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How Do They Get
Away With It?
By Kate Burch
In an outrageous but depressingly predictable ploy, Hillary Clinton,
other Democrats, and the media are blaming Michigan Governor Rick
Snyder for the contaminated water supply to Flint, Michigan. The
Governor, a la Harry Truman, has acknowledged that the buck stops at
his desk and it is his responsibility, as the chief elected officer in
the state, to address the problem. But that gesture cannot be
taken to mean that he, or Republican “neglect” are responsible for a
catastrophic failure of local and federal government.
The back story: Flint, an auto factory town like Detroit, has
suffered from decades of declining population while the bloated
pensions and union health benefits roll on. At present, 40% of
Flint’s residents are officially in poverty, and the union benefits
consume one third of every dollar in the city’s general fund.
Flint, for years, had purchased drinking water from Detroit. The
(Democrat) city council decided to join a regional project to pipe
water from Lake Huron, hoping to save millions of dollars.
Detroit (under Democrat rule seemingly forever,) apparently feeling
dissed, retaliated by cutting Flint off long before the projected
completion of the new pipeline. Someone—it’s not clear who, and
all likely suspects are denying responsibility—decided to rely
temporarily on water from the Flint River. Problem: the
pipes are old, the people running the show had no clue how to control
for corrosion, and lead and other contaminants began leaching into the
water. Residents started complaining immediately about murky
water. Officials offered assurances and temporized. The
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA both were
aware many months before this story hit the press of the lead
contamination, but that buck was passed and passed and passed. As
the Wall Street Journal opined, “If contaminated water had flowed
somewhere inhabited by a manatee, the feds would have sped to
Michigan.” Too bad the good people of Flint did not merit similar
protection.
This kind of lead contamination is a real problem, unlike many other
distorted or grossly exaggerated risks touted by the EPA. The
people of Flint cannot drink their water without harm, and the damage
that has been done to the infrastructure by mismanagement will not be
easily or quickly fixed. This is a true emergency, and how it
will be resolved remains to be seen. Finger pointing won’t
serve.
I think we can all agree that governments do have responsibility for
infrastructure and for protecting the health of the public.
When entrenched interests and butt-covering bureaucracy get in the way
of basic protections and services we have a real problem.
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