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Deadly Waters
I’ve spent the morning trying to understand the chronology of Flint water crisis. From what I can tell, this seems to be an accurate and up-to-date account. But I’m sure some of you are following this more closely than I’ve been, so please tell me if any part of it is incorrect.
It seems to me that unless the ACLU actually forged that March 7, 2014, e-mail from Darnell Earley to the Detroit Water and Sewer Company, which I highly doubt, they’re correct: The claim that Detroit cut off Flint’s water supply is a lie. And obviously so.
The impression suggested by this entire story is one of profound, systemic incompetence. The Snyder Administration appears to have been derelict; the Flint City Council and Mayor Walling appear to have been derelict; the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality was useless, and so was the EPA.
But the idea that this could never happen to wealthy white people is nonsense. In fact, poisoned water stories are apt to become more and more common, because our drinking-water systems are now very old. According to the American Water Works Association,
A new kind of challenge is emerging in the United States, one that for many years was largely buried in our national consciousness. Now it can be buried no longer. Much of our drinking water infrastructure, the more than one million miles of pipes beneath our streets, is nearing the end of its useful life and approaching the age at which it needs to be replaced. Moreover, our shifting population brings significant growth to some areas of the country, requiring larger pipe networks to provide water service. As documented in this report, restoring existing water systems as they reach the end of their useful lives and expanding them to serve a growing population will cost at least $1 trillion over the next 25 years, if we are to maintain current levels of water service. Delaying the investment can result in degrading water service, increasing water service disruptions, and increasing expenditures for emergency repairs. Ultimately we will have to face the need to “catch up” with past deferred investments, and the more we delay the harder the job will be when the day of reckoning comes. …
Given its age, it comes as no surprise that a large proportion of US water infrastructure is approaching, or has already reached, the end of its useful life. The need to rebuild these pipe networks must come on top of other water investment needs, such as the need to replace water treatment plants and storage tanks, and investments needed to comply with standards for drinking water quality. They also come on top of wastewater and stormwater investment needs which — judging from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) most recent “gap analysis” — are likely to be as large as drinking water needs over the coming decades.
It’s just a fact: our water infrastructure wasn’t built to last forever.
Given this astonishing, bipartisan example of appalling incompetence in water management — and given that it’s primary season — I’d like to hear the candidates’ views about whether governments should hold monopolies on water provision.
If they think not, I’d like to hear their views about this question: Is water a natural monopoly?
What do you think?
Published in Domestic Policy, Economics
Good questions.
I read something once (no citation, sorry) that pointed out that, in the 1890s, municipalities built their systems with pipes that would normally last 100 years. in the 1930s, they built their systems with 70-year pipes. After WWII, they saved more money by using 50-year pipes. Some really cheap developments in the past 30 years put in only 30-year pipes. Do you see a pattern here?
Is there a part of the world where water is well managed? Germany and the Nordics perhaps? I never lived in any cities in that part of the world. It is a natural monopoly, the whole water shed and flow is complex and has to be managed, but clear rights seems to have worked well in our own west. Cleaning it up and delivering it to households is a nightmare and frequently rotten, most often underpriced as is irrigation water. I’ve lived in countries where pipes were tapped illegally by squatters in illegal neighborhood, contaminating it for those who paid. These instances reflected many other problems, water and sewerage were symptoms. We’re afraid to turn it over to the private sector because it is a natural monopoly but governments make a mess of it. Regulated monopolies don’t work so well as they also face perverse incentives. Are there water auctioning systems anywhere? These Flint problems will probably lead to Federalization. That is never a solution, indeed it is giving up.
Water is well managed in Cobb County, Georgia.
I do not see Flint as a bipartisian failure. It is a Democrat one. How is the the fault of the GOP? The Dems control everything at every level.
Well, technically, Governor Snyder is a Republican. So, the state department of environmental quality is technically under a Republican. Also, the supervisor installed because the city couldn’t manage to run itself was appointed by Snyder, so Republican even if he’s a Democrat. That’s just the way it works around here.
