
All Flint water crisis criminal charges dismissed by AG's office - colinprince
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/06/13/flint-water-crisis-criminal-charges-dismissed/1445849001/
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rmason
This is just a legal maneuver that can at first seem confusing. After taking
office the Attorney General's staff found a room full of Flint documents. The
previous team had missed them because they weren't filed where they were
supposed to be. According to a buddy in state government they very cleverly
were hidden in plain site.

Later the AG made a big press release on how they had 'seized' the former
Governor's phone and laptop. But it turns out they were in the room with the
missing documents as he'd turned them over as is practice on his last day in
office. Stay tuned, it's likely a few people will be going to jail.

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yostrovs
Check your paranoia: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-
poison...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning-
water.html)

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southern_cross
I remember reading about some of the criminal charges that were being filed,
and in one instance at least, someone was being charged for "criminal
negligence" (or whatever) in the water testing that they did. But after
reading about the procedure they used, I thought to myself that AFAIK their
procedure seemed valid, so I couldn't understand why they were being charged.

Now granted, it could probably be argued that their procedure could have been
more comprehensive. But for the testing they were actually trying to do
(determine how much lead was leaching from the main water lines) the procedure
they did use seemed to me to be a valid one.

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leshokunin
As per the other comment, I sure hope it's a clever legal maneuver.

It is absolutely shameful that a city in the richest nation in the world
cannot have clean water. I don't understand how no one's been to jail, no one
is taking charge, nothing seems to be urgent. Sitting on the West Coast where
things are comparatively amazing, it's really sad to see such negligence from
the local leaders, due to either incompetence or helplessness. Human beings
deserve better. Fix it already.

~~~
tropo
The pipes were in place for many decades. Jailing decades worth of city
officials would be unjust.

Neighboring cities were better run. They struggled to fund pipe replacement
without any state or federal help. They did it. If now Flint gets handed money
for being irresponsible, shouldn't those other cities get paid the money with
interest? We're providing an incentive to be irresponsible if we reward Flint.
Voters chose irresponsible people to run the city.

Flint was so badly run that the state had to intervene, sending people to make
difficult emergency decisions. If somebody is to be blamed, it should be the
people who came before. It should be the people who ran the city into the
ground for decades, not the people who got stuck trying to salvage a far-gone
hopeless mess.

~~~
AngryData
The emergency state management were the ones that knowingly skimped on water
treatment chemicals that everyone knew needed to be used, not to mention there
are known falsified water tests. If the water was properly treated, the pipes
being old or containing lead wouldn't have been a problem and would have been
used for decades more without any problems. The previous local government have
little to zero liability for their state-appointed forced replacements fucking
up. On top of that, both the people in the state and the local city population
voted against the emergency manager takeover.

What actually happened is very simple. They changed the water source, knowing
full well that it required treatment, and then the treatment was not done,
while the water tests were falsified to make it look like it was treated, and
pretty much immediately there was complaints. Within a few weeks the local
hospital reported their stainless steel sinks corroding from the untreated
water, a local automotive plant shut off their local water source and had
their own well dug and water treated because it was so corrosive it was
destroying parts, among the endless complaints from residents. Some people
even contracted legionnaires and died because of the water. Then when the
managers got called out, they started partially treating the water to prevent
legionnaires, but continued to falsify water tests and not ordering or
utilizing pH balancing treatment chemicals.

There was more than a few people that knew 100% what was going on, even if
they didn't fully realize the consequences at the time.

~~~
tropo
You are demanding to punish people for running a city without money.

The water could not be properly treated. Better water could not be obtained.
This is how things go when you are out of money because you squandered it over
decades.

So, what would you have the emergency state management do? The obvious choices
seem to be...

a. bad water

b. fail to pay for good water until that supplier shuts it off (then NO WATER
at all)

c. shut off the water

I guess they could try to steal good water, and then go to prison for that. We
all want nice stuff, but sometimes we can't have it. This is how life works.

I suppose there might be one more solution. It's a bit weird. There may be an
affordable flavoring agent that would prevent people from consuming the water.
We do this with rubbing alcohol. We make it intensely bitter so that people
don't drink it. City water with that treatment would still be fine for
flushing toilets.

All things considered, I think the emergency state management did a reasonable
job with the hand that they were dealt. The city was broken when they showed
up to make painful decisions. The city needed some adults to run it.

~~~
AngryData
They had the money specifically because they decided not to renew their
contract with Detroit water to save money. If they couldn't afford to treat
their water, they shouldn't have ever tried switching water sources from
Detroit. Not to mention they had even more money to fund the Huron pipeline
project to get off Detroit water which would also need to be treated.

The people who switched water sources was not the Flint local government, it
was the state appointed manager, which was against local and state wide
voter's wishes. WNot sure what you are talking about with 'stealing water', it
makes no sense, it is government owned infrastructure, not private enterprise.
They had a literal pipeline already working and connected to the Detroit water
supply and had it for decades and they decided to turn it off for cheaper
Flint water. The costs of treating flint water was 100% known beforehand.

They knowingly falsified water test results specifically to not pay for water
treatment, what are the costs of killing people, destroying an entire city's
worth of water infrastructure, and paying off people to falsify water tests?

The water would have been fine if it was treated, it would have been fine if
they kept buying Detroit water for another 2-3 years like they had been for
decades. If water test results weren't falsified every sanitation engineer in
the country would be calling them up telling them the billions of dollars
worth of damage they were doing to their pipes.

Okay so you don't want them to drink the water, fine. How does that prevent
the acidic water from destroying 50 years worth of water infrastructure in a
single year? How does bad tasting water prevent billions of dollars in
damages?

The EM did a horrible job, they killed people, first via legionnaires disease,
then via lead poisoning, not to mention the decades of population with reduces
IQ and increased violence, crime, and incarceration costs. Then they cost them
Literally billions of dollars destroying the entire pipeline system.

The biggest damage to Flint wasn't the poisoning of the people, which is bad
enough, but the destruction of billions of dollars of government property. It
is like burning piles of $100 bills so you don't have to pay for your gas to
be turned on. If you think the EM did a good job (and the water crisis is only
the tip of the iceberg) then I don't think you have been paying attention at
all.

~~~
tropo
What I mean by stealing: If they continued to use the nice Detroit water, but
they didn't pay Detroit for that water, it would be stealing. Detroit would
shut off the water. If they then reopened the valves or broke into the pumping
stations to continue getting Detroit water, that would be even worse.

The savings produced by switching to the bad water shouldn't be viewed in
isolation. The rest of the city budget matters too. If they are not in the
black, then bills can't be paid. That includes important things like water
treatment chemicals.

Basically, bad stuff happens when you are out of money. Budget problems
started long before the emergency managers took control.

If somehow the city was in the black, then I'll agree that the emergency
managers screwed up. I don't however think that they should be held to a
standard of perfection, so "screwed up" doesn't mean anything criminal or even
seriously malicious or inappropriate. Mistakes happen.

If the city was still in the red, as I'm led to believe, then disaster of some
type was unavoidable. It's just a matter of choosing the disaster. They could
have laid off the entire fire department for example, which would likely mean
that fires spread from building to building. They could have shut down much of
the school system, eliminating school lunches and school buses. Tough choices
had to be made.

