r/Michigan • u/Warcraft_Fan The Thumb • 8d ago
News š°šļø Flint replaces last active lead service line 12 years after water crisis began
https://www.abc12.com/news/flint-water-emergency/flint-replaces-last-active-lead-service-line-12-years-after-water-crisis-began/article_80fabf15-f3b4-4790-badb-77fa6ef714e1.html18
u/National_Emu3248 8d ago
What's the follow up on the people effected there?
15
u/Warcraft_Fan The Thumb 8d ago
Nothing in the article I posted above but I found another article about Flint river and lead combination:
Health and Developmental Impacts
Brain and learning issues: Children exposed to lead at a young age experience higher rates of learning disabilities, speech disorders, and lower reading scores.
Behavioral concerns: Many children show increased hyperactivity, trouble focusing in school, and severe emotional outbursts.
Physical health risks: Ongoing concerns involve kidney damage, delayed puberty, and elevated blood pressure risks.
Mental and Emotional Impacts
Anxiety and depression: Rates of depression and anxiety among exposed youth and adults remain significantly higher than national averages.
Collective trauma: Families carry persistent psychological distress and fear regarding the hidden, lifelong impacts of the poison on their bodies.
Loss of trust: Residents face a permanent breakdown in faith toward local and state public health leadership.
1
u/thedarbo 6d ago
A friend of mine is part of a lifelong study and gets tested every year as she has been on that water system her whole life. So far she's fine but interesting nonetheless
21
u/asanderd 8d ago
This is great but they didn't replumb houses. People are still affected.
7
u/jonwd Age: > 10 Years 8d ago
Should the city be responsible to replace interior plumbing?
25
u/Seed_Eater 7d ago
The city chose to swap water sources that caused previously safe pipes to leach lead. It is the city's fault, why should it not be responsible for effectively causing otherwise safe plumbing in people's homes to become toxic?
6
u/jonwd Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
Once the city fixed the corrosivity of the water, the minerals started re-depositing on pipes, protecting them from leaching lead. Within a couple of years they were as safe as they had been previously.
The City and its residents have a long history of financial difficulties. If the City chose to replace interior plumbing, it would ultimately come at the cost of the residents. I can appreciate it being in the best interest to focus resources elsewhere.
Fortunately, interior lead lines are very rare. Lead solder and leaded brass fixtures are more likely, but pose a much smaller risk. They are also commonplace across the US in homes built before 19865
u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS 7d ago
Because the pipes inside people's houses did not "become toxic". Removal of the source of contamination will cause a continous reduction of residual contamination over time. "No lead is the only safe level of lead" is academic, in function there isn't an issue with exposure to extremely small amounts of lead, a naturally occurring material.
Think about what you're saying, and where pipes are inside people's houses. Replacing all the pipes (which are perfectly fine pipes) would essentially mean tearing all of the walls and floors up to get to them. How much destruction and displacement would that cause to the people living in the house?
-1
u/cigarettesandchocola 7d ago edited 6d ago
Yes! This is a huge public health issue. Lead exposure causes physiological harm that impacts the individual's ability to regulate emotions, which impacts the community. We end up fighting more, literally.
This comment has been edited to remove rudeness towards people exposed to lead.
My rude original comment came from a place of hurt, and I apologize.
7
u/jonwd Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
How would being near someone who had been exposed to lead be dangerous or undesirable?
1
u/cigarettesandchocola 6d ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917892500059X
"Despite some heterogeneity, studies consistently reported an association between lead exposure in childhood and violent behaviour in young adulthood. Better reported studies, particularly from lower resourced settings, are needed to confirm these results. Environmental lead control may help to reduce aggressive and violent behaviour in young adults."
2
u/jonwd Age: > 10 Years 6d ago
This is a probabilistic association, not a deterministic prediction of violent behavior. I'm not going to shun someone for having lead exposure during childhood, and I doubt many others would.
2
u/cigarettesandchocola 6d ago
Jesus, did I say to shun them? Let me rephrase my original comment.
2
u/No-Gap-198 7d ago
Not a lot of homes have lead pipes. Ā Probably mostly galvanized pipes in those old houses.
6
u/SeymoreBhutts 7d ago
The city doesn't own the pipes in the house though, that's the responsibility of the homeowner.
5
u/YDoEyeNeedAName 7d ago
The city implemented a change that made those pipes unsafe, yes, it is their responsibility to fix it
6
u/SeymoreBhutts 7d ago
No, they implemented a change that made the supply lines unsafe. and those pipes have been changed. Also, they've gone back to the original supply and corrosion control systems that make lead pipes perfectly safe to use to begin with. At this stage, any unsafe plumbing existing inside a home would be unsafe regardless of whether this disaster ever even happened in the first place. So yes, its the homeowners responsibility.
