It’s either them or that physician with ebola:
A state of emergency was declared today in Lucas County and the greater Toledo area after tests at the Collins Park water-treatment plant in East Toledo produced two toxin sample readings.
Chemists testing water at Collins Park plant found two sample readings for microcystin — a toxin that is released by algae blooms — that exceeded the recommended “do not drink” standard of one microgram per liter standard. About 400,000 people in and around Ohio‘s fourth-largest city are affected.
Within hours after the warning was issued, Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency for Toledo and the surrounding areas affected including Fulton County.
Sen. Marcy Kaptur was at a news conference today with local officials. She said a new water treatment plant has been needed for a long time but opposition in Washington has delayed the process.
*Marcy Kaptur is of course not a Senator
Representative Marcy Kaptur says the area is meeting the challenge of the water crisis and the issue highlights the need for a new water treatment plant.
She says many larger cities suffer from outdated water and sewer systems. Kaptur stressed that people needed to remain calm and said that she put out some rain barrels to gather water for non-essential uses.
She stressed the importance of the Maumee river to the Great Lakes and that everyone needs to work together to manage the watershed and prevent algae growth from being fueled by runoff from farmland. Kaptur said that she hoped people would look at the area in a different way and stress the importance of the health of the lake.
Davis X. Machina
I blame Obama. I mean, how else am I supposed to interpret a statement like that?
SatanicPanic
@Davis X. Machina: Let’s be fair, both sides do it
Keith G
I think that the President should go to Toledo just to screw with the FOX News crowd.
Toledo is, in essence, a border city.
Dog On Porch
GOP TO LUCAS COUNTY (et.al): “DROP DEAD”!
And that’s that, so long as the republican party retains political power.
Liberty60
@SatanicPanic:
I’m sure the marketplace is simply being prevented by governmen from solving the problem.
? Martin
Why does Washington need to approve a new water treatment plant? Or did Ohio Republicans kill the tax base and now they need fed money to build anything?
Kay
@Liberty60:
They just sent water samples to the jack-booted tree-huggers at the US-EPA. I don’t even know if we have a state environmental agency anymore in any real sense, ya know, as a regulator or “state actor” My sense is they’re pretty much captured.
Kay
@? Martin:
I didn’t see the press conference but Marcy Kaptur is an expert on Lake Erie water and the whole river system and watershed in the area. If she said it, it’s probably true. It’s one of her main areas of interest.
Mr Stagger Lee
Quick where is Joe The Plumber? FREEDUMB!!!! FREEDUMB!!
Keith G
@? Martin: Don’t know about this case, but in the past, I have read about urban water treatment systems/upgrades needing a pass from the EPA to insure that the system is up to standards – especially if federal funds are being used.
Mnemosyne
We just had a massive water main break at UCLA — it was over 90 years old.
I honestly don’t get the conservative mentality that once infrastructure is built, it lasts forever and never has to be replaced. Have they never made home repairs? Had a basement flood? Had a tree crack the sidewalk in front of their house?
askew
@Mnemosyne:
That philosophy only started in 2009 when we got a blah in the White House. Expect them to go back to loving pork once he’s gone. It’s more about denying any possible victory to Obama than anything else.
Russ
If we hadn’t spent that 70 Billion on infrastructure in Iraq over the last 13 years.
? Martin
@Keith G: Well, I can appreciate needing the EPA to give it the thumbs up, but ‘opposition in Washington’ means either the WH or Congress. Congress has fuckall to do with what the EPA approves. Sounds like Ohio lacks the money to build this and is expecting Congress to come through. Well, issue a fucking bond if you need it that bad.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@askew: When did the I-35 bridge collapse?
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I saw that last week and I agree. If you want things you have to pay for them. There’s something disgustingly infantile about believing you can live forever off what people who came before you built and paid for. There’s the huge system operating in the background and just pretending that because we inherited it that means we get if forever without contributing to it or protecting it or improving it is really the height of selfishness.
