Flint Michigan residents charged $150 a month for poisoned water

[SickBeast]

Here you go, Rollo, another water crisis in your own backyard:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/m...54751.html

Erin Brokovich is calling it a "national crisis" and says that Flint is "the tip of the iceberg".

They are saying that Louisiana is also having a big problem along with several other places.  Actually when I was in New Orleans over the summer, there was a water advisory.  They said not to drink the water or even bathe in it.  The advisory was lifted while we were there but we didn't take any chances and we drank bottled water.  Actually a good friend of mine is overseas right now and his entire family caught a horrible bug from drinking the water.  They were all hospitalized and put on IV units. :(

I was just looking at a map.  Flint is land locked and only has a couple of small rivers flowing nearby.  To be honest with you guys, here in Canada we probably take clean water for granted, we have it in abundance.

It looks as though the government is going to have to do something about this.

Yeah big water crisis going on here, it's like the 3rd world.  

It's a big place here SB, not some backwoods villages like Canada.

You have lots of clean water because so much of your country is uninhabited. We have some isolated problems with our aging infrastructure that will be addressed.

You have problems with aging infrastructure because your capitalist pig masters are too greedy to properly maintain the assets or replace them at the end of their expected working life.

America is falling apart under the strain of aging infrastructure that the rich bastards charge a fortune to access and won't maintain.  It will cost ordinary Americans billions upon billions to eventually fix.

I don't think this is fair to put directly into the lap of the Republicans, as much as I can't stand them. It is largely a local issue. The situation in Flint was different because the governor was heavily involved and there is evidence that he was a big part of the problem. Generally speaking, though, water infrastructure is the responsibility of local governments. I don't know about you, but I don't like paying a lot of property tax. For my home we pay about $100/month. In some places nearby for a similar home they pay $200 and get less services than we do.

In the USA do the municipalities not own the water infrastructure? Are you telling me that the water utilities there are privately owned? If so, then that could indeed be the problem.

My point, however, is that it's not the "pig master's" fault. This is a local government issue. It's why we pay taxes. If you want better water infrastructure, you'd better be willing to pony up with more taxes, which is only fair. These things happen all the time. The government will sometimes put a levy on your taxes to pay for something like this. It only makes sense IMO.