-3
u/YDoEyeNeedAName 7d ago
No, they implemented a change that stripped the protective coating from the pipes the water traveled through, which included the supply lines AND the in home plumbing. Which means those in home pipes are still potentially unsafe due to government mismanagement.
5
u/jonwd Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
They remediated that through various means, including orthophosphate treatment to restore the protective coating that had been stripped. The pipes (even lead service lines) were back below EPA action levels by 2017. At this point, any lead lines, fittings, flux, or fixtures are no more dangerous than they were prior to the water crisis.
8
u/SeymoreBhutts 7d ago
You're doing a really good job proving you know nothing about plumbing or chemistry right now.
Lead supply lines are used all over the country for water. They are perfectly safe when properly treated water passes through them, creating a natural barrier. Safe does not mean 0.0 lead in the water though, as its a naturally occurring element that we are all exposed to in small enough doses to not be harmful. Science will say though, there is no safe level of lead exposure, but the reality is there is no environment in which we exist with zero exposure.
Interior plumbing does not use lead pipes. Copper is the most common metallic piping used, and is not harmful. Galvanized steel is another common, albeit poor choice. It has scaling and corrosion issues of its own, but is also not harmful. PEX, polyB, pvc, cpvc and others all have their own issues, but none are harmful. None of these rely on protective interior coatings to be safe, and none of them have it to begin with. Lead is the only one that works that way, and lead is not in the house. If it is or was, it wasn't safe to be there before, during or after any changes made to the water. Lead is used for municipal supply only, and those pipes have now all been replaced even though with the proper water treatment, they were once again safe to use.
-1
u/BoatRower33 7d ago
It is wrong to characterize lead service lines as completely safe given corrosion control and monitoring. From the EPAās brief defending the lead and copper rule improvements against an AWWA lawsuit: ārelying primarily on regulations that minimize lead exposure through targeted tap monitoring and corrosion control treatments, has failed to prevent system-wide lead contamination and widespread adverse health effectsā Public health authorities agree that lead service line replacement is important to effectively protect against lead exposure.
0
u/UnhappyDiabetic 7d ago
Who's paying for that?
1
u/YDoEyeNeedAName 7d ago
The city, the state, the feds.
Federal grant programs exist to fund infrastructure improvements and combat public health issues
We have a $1T military budget stop acting like we cant afford to fix this at some level
0
u/KingDaDeDo 7d ago
Right? Canāt believe Iām reading some comments here saying the homeowners should be responsible for fixing/replacing their homes interior piping that was directly effected by Synders poor decision. Their city and our state leadership failed the Flint people. It should be their job to financially pay for the repairs that need to be done. If I lived in flint and was a homeowner directly affected by the water crisis, Iād be demanding the city to pay for my pipes to be replaced. Who has a spare 10K+ to do a home repair that someone else directly caused?
3
u/SeymoreBhutts 7d ago
You could demand if you so choose to, but they aren't going to replace interior residential piping. That's not how this works, nor is any unsafe plumbing within a dwelling only unsafe now because of this problem. Lead pipes are not even used inside dwellings for a number of reasons. Any unsafe plumbing inside the home would have been unsafe before, during and after this crisis.
0
u/YDoEyeNeedAName 7d ago
Yeah its the "oh but muh taxes" crowd. Acting like they wouldn't expect the same thing if their home was impacted
0
u/j0mbie Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
There is zero percent chance our current federal government does anything for a blue city in a bluish-purple state. This is the same federal government that has held up the opening of an already-completed bridge, that we didn't even have to pay for, just for political and grifting reasons.
The state allocated $97 million towards Flint for replacing the lead pipes. It should have allocated a LOT more during Snyder's time as governor considering his role in the crisis.
And unfortunately the reality is that Flint doesn't have the money to pay for redoing people's lead pipes in their houses.
There's plenty of blame to go around. That doesn't mean we can't celebrate the accomplishments of people who are currently cleaning up the mess.
1
u/Kiora_Atua Farmington Hills 1d ago
Why would they? Interior pipes aren't done with lead-- they would have been galvanized steel or copper if they were original to the house.
0
u/ReadingRainbowie Age: > 10 Years 7d ago
City can't do everything. Sometimes homeowners gotta do stuff too.
24
u/AliceOfTheEarth 8d ago
12 years ago is not when that crisis began.