Villago Delenda Est
Infrastructure investment is so fucking boring. It makes the eyes of the vermin of the Village glaze over, and then it causes lots of yawning on Meet the Press with your genial host, Dancin’ Dave. It’s not exciting, and sexy, like oh, I don’t know, F35s and yachts and football teams for Donald Trump.
Clean water? Meh. Bombing people? That’s entertainment!
Mnemosyne
@askew:
What huge infrastructure projects did Bush initiate? I mean, here in the US, not in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Republicans have been anti-infrastructure for decades — it’s part of their rant against Big Gubbmint. All infrastructure projects are boondoggles meant to use up taxpayer money.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
Yes, and you’d think that having the motherfucking Speaker of the motherfucking House from your state would help with securing some Uncle motherfucking Sam sugar to help with that, but we’re talking motherfucking Weeping Cheeto, so good motherfucking luck with that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
More of the legacy of that shitty grade Z movie star’s marquee run in the WH.
Keith G
@? Martin: To clarify by example:
Here in Houston, we are building out light rail. A large project getting funds that were first approved by W’s Dept. of Transportation.
Almost every year since, we have had anti-rail Republicans fight, delay, or sometimes reduce the federal funding during the appropriations process. All the while the project end dates get pushed back and cost continue to go up.
Pogonip
@Kay: Also the height of stupidity.
? Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: I guess I’m feeling a bit less Federalist today, but water treatment is a local issue. There’s a robust bond market in this country. Stop asking the Feds for money for everything.
EriktheRed
@Villago Delenda Est:
Fatass Hastert was my Congresscritter and it never helped our district when he was Speaker.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip: Selfishness and stupidity. For the modern Rethuglican trifecta, toss in racism.
Keith G
@? Martin: Most large public capital/infrastructure projects in all states project use some level of federal funding.
edit
@? Martin: The results of water treatment are dictated by the feds, therefore they help with the costs. If the did not happen the Clean Water Act would never have been passed.
Villago Delenda Est
@EriktheRed: It helped Fatass. He arranged for some new interchanges on some interstate that happened to be right where he owned some land.
Kay
@? Martin:
It looks like Democrats have been trying to get water infrastructure addressed for a while:
Kaptur usually knows what she’s talking about. She’s just really bright and hard-working. It doesn’t get much better than her, as far as “public servants”.
Baud
@Kay:
One of the best summaries of modern conservatism I’ve ever seen.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The water main in front of my parents’ house broke a bit over a decade ago. It was built like a very long barrel, and the break happened when one of the cast iron hoops rusted through, allowing the wooden staves to pull apart and the water to get out. I don’t know which is more amazing to me, that the city still had wooden water mains, that the water quality was outstanding despite the ancient technology, or that the city had the spare parts and expertise on hand to fix it.
askew
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
That bridge didn’t collapse due to a lack of infrastructure spending.
The NTSB concluded that the root cause of the bridge collapse was a design error that resulted in gusset plates at 4 locations on the bridge being too small to carry the load that was placed on the bridge. This design flaw resulted in a structure that was doomed from day one.
As a Minnesotan, I remember quite well when and why it collapsed and it had nothing to do with Republicans cutting infrastructure funding at the Fed level.
Villago Delenda Est
@Russ: The Iraqis want to know where that 70 billion went, too, because they’re not benefiting all that much from it.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Did you see Joe Nocera’s op-ed in NYT this week? It was about teachers and he was blaming teachers unions for something or the other.
askew
Infrastructure funding fell off a cliff when Republicans took over House in 2010 compared to spending under Bush:
Kay
@Baud:
Which is why they should change the name of that ideology. There’s nothing prudent or responsible or conservative about it. They conserve nothing, and they refuse to pay for things that they were given. If a water system is 90 years old that means very few of us who use it built it. It’s now unimaginable that we would be expected to rebuild? That’s like TYRANNY, I guess. Boo hoo. That’s what they sound like to me.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@askew: Really? As far back as 1990, the USDOT rated it as structurally deficient. A bridge that is structurally deficient for 17 years and isn’t replaced sounds a lot like lack of infrastructure spending to me.
