On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 18:32:53 +0000, Bod wrote:

On 28/11/2017 18:02, wrote:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 08:04:07 +0000, Bod wrote:

So there are no Republican cities/towns that have high levels of lead in
their drinking water?

Most cities are run by democrats, particularly the old ones with lead
pipe. A lot of this lead actually comes from the residential plumbing
tho. Certainly per capita, it is a democrat problem just because of
the size of the big blue cities ... and they are all broke, verging on
bankruptcy. They can't afford to do much about it and the affected
residents are broke too. That is why the government was giving away
lead filters in Flint. Most of the residents could not afford to buy
them.
The interesting thing is Washington DC may be the second worst city in
the US for lead, after Flint. Maybe lead in the water explains why
long term congress people act as dumb as they do ;-)
It is true that the oldest pipes are in the parts of DC where the
politicians tend to work and live. That is also where the oldest sewer
systems are. Those are the ones that mix storm drains with sewers and
frequently overload on rainy days, dumping raw sewage in the river.

That's interesting and sad at the same time. Hard to believe that the
USA of all countries could not sort these problems out. I mean America
being one of the richest countries in the world.

The problem is the cities where these things are happening, for the
most part, are broke. They made bad contracts with the union
government workers back when they were fat and now their industry
moved away, the income stream slowed down and they have tens of
thousands of retired employees making 5 and 6 figure pensions that
were not properly funded. The money to replace these pipes is simply
not there. We also have a federal government that is $20 TRILLION in
the red with more unfunded pension liabilities than the cities have
(including federal pensions, social security and medicare) and an
electorate who does not want to pay taxes.
I am not sure we are really as rich as people think.