Every one knows, at least any one who has done plumbing or taken high school chemistry, that acid eats metals, turning solid metal into invisible ions dissolved in the acid, like salt dissolving into water. All water pipes installed before the 1980's are metal. The plastic pipe now used didn't come on the market til the late 1970's. You cannot allow the city water to become acid, 'cause it will eat the pipes all over the city. Standard procedures for city water works is to add enough lye (sodium hydroxide) to acid water to neutralize it. This has been standard practice for a hundred years or more. This ain't rocket science.
According to the newsies, when Flint switched over to using acidic river water which, for some reason, most likely a screwup somewhere, this was not done, and acidic water flowed all thru the city's water pipes, eating out the metal. All copper plumbing is fastened together with tin-lead solder and older pipes are pure lead. Our word "plumber" comes from the old Latin word for lead (plumbum). So, the lead content of Flint water soared up and up.
Anyhow the newsies were on NHPR this morning wailing about the Flint water situation. What needs to be done is find the persons who failed to add the lye to neutralize the acid, and prosecute them. We ought to take at least three scalps, one from the Michigan environmental pollution agency, one from the federal environmental pollution agency, an one from the city of Flint water department.
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