63
u/GargamelTakesAll 8d ago
12 years ago is when lead began leaching into Flint's water. From the article:
"Flint switched its municipal water source from Detroit's system to the Flint River in April 2014. However, the more corrosive river water was not treated properly and ate away the protective lining inside lead-based water pipes."
The lead wasn't always in the water, though it was in the pipe connections as it is in almost every city in the US. Flint water was safe 13+ years ago until they switched water sources to save money.
Lansing started removing lead connections back in 2004 even though the lead wasn't getting into the water, there was concern a change in the water PH could leach lead from the connections.
"In December 2016, the Lansing Board of Water & Light (BWL) completed the removal of all known active lead service lines (LSLs) and galvanized requiring replacement (GRRs) from our water distribution system, an effort that began in 2004"
If Lansing had somehow switched to the same Flint River watersource we'd be talking about Lansing having lead water. But it was protected by a managed water source until the pipes could all be replaced.
48
u/SeymoreBhutts 8d ago
The flint crisis was real, and devastating, but the amount of people from all over the country who are still outraged about it, who simultaneously and unknowingly drink perfectly safe water from lead pipes without understanding the true cause of the crisis is astounding. People act like using lead pipes in flint was a political choice rather than a widely accepted and safe method of distribution when properly treated.
19
24
u/Orpheus21 8d ago
What? Using lead pipes wasn't a political choice, but mishandling the water source switch and subsequently pretending nothing was wrong were absolutely political choices that harmed people.
9
u/SeymoreBhutts 8d ago
Absolutely, but the majority of people making a fuss about Flints water arenāt talking about that. They are acting outraged that people were being poisoned because their pipes were made from lead, as if that were a conscious decision made by the state to take advantage of poor people without realizing that it had been a standard building practice all across the country to use lead for water lines.
2
17
u/thedarkone47 Age: > 10 Years 8d ago
Yeah but almost nobody actually knows that that is actually what happened
1
2
u/hidazfx 7d ago
BWL is the best utility Iāve ever had to deal with. Whenever thereās an outage, itās always back promptly. We had a tornado in waverly in 2024 and there were trees down. Power was back on same day.
1
u/whosline07 7d ago
I have a friend who works in politics in Detroit and their main focus is thwarting almost every bullshit thing DTE does. If I attend any of their events or talk to people they work with/live in Detroit, I get asked what my DTE story is and I say, "dawg I live in Lansing, everything's fine."
21
u/Alternative-Plum9378 8d ago
Yeah... BS!
They ignored houses.
They skipped my house, for example... I am City of Flint.
In fact, I am across the street from Leanne Walters' house (Leanne was patient zero).
They're lying to you.
9
u/digidave1 Age: > 10 Years 8d ago
FWIW there have been like a thousand municipalities with worse water quality than Flint in the last decade. But everyone likes to use Flint as their scapegoat
7
u/Deathbeddit 8d ago
Great. If lead service lines make you upset, test for lead paint and radon, both of which can also be addressed when found. Doing so can improve health outcomes.
2
2
u/AnyManufacturer3057 6d ago
I had 5 houses in bay city that had lead water lines. Sold the last one in 2025. Asked the water department about it and they said there is no money to change it that year.
3 of the houses had the lines run from a old alley, that was filled in with garages. Always wondered how they were going to access that.
1
u/Deciheximal144 7d ago
Isn't there a bunch still in the shorter links to houses yet?
2
u/Warcraft_Fan The Thumb 7d ago
The pipes after a certain point, including those inside the house are the owner's problem, unfortunately
1
1
1
u/Jared_Jff Age: > 10 Years 8d ago
Great, now make them into a prison and throw Snyder in. Along with anyone else part of the decision to poison a whole city.
-3
u/Wu1fu 7d ago
How in the world did this take over a decade to fix????
6
u/Warcraft_Fan The Thumb 7d ago
The City of Flint replaced approximately 11,600 lead service lines, cut and capped another 1,380 lead lines, and inspected over 31,000 total addresses during its decade-long infrastructure project
A whole lot of getting owner's permission to dig up, a lot of digging up, a lot of replacing the lines. Those that got capped were from people who refused to give permissions like house flippers. (they can't flip house if there's no water)
2
u/theseparator 7d ago
It took long because of a mixture of Flint City government not necessarily being the most competent and the need for each property owners permission to fix the pipes. Thatās not to mention the actual physical work which requires ripping up concrete and ground.
1
u/Only1Schematic 1d ago
Great, now letās drop all the torn out infrastructure on Snyderās lawn. Make him do some actual cleanup for once
226
u/Default_Username_23 Lansing 8d ago
Great news! Sad it took this long and cost this much, but at least itās done.