Claire,
Your title keeps reminding me of this song:
This is where the whole way we pay for infrastructure annoys me. We typically use bonds to get the money, the pay off the bonds over the lifetime of the infrastructure. This works well for politicians especially in an inflationary regime since the dollars one is repaying the debt with become cheaper over time. The problem becomes when the debt load becomes too great, or heaven forbid, we actually have a deflationary environment. I have always preferred a CARF approach, that is a capital asset replacement fund, that is accumulated gradually over a period of time, and initial investments are likely still made with bonds, but the repayment is set not just to repay the initial costs, but to build up the reserve fund. Then when it is time to replace the asset, the funds are already available, and in fact the interest works for the entity having the asset since instead of paying interest, they are receiving it.
The objections to this are usually self centered, e.gg why should I pay more that the carried cost to build with bonds, and why should government maintain a “slush” fund and not give the dollars back.
But overall using bond debt over time is much more expensive to the affected rate payers that the CARF approach. But then considering replacement costs at the time something is built is easy to duck for politicians
I don’t think a monopoly situation attains when a resource lies beneath every pair of feet. What then transpires is a consideration of economics. You can drill a well for a few thousand dollars and have water. Now, how much is it going to cost you to treat that water, to make it safe for drinking?
Detroit appears to have ended a long term contract to supply Flint, after Flint considered, then rejected utilizing the Flint River as an alternative source. It seems likely that the rejection of the Flint River was related to excessive costs for treatment. Detroit then offered Flint a new and different contract and, at that point, Flint decided to draw water from their own river. What transpired that led to a different decision regarding the suitability of the Flint River? I suspect a treatment plan for the Flint River was prepared, analyzed, cost estimates were developed, and the City of Flint decided to go with their own source. After all, I assure you that the City of Detroit heavily treats their water, prior to delivery, so the economics could have been very similar.
John, the other issue with CARF is will the money be there when the replacement comes due? Or will they have balanced the budget by offsetting other budget problems with the CARF? And what will the politicians invest the CARF in? Will it be a stock recommended by someone’s brother-in-law?Now, all of these objections can be overcome and safeguarded against, but most cities and voters will not manage it.
It is certainly the smart way for a commercial or non-profit corporation to manager assets, but more problems and more unintended consequences come when it is a government corporation.
That does not make it a bipartisian problem. The Democrats run the state apparatus. Not Snyder’s fault if that apparatus gave him poor information on whom to appoint, (the appointee, by the way, was a Democrat).
Democrats are destroying cities. Period. It is not Republicans.
What, then, transpired? I don’t know, yet. Too little information has been made public. My guess is that the approved contractor failed to meet treatment goals. Perhaps, the delivered water had a pH that was a bit too low. Water that has a low pH (is acidic), can allow metals to go into solution that would otherwise be entrained within sediments and easily removed via filtration. Another thing that suggests a pH that was a bit too low is that more acidic water may also leach metals, such as lead, from obsolete lead pipes, or the lead solder joints of very old plumbing. In that way, lead from the Flint River source could have been removed by treatment, but lead in the existing, older plumbing could contaminate drinking water.
Information is being obfuscated. We need real, dispassionate data. Just release the random water sample data from the river, from the treatment plant, from the faucets, and release the details of how the samples were collected. Inappropriate water sample collection and preservation are notoriously apt to reveal elevated dissolved metals upon analysis. Before this is considered a political discussion, all of the data and methods should be looked at by impartial experts. It is unfair to ask politicians at any level to make sense of this blame game. Turn this over to an undergraduate class. They’ll tell you in 2 days where data, or methods, are being hidden or inappropriately emphasized. Who benefits from making this seem more complicated?
Well-managed in the sense of, “Everyone has confidence that it’s safe to drink and no one can even remember a scandal like Flint?” Or well-managed in the sense of, “It’s safe, of course, and it’s not that expensive, either?”
France has extremely safe water. Depending on the region, it’s either managed publicly or privately, but the principle is “water pays for itself” — consumers pay for it, not taxpayers. So the cost of water obviously varies a lot by region. It’s a big part of everyone’s utility bill, although it’s often baked into the rental contract, if you’re renting, so I don’t know how much I’m really paying for it. There’s no scarcity in Paris, so obviously landlords don’t care much if a wasteful tenant takes long showers. I imagine that’s not at all true in drier parts of France.
