The Flint, MI water emergency

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The investigators have started laying charges.

Trivial things like dereliction of duty.  All things being equal, I think attempted murder or attempted genocide would be more appropriate.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Every unfortunate human being who will have become seriously ill after drinking the contaminated water before the charges are finalized can be a count of something akin to assault and everyone who will have died can be a count of homicide (manslaughter or wrongful death).

A class action lawsuit could bring justice to the community (especially the families affected by the poisoning) where a mere investigation will merely punish the incompetent (or malicious, see: Grey's Law), likely going easier on them than a typical Flint citizen committing a pettier crime.

 

At a mere quarter century in age, I have become sufficiently cynical to sympathize with anarchists and take pleasure in the punishments of politicians. I will vote for the greatest good (Sanders) but will stop restraining myself from hastening The Fall if the worst (D'ump) is elected.

[Easy Bakes 253]

So why  has no one asked the question yet

Have they switched water sources yet?

 

[Odainsaker 2,134]

My understanding is they have, but the damage is already done.  The corrosive and improperly treated water of the heavily contaminated Flint River that was redirected into the city's water system ate the protective chemical films and built-up mineral scale that had lined the interior of the system's old network of lead pipes, allowing the now more exposed lead in those pipes to leach into the water and spread throughout the system.  The city's water pipe infrastructure is now destroyed and will have to be replaced, a complex undertaking that could potentially cost billions, will take decades to complete, and whose emergency funding is already tied up political knots.  In the meantime, they are boosting additives in the water to rebuild the protective scale, but that indirect process of encouraging scale build-up in old, unseen pipes would also normally take years.  The water may now be from a cleaner source, but the lead-leaching pipes are now just too unsafe.

Yep, they fed people polluted water so corrosive that it ate into lead pipes, secretly giving users both toxic waste water and deadly lead poisoning.  While they were at it, they apparently didn't even bother to fully treat the water for disease-causing bacteria.

 

[Easy Bakes 253]

If we ever needed a lynch mob this would be the place

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You may rest assured that the minor officials will be soundly castigated while the fat cats will continue licking up the fat.  It is time to punish the innocent and exonerate the guilty.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Never mind all the pretty little things we have above ground, it's what's underground that makes the First World the First World.

Oh, and it's in worse shape, too.

This will undoubtedly become an engineering ethics case study right up there with the Citicorp Tower in NYC.  A nice public sector counterexample.