It's a crime scene! FBI should be investigating Flint water.

[Octafish]

We DO have the EX-Detroit FBI guy on the case, a hired hand for Snyder's own and official independent investigation.

If terrorists had poisoned a major city's drinking water, they'd be on the case and a whole bunch more Feds, too.



I'd ask for a Federal Special Prosecutor, but Poppy Bush dumped that law.

[randys1]

1. At a minimum this is criminal negligence. Were Snyder not a connected criminal, he might

actually be held accountable.

[HereSince1628]

13. It's not negligence, it's collateral damage from a privateering raid on Detroit

The goal of the attack was the private takeover of a major metropolitan water utility.

To do this the Michigan privateer supporting ideologues needed to make the water utility look like it couldn't manage itself.

Pulling the City of Flint as a paying customer from the Detroit water utility was meant to help make Detroit's facility look bad.

It was planned and coordinated racketeering whose cover was blown because as often happens to racketeers the person they depended on as a useful idiot turned out to really be just a plain idiot.

This event is one of the outstanding examples of what's dangerous about capitalist ideologues gaining control of governments. From it must be understood that the business of government cannot be the selling of public assets/enterprises into private hands.

[Octafish]

14. Exactly so, HereSince1628!

The people above the millionaire Govnerd include billionaires named DeVos and Koch.



They wanted to auction off the DIA to pay off "creditors."

[dmr]

16. YES! I don't believe otherwise. I've got some questions about the pipes.

The water pipes leading from Detroit to Flint:

I read that Snyder sold these pipes to an unknown entity. I'm not sure, but I think the wording was "immediately after" or "soon after" they were sold after the switch. I know it was something like that because it made my head snap to attention and is gnawing at me.

And, now we are renting those pipes, to boot!

So:
1. What entity bought these pipes?
2. Is this entity hidden inside an LLC shell game?
3. Exactly when were they purchased?
4. When & how, & by whom was this decision made?
5. When did negotiations begins for the sale?
6. Were there bids?
7. Why did this entity buy the pipes?
8. What do they plan to use these pipes?
9. Oil?
10. Or, does this entity plan to pump a privatized Detroit water again to Flint?
11. Has this entity paid for these pipes?
12. Where is this money?
13. What are we paying in rent?
14. Why not loan the pipes out of good citizenry & good faith to the taxpayers of Michigan?

There's more questions I'm sure. But I absolutely believe this is corruption at its worse.

[Octafish]

17. Excellent questions. Michigan law DOES NOT allow Michigan residents to know their answers.

GOP Snyder and GOP legislature made sure of that.

http://www.aclumich.org/article/aclu-michigan-executive-director-snyder-should-waive-foia-exemption-remove-dps-darnell

I believe as you, dmr: This is corruption and the fact they hide it from public view -- like vultures circling over head in a cowboy movie -- shows exactly where the bodies are buried.

[Crepuscular]

23. Really not much of a conspiracy.

Here are some answers to your questions.

1) Genesee County bought the section of pipe that hooked Flint up to the Detroit sewer & Water District.
2) No
3) The portion of pipeline was sold to Genesee County in 2014, after the switch had been made to the Flint River as the interim source of water for Flint.
4) The decision was made by the EM who was running Flint.
5) In 2014
6) No bids, there were no other entities that could utilize the pipeline other then Genesee County or the City of Flint. This was a pipeline extension that the City of Flint owned, which had been built when Flint originally tied into the Detroit water system 30+ years ago, Genesee County previously bought Detroit water from Flint, which flowed through that section of pipe.
7) Genesee County is part of the KWA joint venture that will supply Flint with water from Lake Huron starting in 2016. They would either have to build a section of new pipeline parralel to the existing portion that hooked up to Flint or they could buy the existing portion that Fint owned for less money. Kind of a no-brainer.
8) They will be part of the finished KWA pipeline project.
9) No, water to supply flint and Genesee County.
10) No, it's a jointly owned project by the municipality members that has no connection to the Detroit water system.
11) Yes, they paid the City of Flint about $3.9 million dollars in 2014.
12) The City of Flint, it was supposed to be used to pay for upgrades to the cities water system.
13) Not sure who you mean by "we". Genesee County owns the pipe but is not charging Flint to use it to buy water from Detroit until the KWA pipeline is completed in 2016.
14) That is exactly what Genesee County is doing, they are loaning the use of the pipe for free to the City of Flint, until the KWA pipeline comes on-line in 2016.

[dmr]

24. I hope what you are saying is true, but do you have any links

that explains any of this?

I'm surprised Genesee County isn't the original owner.

[Crepuscular]

27. All of the information that I included i

is readily available on the net, if you have a specific portion you would like a link to, I can post one.

[daleanime]

2. Massive K&R.....

[Octafish]

18. Here's How Hard It Will Be to Un-Poison Flint's water.

by Nick Stockton
Wired, Jan. 29, 2016

EXREPT...

