politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
It’ll be interesting to see all these lead pipes replaced, and watch the amount of religious people take a nosedive afterwards.
It will have an effect in decades. The people that got affected are unlikely to get better. The biggest damage is being exposed to lead during childhood.
I think we're starting to see this effect from the lead we removed throughout the 80s, everything from crime to religion has been falling for the past 2 decades.
I don't think it was all lead, but I think it's playing a decent part.
Yeah, but decades is a blink of the eye, as these things are measured. And honestly, I don’t think a fair amount of Congress has even one more decade left in them.
I doubt it. While lead isn't ideal for delivering water, it's not as bad as you think. Once scale builds up in the pipe it didn't leech lead. The problem Flint had is they switched water sources and destroyed the scale so it went back to bare lead.
I wouldn't install new lead pipes but my point is that many old lead ones are probably fine. Ones that aren't fine so need to be replace though.
I've seen this comment before. My counter: can you assure me that, for example, a new homeowner that doesn't know better won't disturb the scale? They won't have a leaky faucet and mess with the pipes? Or something like Flint doesn't happen ever again where necessary infrastructure changes necessitate disturbing the scale?
This 'solution' only 'works' if you leave it completely alone and never touch it. So don't get new appliances, never have a plumber fix some things, never update that water main that's gonna break down any time now. It's a very short sighted 'solution' to the problem. I'd hazard it's a good argument for triage. Cities that need new infrastructure anyway go first kind of thing. But fobbing it off as 'its fine' isn't ok.
I don't think they were saying that we shouldn't replace them, but rather that it's unlikely to have a marked impact on things like religious adherence.
For the most part, the concerning lead is in the municipal portion of the water supply, not in the areas a homeowner can disturb. (Not all of course, but it was largely phased out of home construction in the 30s). Replacing appliances or having a plumber work aren't going to cause issues, and since the 80s having a service line or municipal water main break is a quick way to get non-lead installed.
Lead doesn't contaminate water super fast, the water needs to be in contact with it for a bit before concentrations start to rise to immediately actionable levels. That's why the biggest source of concern for contamination are municipal water mains and home service lines: water doesn't flow as quickly so it can accumulate more contamination, and there's a larger volume making it harder to flush the contaminated water. (If you have lead household plumbing, letting the water run for a minute or two will reduce the concentration below actionable levels. You can't do that if the contamination is from the water main)
You are entirely correct that pipe scale is not a "solution".
There's no safe concentration of lead, which is why we need to replace all the pipes, a process that started in the 80s. Usually doing it as part of routine maintenance is fine because it's not usually an emergency. The original plan to be done by the 2060s made a lot of assumptions about infrastructure maintenance being done on time, and people not making short sighted dumbfuck choices like the Flint emergency financial manager.
So we need to fix it as quickly as is reasonable, but we don't need to freak out over it, and we probably won't really see many marked changes like we did with leaded gas, just "no huge catastrophe", and average water lead levels dropping from 3 parts per billion to 1 or less.
I don't see how a homeowner could affect pipes upstream like that. I have been under the assumption they are talking about replacing city/count/state pipes and not pipes that landowners are responsible for. The article doesn't state either way.
And there is no guarantee shit won't get fucked up. But actually listening to people when they say what you want to do will fuck up the pipes sure helps. So, the opposite of what Flint did.
The first time I saw the argument, it was in relation to pipes in one's home and I'm not an expert on plumbing. I just felt the idea of "leave it alone and it'll be fine" is a really bad one and that it should be pushed back. I did acknowledge municipal pipes a bit, but my argument could use refinement.
IDK how much can even be done with $3 billion. It sounds like a drop in the bucket.
More than 0, and that's the important part.