Yatsuno
@Kay: OT but did you see this bit of news? I wonder if they can get an immediate stay in time for November.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, well, truth in advertising was never one of their strong suits.
Keith P
The market will determine if clean water is necessary.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
No, I didn’t. The NYTimes is terrible on public schools. It’s supposed to be national, but it’s weirdly parochial. They should stop covering it or admit that it’s primarily a state issue and every opinion piece they flog is about this set of eastern urban school systems. The Washington Post is better, and that’s not saying much. At least they seem to be aware that DC is not “the country”.
The shit they flog about charter schools has absolutely no connection to the reality of charter schools outside of NYC. You would think one of them would occasionally travel to FL or MI or OH or PA or AZ or WI if they are going to continue to insist they are somehow “national” on public schools. For God sakes. Pennsylvania isn’t that far away.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
From my experience, you do. Crappy as they may be, state environmental departments do NOT want the EPA taking over their authority, and they have to screw up pretty badly on audits for that to happen. Most likely Ohio’s DEP (or whatever it’s called) will do whatever it takes to keep EPA away from kicking them out. Or at least the minimum.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I don’t even think they get out of NYC and travel upstate, forget going to Pennsylvania.
ETA: Here is the link, in case you are interested.
askew
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
You can read the report on the findings. The collapse was caused by a poorly designed bridge and safety guidelines that didn’t account for gussett placement.
Politifact.
Pawlenty does share some blame because he cut taxes so drastically in Minnesota that regulatory agencies across all of state government were taking shortcuts:
Scott Peterson
@Kay: Today’s Republicans are deadbeats sponging off the hard work their predecessors did — along with, obviously, the Democrats — to build this nation’s infrastructure. How determined the GOP is to block even basic maintenance, never mind improve our standing relative to the rest of the world, is a scandal that should lead every news program for weeks until it’s rectified, and would be if the mainstream media wasn’t so terminally addicted to the “both sides do it” mentality.
maya
@Roger Moore: Probably had lots of staves left over from Prohibition days.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Kay: Not just Democrats. Maryland Democrats: Cardin and Mikulski. C’mon other states, whassamatter U?
Kay
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Years ago, I did some work for a local environmental group on CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). They wanted to protect groundwater. I was genuinely shocked at how much state law had been overwritten or repealed and how possible agency actions had been deliberately weakened. It was like I would start reading laws and then agency regs and run into dead ends again and again. “Can’t go that way, maybe they can go this way”. They eventually ended up joining with a group in Pennsylvania who knew how to navigate federal environmental laws.
Mike J
@askew:
And as Omnes said, they knew it was a death trap for 17 years and never spent the money to replace it.
Tokyokie
@Kay: I knew a guy who inherited a Mercedes from an uncle who didn’t have any children. But the dumbass was too cheap to get oil changes, and guess what? He drove it into the ground within about a year. It doesn’t matter how well something is built, if it’s not maintained, it won’t last.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@askew: I still say that a structurally deficient bridge shouldn’t sit around for more than a decade and half; It wasn’t due to be replaced until 2020. That’s inadequate infrastructure spending. BTW, if it had been replaced, the design flaw wouldn’t have caused it to collapse.
WereBear
@Kay: Basically, “conservatives” are a parasitic system.
GregB
Let them eat fecal coliform.
Mustang Bobby
My parents moved out of the Toledo area last fall. My mom tells me that the water system for the metropolitan area has always been a disaster: they used to get bills for $500 a quarter.
