Why are there not more lawsuits? Is the scope of the damage too difficult to quantify, or the negligent parties too diffuse/remote to sue?
As much as our litigation-based culture is vilified, it can help spur action by changing the cost/benefit of doing nothing and force companies/governments to step up and fix this before more people are hurt. The risk of Mesothelioma lawsuits, for example, help add some seriousness to asbestos exposure claims.
That's the case all over the country. When I was there, the legal clinic at Northwestern University was working on, among other things, Clean Water Act issues. They did a report on water quality--tons of municipalities in Illinois failed to meet standards. But lawsuits would have been pointless. Almost all of these are tiny municipal water utilities that have no money.
The problem is only going to get worse. Municipal budgets are in shambles and taxes will go up to make ends meet. Raising water rates--which are far too low--to pay for new infrastructure will be politically intractable.
New York City sends you a free lead test kit, if you ask for it [1].
[1] http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1266/water-lead-te...
Too bed there's no way to study the dataset directly short of repeating the process.
http://austingwalters.com/foia-requesting-100-universities/
In short, you often have to get on the phone, email, snail mail, go in person, and pay quite a bit to get records. It's a very painful process. Careful what you offer lol
Will the nation ever upgrade and repair ancient and disastrous infrastructure?
This is not an excuse, but I think it's important to point out in some cases, the issues with lead are on private property, and some municipalities just can't afford to fix everything.
(happy to have my worries put to rest by HN'ers!)
Here we'd have the resources to hopefully make it safe(r). China doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Utilities remains a major pain in USA partly because of the ridiculous government control which invariably leads to corruption.
I have been exclusively using distilled water in Sunnyvale for last 3 years. Water in Sunnyvale has dangerous levels of pesticides if not lead.
It's a shame they couldn't get around to reporting the truth behind the sensation a year ago when public outcry was enough to get substantial Federal funding allocated to fixing this nation-wide.
First there should be a Federal law requiring disclosure of testing data nationwide, and the full sets should be put online in standardized formats.
Childhood lead rates should be shown next to walkability score and crime stats on Realtor sites. Home sellers should be mandated to report their local area exposure rates at the time of sale.
Second, setup a super-fund type cash pool which provides for remediation of the top X% of effected areas.
Third, new laws for mandatory testing and reporting, and fines and felonies for underreporting, misreporting, or falsifying reports of childhood lead exposure.
Here's to hoping that major infrastructure spending includes the unglamorous water mains replacements as much as the more glamorous monument-style projects.
For whatever reason, this kind of work and reporting could not be done instantly, either due to investigative funding issues, politics, priority, or sequence of research.
So giving credit where it is due, I am glad Reuters succeeded at publishing this data.
There are a lot of problems nobody bothers with because they're not new problems.
This is a report by Reuters.
Yes! This is a very fixable problem -- and fixing it will create jobs in the short run, and reduce dependency in the long run. Definitely money worth spending.
I'm guessing it's decidedly non-zero.
Edit: this was not intended as a dig at Michael Moore or anyone else. The fact that he made a documentary featuring Flint means that more people than otherwise should be are aware of the place, hence, media stories about it are more likely to gain traction with the general population. Michael Moore humanized Flint. His making it recognizeable, I think, aided in the rise of this particular story, IMO.
I also think the name of the city helped its presence in the news cycle. Flint, being short and a homonym for another English word is far more memorable than say "Scarborough" (which, amusingly, was the first name that came to mind when I tried to come up with the most memorable unmemorable name for a town.)
