this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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The US has many places where drinking the water is not safe, not that people are just choosing not to. I'm sure the people of Flint would be psyched to be able to actually drink tap water again.
The places with forever chemical contamination are also growing.
You might consider updating your thoughts. The water in Flint has been fixed for several years.
The water mains damaged by corrosion were replaced, and the vast majority of household service lines have been replaced.
It'll take time before people trust the water system fully again, but it's been independently tested and shown to be fine, with continued monitoring as part of the lawsuit settlement.
According to the latest posted tests from 2022 they still show lead in test samples, although they are under the "limit". But the same tests will tell you there is no safe amount of lead. They also only did 4 samples for the 1st half and 6 samples for the 2nd half. Depending on where those samples are coming from I would proceed with caution if that was my water.
But if people want to believe the same people that said it was safe when it was brown I'm not here to stop them.
Flint Annual Water Quality Report 2022
That's normal for anyplace that hasn't moved away from lead service lines, which is much of the developed world, although everyone is doing so at varying paces. Most of flint has been converted, and testing guidelines require them to include houses that haven't if possible.
As noted in the report you cited, which specifies that it's from lead service lines, household fixtures or ground elements. Specifically not the corroded piping, since that was all replaced. Samples are taken at the tap in people's houses after letting the water stagnate for six hours.
Criticizing Flint for having water in line with global norms isn't quite fair.
I'm not sure why you say it's the same people, when the lawsuits mandated independent testing, and it's a new set of people in charge of the agencies and the entire state government since then.
The levels we're talking about detect lead from the solder used to join copper pipes in the 90s. The existence of an action threshold as distinct from a target level isn't some "oh shit" moment.
There's no safe level for gasoline in your body, but it isn't a health crisis if you get a drop on your hand.
https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2019/02/independent-tests-in-flint-reveal-water-is-well-below-action-levels-match-city-results.html
https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/flintwater/documents/2019/Report_Independent_Lead_Testing_Period_2_dated_012119.pdf?rev=e72560f19ea84ad38225bc5c22adf0a3
Sure, but a town with a population of 80k people doesn't define a nation. The vast majority of Americans have safe tap water available to drink.