But infrastructure repairs are not job creators, so the hell with it.
scav
@askew:
I mean, they were painting the lifeboat on the Titanic when it sunk! And the seating arrangements were being actively adjusted. What’s everyone so upset about?
scav
@askew:
I mean, they were painting the lifeboat on the Titanic when it sunk! And the seating arrangements were being actively adjusted. What’s everyone so upset about?
Kay
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
So in Ohio (as in other states, probably) you can read back on a law and see the changes. So I’m obsessed with finding these Lefties an avenue to do something on protecting groundwater this one summer years ago, so I’m going back and back and I’d see when they changed the law (they’re literally lined thru when they’re amended) over the years.
They did this clever thing in the 1990’s to 2000’s, where they transferred a lot of the agency power FROM the state environmental agency TO the state agricultural agency. The state ag agency is obviously a much more friendly regulator for ag interests.
Anyway, my conclusion was one shouldn’t take it for granted that the environmental protection laws and rules that went in in 1972 or whatever are still there. Lobbyists had been hard at work for a lot of years gutting them and making it nearly impossible for ordinary people to do something like “protect local groundwater”. It was a complete regulatory capture, just slooooooowly, over decades.
That’s “infrastructure” we’re losing too.
Suffern ACE
@Kay: yep. Sure, in the northeast, you have all if these WASP academies and Catholic High Schools devoted to getting kids into those great private universities and colleges – you know where Swarthmore is the average fallback school. They like to pretend that they can offer that system is what Indianapolis needs. Now, they would never send their children to a for profit school. But their kids can administer for profit schools and serve on a board that pays pays in stock options. So I guess it’s good for them.
Michael Bersin
“…everyone needs to work together to manage the watershed and prevent algae growth from being fueled by runoff from farmland…”
Here in Missouri on August 5th we’ll be voting to add a “right to farm” amendment to the state constitution. The usual corporate suspects have been dropping beacoup bucks on the vote “Yes” campaign.
Interestingly, there’s no right to potable water or breathe clean air in the state constitution.
Just imagine the outcome in court if the “right to farm” amendment is added to the constitution and someone tries to sue a corporate agriculture operation for their byproducts impacting on that individual’s property and/or health.
sm*t cl*de
Work together? Manage a scarce resource? Someone does not understand the Gospel of Rand or the virtues of selfishness.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@sm*t cl*de: Exactly, everyone knows the Great Lakes Charter is imaginary.
gbear
@Mike J: Then after 35W collapsed, the state house and senate provided additional money in the budget for infrastructure, but Pawlenty vetoed it. I’m glad his ass is out of politics now.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
I read all these public ed blogs and apparently they had a real education reporter but he left and they replaced him with this odd collection of (maybe!) very smart people who don’t understand systems.
There’s a basic misunderstanding at work here. It’s that if you pull one string in a system the whole fabric changes. So, for example, if you set up a parallel system of what are selective charter schools, the remaining truly public schools in the system are going to have a harder time turning in high test scores. That would happen here! I guarantee our scores go down if everyone on my street went to our (hypothetical) charter school. I wouldn’t then turn around and start screeching at the school that takes the remaining 80 or 70 or 60% because their scores declined or were flat. “Flat” in that case might be “growth” (relative). Come on. It’s a system and it’s universal. It has geographical boundaries and a given population. It’s not completely unknowable what’s likely to happen when you radically change it by introducing a whole new “choice” sector.
Gambiteer
What’s ironic is that the algae blooms in Lake Erie are caused largely by agricultural runoff from the Maumee river, which runs through Toledo. But it’s not the farmers in eastern Ohio whose drinking water is poisoned.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
I had a funny argument with an ed reformer the other day, online. The assumption was because I’m a white person who lives in an area with very few black people that my local public school is “high performing” and lavishly funded by property taxes which is why I support it. Except it isn’t. It’s 50% free and reduced lunch and 25% of the parents have a college degree. Do I think they do a good job with the resources and the students they receive? Yeah, I do.