The water agencies are under the authority of the ecology ministry, so they perform the safety oversight that state and federal environmental agencies (in principle) do in the US. They’re located in every major river basin. They collect fees for infrastructure renewal (and fees from polluters, using the “polluter pays” principle). Local governments, industries, and farmers all pay the respective agencies, and the agencies redistribute it to upgrade infrastructure.
I don’t know if the privately-managed regions provide the service at a notably lower cost, though. I’d have to look into it. The private companies certainly claim they’re more efficient, but consumers complain they’re not passing the savings along to them — which is what you might expect, if you view it as a natural monopoly.
I honestly don’t have a clue how it works in Germany and the Nordics. I think it’s pretty well-managed in France, overall, but I couldn’t say that for sure. I don’t think you could have a Flint situation here, though: The French will always err on the side of prioritizing safety over low taxation, which may, in the case of the water supply, be the right approach. I don’t know.
Agreed. And, yes, I know the appointed manager was a Democrat. But that won’t stop the news media from trying to blame Republicans. I think we can also agree on that. They just happen to be two separate issues: who is responsible and who gets blamed.
Sure. The question is exactly the one you asked: Do they do a better job than publicly-run systems? The other question is, if they do, do they pass along the savings to the consumer? The point is that competition works in everyone’s favor, but in the case of water management — some would argue — no competition is possible.
Worrying about what cannot be seen, such as pipes beneath the ground is not a priority for elected city officials. In fact worrying about what can be seen, like potholes is not a priority for elected city officials. Filling potholes and replacing pipes is not as fulfilling as ribbon cutting ceremonies for new light rail systems that cost millions of dollars per mile.
No mayor or city council member wants their picture taken next to a trench that will eventually be covered. Mayors and city council members want their pictures taken while standing next to a bright new shiny train, or solar panels that have been installed on some city building.
This is a built-in liability of democracy. It’s hard enough getting individuals to save responsibly. It’s obviously going to be even harder to get cities and states to do it.
Aside from reservoirs what most might think of as water competition would require equal access to rights of way for delivery. Local government monopolies (and yes, I’m the guy who is all in favor of a crazy patchwork of state and local government) have been known to make such access difficult for fiber optic cable companies; I’m pretty sure water would be more difficult than fiber optic cable.
There could be other forms of region-based competition, but one thing to keep in mind is that a water delivery system is also going to have to work with a waste water system, which tends to mean coordination over larger geographic areas, which means coordination at higher levels of government.
Conservatives like Rush who say our country has room for lots more people should keep all this in mind.
We seem to be falling apart in this country: the road systems, the electrical systems, the water systems–we do a lot of hand-wringing (not you specifically, Claire), and our systems continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate. And I only have complaints–no answers.
I’d say water distribution is pretty close to a natural monopoly. In theory, you could have competing treatment plants, but blending water from different sources in the same network would require careful balancing of the chemistry to avoid a situation like Flint (an upset in stability with respect to corrosion).
The Netherlands invests a lot in their water systems.
Oil pipelines are another issue. The big Enbridge oil spill on the Kalamazoo River in 2010 made a lot of people around here aware of the issues. I understand there are also concerns about some of the old lines running under the Straits of Mackinac.
Once again, in the moment of scandal and finger pointing, we lose the main story.
There are a handful of things that people of all stripes can agree on: Government exists to provide for the common good where individual effort may be counterproductive. Roads, police, fire, sewer and water can reasonably be seen as services on that list.
But why does the essential services so often fail? Because of all the stuff the politicians poke their nose into that they have no business getting involved in. Stop worrying about tobacco, big gulps, salt content and all the other micromanaging bullcrap. Last week, while getting my drivers license renewed the clerk was compelled by law to ask me if I had a medical power of attorney. Instead of worrying about that, how about worrying about the quality of my town’s water supply?
