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Friday, November 18th, 2016

This Major City’s Drinking Water Was Fine. Then Came the Private Water Company.

Author:     Julia Lurie
Source:     Mother Jones
Publication Date:     Oct. 26, 2016 5:00 AM
 Link: This Major City’s Drinking Water Was Fine. Then Came the Private Water Company.
Stephan:   Here is yet another negative proof of the Theorem of Wellbeing -- a counter-proof.  It is so obvious that choosing the option that fosters wellbeing is cheaper, more productive, more efficient, more life-affirming, more pleasant to live under, and more enduring, that you'd think even the dimmest voter would see the advantage. But as this election and this story shows they obviously don't.
Chepko/iStock; Credit: robynmac/ Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority

Chepko/iStock; Credit: robynmac/ Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority

This summer, 81,000 homes in Pittsburgh received a worrisome letter about their water. The local utility “has found elevated levels of lead in tap water samples in some homes,” it said. Seventeen percent of samples had high levels of the metal, which can cause “serious health problems.”

“They cut our laboratory in half,” said a former Pittsburgh water quality director. “We would have been researching like crazy this lead corrosion problem to see how to correct it.”

The situation was bad enough to attract the attention of Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who helped expose the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. “The levels in Pittsburgh are comparable to those reported in Flint,” he said in an interview with local TV station WPXI.

This was surprising because until this year, Pittsburgh’s lead levels had always been normal. So what happened?

First, a bit of background: In 2012, the city faced a dilemma. Though it had clean water, its century-old water system desperately needed […]

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