The basic challenge: dig up several thousand miles of poisonous pipe buried as deep as dead bodies.

SNIP..

Most of the corroded pipes in Flint—20,000 to 25,000 in total—are what is known as service lines. These are one inch in diameter, and connect homes to the larger, main pipes running under the middles of streets. (The mains are cast iron.) Because Flint is in Michigan, and Michigan is a very cold place, the service lines have to be buried about three and a half feet deep, below the frost line. “But most of the main pipes are between five to seven feet deep, so the service lines are at a similar depth,” says Martin Kaufman, a geographer at the University of Michigan-Flint. So that’s the basic challenge: dig up several hundred miles of poisonous pipe buried as deep as dead bodies.

Before calling in the backhoes, somebody needs to figure out where all those pipes are buried. Not just which houses they’re in, either. Remember, the pipes are an inch wide, and buried under roads, sidewalks, and front lawns, beneath lattices of cables, fiber optic wires, and gas lines. Digging in the wrong place would be both dangerous and expensive. Kaufman is one of those in charge of figuring out where all the lead pipes are buried, but the pipelayers of yore didn’t do him many favors. “The recordkeeping of the city is not very good,” he says. “They kept information on three by five index cards, a lot of which are smeared.” The only definite way to check if a pipe is lead or not is to scrape the pipe’s interior as it comes into the house. “If the residue is gray and nonmagnetic, it is lead,” he says.

Let’s say Kaufman and his peers deliver a city-wide lead pipe map to Harrington and his brothers and sisters in the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters1. The check is blank, the backhoes are fueled up, and an army of plumbers stands at the ready: How long would it take to re-plumb Flint?

Replacing a typical service line takes three people. “You need an operator to run the equipment, one guy hand digging to make sure you don’t get into any other utilities, and another guy getting the floor busted out in the basement,” says Harrington. As long as they don’t run into any problems, the whole job should take the team about half a day. Harrington estimates that he could reasonably call in about 20 such teams to work full time until the job is done. Assuming the rate is forty pipes a day, roughly 249 days a year (nights and weekends, y’all), the Flint plumber’s militia could bang the job out in just over two years.

Harrington says digging up and replacing a forty foot length of lead pipe costs around $3,000. This does not take into account externalities like repaving streets and sidewalks, fixing any damage done to the home, and resodding lawns. Multiply $3,000 by 20,000 pipes and you get $60 million dollars—which suggests that the figure quoted in Michigan governor Snyder’s email is probably a lowball.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/heres-how-hard-it-will-be-to-unpoison-flints-water/

[daleanime]

19. How much do you want to bet...

that they try to tell us that this won't be necessary?

[Octafish]

21. Michigan gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation

An honor system with no honor

By Chad Selweski
Center for Public Integrity, November 9, 2015 Updated: November 12, 2015

Overall Michigan ranks 50th out of 50 states.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/09/18427/michigan-gets-f-grade-2015-state-integrity-investigation

I'm with you, daleanime. The bastards in Michigan are an ongoing program for making greed pay. The DeVos and Koch fortunes are among those funding it via all manner of Trickledown rightwing neofascist bankrolling crapola.

[Faux pas]

3. K N R

[Octafish]

25. Flint water victims can't sue the government. That's another crime.

Here's why it's good to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

Flint water victims can't sue the government. That's another crime.

by Shikha Dalmia
The Week, Jan. 29, 2016

Michigan's state and local officials poisoned Flint's water with lead but innocent federal taxpayers are the ones having to foot the cleanup bill. President Obama has pledged to hand Flint $85 million in aid money. This sounds like a lot, but the fact of the matter is that it is far less than what Flint's victims would have gotten if a corporation — rather than government — had been the culprit. That's because, unlike private companies, the government is shielded from liability lawsuits.

This would be an excellent argument for the wholesale privatization of public utilities, but, alas, privatization is a dirty word in the liberal lexicon.

After initially giving Michigan Governor Rick Snyder only $5 million in going away money to help Flint residents buy water filters and bottled water, President Obama finally acquiesced this week to pleas for more help and authorized another $80 million. Now he's also considering Snyder's request for extending Medicaid eligibility to all Flint children up to age 21 regardless of their income or insurance status.

Setting aside the Medicaid expansion, the $85 million in federal aid combined with the $28 million in state aid that Snyder has arranged, works out to on average $1,000 for each of Flint's 99,700 residents — or about $4,000 for a family of four.

But consider the horror they are confronting:

As has been widely reported, 6.4 percent of Flint's nearly 8,500 kids are now testing for dangerously high lead levels in their blood stream — up from 3.6 percent before the city switched them from Detroit water to toxic Flint River water. Many of these children have developed rashes and brittle bones and face the prospect of permanent brain damage, diminished IQ, and behavioral difficulties. But kids are not the only ones hurt. Around 85 people have been diagnosed with Legionnaire's disease — a particularly horrible form of pneumonia — compared to around six to 13 in a normal year. Ten of them have already died.