Two years ago when doing some bicycling across Michigan, I found the roads in Genessee County (where Flint is located) to be pretty bad in comparison to the surrounding counties. Not that this was a big surprise. Our own county’s roads are some of the worst in the state, but no worse than Genessee’s. And we’re making progress on roads in our county, thanks to some conservative Republicans who got into office and have reformed the highway maintenance system. It’s an ongoing struggle, though.
Something that just occurred to me is that in countries that fail reliably to provide clean drinking water, or where it’s even reputedly not safe, the supply of it is de facto privatized. Tons of competing, private companies supply clean drinking water in Istanbul — they advertise non-stop, they compete hard on price and service, and they deliver jug upon jug of it to your doorstep. While I couldn’t vouch for its safety 100 percent, it tastes better than the stuff that comes out of the tap. (I drank the tap water there too, and nothing bad ever happened to me: The water there is actually perfectly safe to drink, but confidence in the government is low: If you can buy your own, you do.) As soon as people move into the middle class in India, they buy a water filter.
We all know that “bottled water” is either spring water or privately treated tap water, and usually the latter. I wonder if we’re looking at the problem the wrong way: There may be a natural monopoly on water, but is there really a natural monopoly on water purification and filtration?
I was thinking about that, too. Because of some health issues, I usually only drink steam-distilled water we buy. There are many choices out there. I wouldn’t want to use that for showering, but for drinking, cooking, and making tea, it doesn’t cost that much.
I agree completely, keeping track of what the politicians do is important, and really hard to do. We should fire them more frequently!
Can we all agree on that? I’m thinking it over and wondering. If we all agree on it, why is it so hard to get people to vote for a CARF system of infrastructure financing?
Because budgets are limited. Let’s say you and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. For the sake of simplicity let’s say there are 30 items to vote on. We agree on 10 of them as being essential services. But instead of doing those 10 things really well, we’ll do all thirty of them half-assed. Then you get your political payoffs, and I get mine, and everyone plays “BIBDAYBD.”
That jumble of letters stands for “But I’ll Be Dead And You’ll Be Dead.” It’s how deals and compromises are made. Everybody knows the piper will eventually call and the bills will come due and the neglect of the important things will catch up to you. But that can is usually kicked so far down the road it’s pathetic. BIBDAYBD, so don’t worry about it. Let’s grab as much power and money as we can today.
Our cities, states and country as a whole aren’t suffering for the decisions we made yesterday. They’re suffering because of the deals that were cut when we were fat and happy. The piper is calling but we have so many hands dependent on the government till that we can no longer take care of the really essential stuff.
Apropos of nothing: The Conservative government of Stephen Harper put a very high priority on sewer and water projects when it implemented its “infrastructure stimulus” over the past decade.
On the one hand, this was a very good thing because (as in the OP) this is aging infrastructure that really needs the upgrades.
On the other hand, one could argue it contributed to the government’s downfall when confronted with a flashier and more handsome candidate because water and sewer upgrades aren’t “sexy”.
Voters didn’t see the “this new water main brought to you by” signs and think, “I’m definitely going to vote to reward that sort of prudent and responsible thinking!”
Instead, they (arguably) thought, “well, that’s what government’s supposed to do anyways. I demand more than that. I wanna vote for greatness.”
The result? When The Dauphin talks about infrastructure investment, he talks about something called “social infrastructure”. i.e. welfare.
Mind you, this doesn’t change the problem of non-drinking water. Very little of the water we use is drinking water. The natural-monopoly problem comes right back if we think about bathing water, toilet-flushing water, washing-machine water, gardening-water, and, obviously, agriculture.
a) Something similar can be said about electricity generation vs. distribution. The local utility delivering power the last bit of the way into the houses may arguably be a “natural monopoly”, but that doesn’t mean that electrical generation must be.
b) Even if “end-of-the-pipe” delivery is a “natural monopoly”, the negative monopoly effects can arguably be reduced by ensuring each monopoly’s territory is as small as possible. Why should a single city be serviced by a single utility monopoly when the city could be split into multiple territories which private operators could compete over?
c) If Flint’s water supply was run by a private firm, that firm could be fired for incompetence and the contract given to a competing firm.