none of it. They see blood in the water and want to seize upon the opportunity to take back some turf from the republicans. They also don’t want the finger of blame pointed toward any bureaucracy as that doesn’t fit the agenda of expanding it. The window of opportunity is short. Once the lead levels decline to below the action level, the ability to have federal taxpayers pay for Flint’s infrastructure replacement withers. At that point they become just another city with old pipes. Despite the inept DEQ, the flawed EPA, and even a compromised Governor with a different partisan agenda if you want to go there, Flint had the power to do this the right way and failed. It’s time they look in the blame game mirror.

 

 

D’Souza vs. Ayers debate at UofM 2-3-16

This should be at the top of your viewing schedule rather than the soap opera primaries.

What isn’t being talked about in the Flint water crisis

The Flint water crisis marches on with the list of investigations growing and growing. The FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, EPA’s Office of Inspector General, EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, the Michigan Attorney General, and a state of Michigan Governor appointed task force are all conducting official investigations. Not to mention a handful of environmental and government transparency activists. An ever increasing number of lawsuits have been filed, some class action, some targeted at government officials. Famed Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger has joined the fray by filing a $100 million dollar suit against the state and McLaren Hospital alleging they were aware of the tainted water from which a high percentage of those contacting Legionnaires’ Disease were patients. The only certainty is that we haven’t seen the end of the investigations or lawsuits.

Despite the intense media glare on Flint, it seems that several key issues are still being missed. As an example, this editor has personally contacted several media outlets, spoken to reporters and activists, and have yet to see these key points pursued. So we march on.

• the CSMR, a formula used to predict what effect a change in water treatment will have before implementing it, was completely ignored by the city of Flint, their engineering firm and the state of Michigan DEQ prior to changing their water source from Detroit water to Flint River water. They would have known before a single person was poisoned that the lead leaching issue would occur. No test period required. No hiding behind the EPA mandated back to back six month monitoring periods. Negligence pure and simple. Criminal? For the courts to decide.
• the EPA continues to avoid the blame. It is the EPA and their Lead and Copper Rule that must be looked at as the root cause. Their sampling protocols are intentionally set up to fail. Utilities around the country are using a multitude of tweaks to insure they don’t exceed the 15 parts per billion action level for lead and 1,300 parts per billion action level for copper. To do so means just what it says, they must take action and action costs money. A plan to combat corrosion in water pipes can take up to FIVE years to implement. Legally. While the people are the lab rats being used to collect data. It certainly should be criminal. The so-called Safe Drinking Water Act is devised to balance the nations water supply safety with financial burdens upon utility companies and their associated cities and townships that operate them. The avalanche of stories hitting the news circuit now highlighting poisoning from water supplies across the country is not at all new, it’s only now newsworthy thanks to Flint. The costs to truly make the water supply safe will be massive and the EPA is directed by government leaders to mitigate that financial burden through legislation. At what price? You and your loved ones health, that’s all.
• the fallout from the actions taken in Flint. The artificially large dose of corrosion control now in place to attempt to make up ground for the 17 months the city operated without any will have a consequence. The phosphates discharged through the normal drainage of the Flint River basin will eventually make their way into lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay. Saginaw Bay already exceeds their phosphate discharge levels annually which leads to toxic algae growth. Algal blooms are sure to follow impacting thousands of residents, fishermen and recreational users.
• more fallout from actions taken to protect the people of Flint. Over 30,000 water filters passed out. Over 100,000 replacement filter cartridges issued. Those filter cartridges will end up in landfills. So will all the other lead related devices, traps, samples, etc. So will all the lead pipes that get replaced. Should Flint get federal money to go all in and replace every lead pipe in their distribution system as well as the homeowners that need to replace their in-home lead plumbing sources, well see a huge concentration of all of these lead items in local landfills at virtually the same time. When nature gets it way as it always does, that lead will eventually leach out of those landfills. Doesn’t matter if they have protective liners. Water always wins. It may take decades or even hundreds of years but somewhere along the way it is entirely possible a future generation will face a spike in groundwater lead. Having so much lead introduced into landfills at essentially the same time and the same depth means a large dose of toxic metal poised to leak out. An example of today’s problems being pushed down the road to be someone else’s problem.
• the fact that the city of Flint Water Treatment Plant currently has operators employed that have failed to meet minimum certification standards. The DEQ oversees the operator training and certification program for water treatment plant operators. Within 18 months of employment, an operator must obtain a minimum certification license known as an F-4. Flint has operators employed since March of 2014 that have not yet become licensed operators. This information is public knowledge and available on the state DEQ website. Yet no one anywhere even discusses it. Given the magnitude of the Flint water crisis, one would think having certified operators would be of primary importance.
• now that a corrosion control program is finally in place in Flint people naturally want to know how long before the water is safe to drink again. Particularly since the EPA approved water filters are only good for up to 150pbb of lead. No one even wants to venture a guess publicly. A 2003 study showed that it takes approximately one year to reduce lead levels back below the allowable limit (15pbb) once the protective lining inside the pipes has been compromised as you can read for yourself on page 15 of this study.

Those are a few critical issues not in the news cycle. Hopefully that will change soon as the citizens of not just Flint but the entire country deserve to know the whole truth.

Al Gore ‘past the tipping point’ has passed

Ahhh…global warming and the end of snow is so…hey, is Steve Harvey hosting this?