Why Flint, Michigan's Water is Important, Politically

There is lead in Flint, Michigan's water because local GOP officials, of all races, focused on cutting costs without thinking through other issues that needed thinking through. This was not environmental racism, although that may exist in certain places and may have existed in some individual's responses to information as it came to light, but it is not part of the defining moment here.

Background:

Flint, Michigan, a city of near 100,000, went bankrupt and was taken over administratively by the state, which has a GOP governor, who was a big time businessman.  He had to figure out a way to fix Flint's finances, while minimizing the cost to Michigan taxpayers who are not residents of Flint or part of its local economy.  So, one thing the new local administration did was switch from Detroit's water so the local river water because Detroit, also in state administration for poor financial management, was charging Flint a lot for sharing Detroit's water.

Danger of Sole Focus on Cost

What should have happened?  After deciding that the Flint river was an option, experts should have been consulted as to whether the water was safe to drink.  Apparently, water can be safe to drink but if chemicals are not added to it to protect the water pipes, the water pipes can corrode from stuff in the water from past pollution and the water pipes release stuff, including lead, into the water flowing through the pipe.  There are water experts who know that this type of analysis is standard operating procedure in well run water departments.

It is easy to see why costs were a focus, but you see in today's GOP a distrust of expertise, if such expertise thwarts a political goal.  And cutting costs so you can cut government revenues is the overriding policy of today's GOP at all levels of government.  But when you cut the cost of things that protect the public's safety, you lose the support of the public.  That is why our doomed to failure goal of zero terrorist events is unofficial policy.   Politicians of every political persuasion practice a policy of trying to achieve 100% protection against terrorism because people want to be safe.

Well, fire response, policing, national defense are no more important to the population than environmental safety.  That is the good fact that we see in both the voting population's response to Flint and the GOP governor's acknowledgment that he failed the people of Flint.  It means that the GOP, despite numerous Presidential candidate's pledging to shut down the EPA, will face a political uproar if the Democrats paint accurately just what the EPA does to protect the population and what will happen if there is no more EPA.  There will be degradation of the water and air in the country because pollution costs business nothing and the cost is spread across society; and preventing pollution costs business because they put the cost raises prices and reduces volumes, lower profits, but protecting society in ways which allow other businesses to sell products and satisfy social goods.

Why the Environment is Important

1st, lead has been removed from paint because lead is very dangerous to the development of the brain in children.  It reduces their IQ and if they ingest enough, they become so mentally disabled  they become retarded and wards of the state.  So there is a cost that local governments must pay if they try to cut costs protecting the environment.  Traditionally, lead has not been widely ingested, so, unfortunately, Flint is a major experiment in what happens to a population of all ages if there is wide spread consumption of lead in volume.

2nd,  if there was no EPA, paper companies and other industry would be dumping stuff into the water.  That is why the Flint river is polluted to begin with, the auto industry was dumping stuff into the river for decades before the Clean Water Act and the EPA forced them to stop.  But they didn't force them to clean up the sediment in the river which still has all that bad stuff in it.


Why is Flint so Important?

Society pretty much takes for granted our current state of relatively clean water and air.  Society is not divided about the need for clean drinking water and clean air.  This is where the GOP governor's response is so important, if local GOP leaders start to acknowledge the environment is important, then GOP leaders in places where the rise is sea level is going to effect communities are going to have to develop some policy position on global warming other than denial or "it is too late and too costly to do anything about it".   Society  is very divided about green house gases, and this is where leadership is needed.   Local leaders are going to have educate the population and do something to motivate a change in GOP national policy on Global Warming.

We can only hope that the Democrat's figure out a way to message all this, with a focus on costs and not on environmental racism.  Not everything is racism, people of all races are effected by the environment.