Even if Obama expands free Medicaid for all Flint children, the rest of the medical bills — deductibles and co-pays — for middle-income Flint families will be substantial. Nor is that their only financial exposure.

CONTINUED...

http://theweek.com/articles/601521/flint-water-victims-cant-sue-government-thats-another-crime

Rahm explains why I hate piratization.

[Mc Mike]

4. Rec. Thanks. nt.

[Calista241]

5. I don't see how this is a criminal matter

I can see them all resigning for stupidity. Maybe sued into oblivion, but it's more than likely not criminal.

They had an RFP, and appeared to follow state purchasing guidelines. Unless there's some evidence of them saying "let's just poison and kill all these people", or "I don't care about the consequences as long as I get my money," then there's no case.

Absent bribery, kickbacks, or anything like that, there likely won't be any charges. It's like they never prosecuted Bush. A politician can't be legally held responsible for making a poor decision as long as they was acting in good faith.

[wordpix]

10. follow the money---locals say this was known about 2 yrs. ago

and nothing has been done. Flint has been under a state of financial emergency since 2011, and nothing has been done about the water in terms of that issue, either.

It could be legally argued it's a crime b/c it was known about two years ago; it's a public health issue and the public will have to pay to fix the problem; it makes the already very low property values go even lower to the point a house with lot is worth nothing; and lead-filled drinking water was allowed to continue those two years with no remorse or recourse by officials, and no money allocated by the state. Certain federal, state and local officials are responsible for identifying, quantifying and fixing the problems but did not do their jobs. Answers are needed. But first, the problem has to be fixed.

Here's a question: Where did the public revenue go to start fixing the problems, which should have occurred two years ago? Obviously, the revenue did not go to digging up and changing the old pipes for the past two years when the problem was identified.

How are the GM executives doing financially these days? Better check that CEO salary and others.

[wordpix]

11. just read this at wikipedia/Flint - fed lawsuit already happening, resignations, etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan

Water State of Emergency[edit]

Main article: Flint water crisis

In April 2014, Flint switched its water supply from Lake Huron (via Detroit) to the Flint River.[52] The problem was compounded with the fact that anticorrosive measures were not implemented. After two independent studies, lead poisoning caused by the water was found in the area's population.[53][54] This has led to a federal lawsuit, the resignation of several officials, and a public health state of emergency for all of Genesee County. [55][56][57]

[malaise]

6. They should all be arrested and charged

This was deliberate or they would not have provided water for their staff. This is criminal

[wordpix]

7. time to gather more evidence around the city--calling all photographers/videog-

raphers to document the crime as it's happening. Otherwise, Snyder and his crew will claim it didn't happen this way...

[former9thward]

8. Not quite.

A Democratic Congress refused to re-authorize the law and it expired in 1992. It was the re-instituted in 1994 and expired under Bill Clinton in 1999. The DOJ using its statutory authority established an Office of Special Council in 2003. It still exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_the_Independent_Counsel

[Octafish]

9. Thanks for the update! The Project CENSORED article was from 1993.

Sorry. OP link is kaput.

Details of why we should bother from 1993 here:

"The CIA's withholding of evidence in the Drougal hearing was a great embarrassment for the Bush administration. The Justice Department suffered a major setback in its case against Drougal. But the mass media failed to draw the connection between the CIA's meddling in the BNL-Atlanta case to the CIA's effort to taint the Gonzalez investigation. The mass media have yet to explore the political implications of the CIA's intervention in the Iraqgate scandal.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140413183749/http://www.ringnebula.com/project-censored/1993/1993-story5.htm

Thank Gore for the Internet.

[Odin2005]

12. That water looks like diarrhea...

[Octafish]

22. Rust. Blood. Germs. All manner of lead and metallic toxin from the pipes and river.

...Chemicals not made by nature. That's what my doctor told me was sprayed out all over the bathroom wall. "Explosive," he added.

[Overseas]

15. K&R. Yes please!

[dmosh42]

20. All part of a "rigged system"!

[wordpix]

26. +10000. I'd like to know how much $ GM execss made when they pulled out of Flint

Seriously, this was a GM corporate town. GM stopped making cars there in the '80's b/c Japanese cars and trucks were becoming popular, particularly since they weren't gas guzzlers like GM's Buicks and Chryslers built in Flint. So GM pulls out, and the city has been completely broke for several years.

Well someone made off with Flint's money, whether it was/is GM execs or politicians or both. I suspect both. We need an investigation and a shakedown to get some of Flint's money back.

Also, the city would qualify as a Superfund site and there's an emergency, so FEMA and EPA need to start providing relief immediately, not to mention the state and Army Corps of Engineers. Obama should exercise his power as commander-in-chief to kick some ass and get things moving and coordinate an effort. If the repukes don't like it, let them stand up and say it.