I don’t even know what this is. I don’t know where to start with people who make these sweeping pronouncements. The teachers union one county over is much more militant than mine. I’d need 500 words just to describe those two groups of teachers, let alone writing “teachers unions” and meaning “in America”.
James E. Powell
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
It would be nice if the 16 senators and however many congress-creatures who border the Great Lakes would defend them with the persistence and fervor that, for example, oil state senators & congress-creatures do for their industry.
Jay C
@Mnemosyne: @Roger Moore:
Well, I live in Manhattan, where water infrastructure from 1923 would be considered just middle-aged by the prevailing standards, the one thing we have been told (and are repeatedly reminded of after every main-break) is that where pipelines are concerned, it is far cheaper and more efficient to simply let them go, and then fix breaks where and when they occur, than to even consider programs of mass replacement: the costs and inconvenience of the occasional outage* being weighed (and found wanting) against the vastly greater hassles (and costs) a major re-install would entail.
*Unlike, apparently, UCLA, here in Gotham, the density actually works to mitigate the problems: water-main breaks usually only affect areas of maybe a few square blocks: sometimes even less. We had a main break on our sidestreet a couple of weeks ago: the row of buildings across the street (3 or 4) were without water for a day: our building (across the street from the sinkhole) was completely unaffected – we get our water from the main on 2nd Avenue. Though we still got to be awakened by the sound of jackhammers at 7:00 am: life in the Big City….
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@efgoldman: There will be. IIRC the Great Lakes hold 20% of the world’s fresh water supply.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Many years ago, I interned at Nashville Gas. TennDOT was working up the plans for the interstate loop at the time, and all the utilities were taking advantage of the opportunity to replace old infrastructure. There were still cedar water mains running through downtown Nashville at the time. And if not for the interstate construction, they would still be there.
Kay
@efgoldman:
Obama’s actually been good for the Great Lakes. He did the Great Lakes Water Initiative first term. He cut some funding to it in his second term budget but it’s still a net plus. I actually saw it at work on Lake Michigan one summer. They were out there on a barge, doing their scientist things. They had a sign up. I took a picture of it for this very blog! :)
Barbara
@Jay C: It does sound like NYC has a workable system, for NYC. The world below street level there is amazingly crowded with all sorts of pipes, wires, tunnels, etc.
I’m in a massively grumpy mood today but reading about water treatment and distribution just reminds me that these services are undoubtedly on somebody’s privatizing wish list.
We see water main breaks and sigh because they are happening in areas with epic droughts where every drop needs to be husbanded, or we sigh over bans on drinking water having to be put in place for health reasons, but somebody else is probably gleeful at seeing a series of small “shocks” as Naomi Klein described them, that can be spun as: See, government can’t handle this, let us! We’ll do it right AND make money!
shelley
Some paragon of compassion over at Free Republic complained about bringing that doctor with ebola back into the country. He said we should send him to Gitmo.
Kay
@shelley:
This is their new thing, I guess now. You have to be worthy to return once you leave.
Thank God everyone in this country isn’t scared spitless every moment of every day:
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I don’t get it, what business is this of Trump’s?
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
The doctor with ebola? None of his business. This week we’re coddling their fears about people entering the country with diseases. It’s about as rational as “stranger rhymes with danger”. They’re afraid of the child refugees and a physician this week. Next week it might be sharks or monsters.
VOR
@gbear: The I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed on August 1, 2007. Remember, the 2008 RNC convention was held in September 2008 in St. Paul, nearby. Then-Governor Pawlenty seemed to think he was on the short list for McCain’s VP pick. So there was a lot of pressure on the Republican side to fix the bridge quick. The new bridge was completed on September 18, 2008, missing the RNC convention by two weeks but still 3 months ahead of schedule, per Wikipedia.
Yes, the old bridge was structurally deficient and that was known for years. But under Pawlenty, the state repeatedly took the cheapest option for monitoring the bridge. Pawlenty’s Lt. Governor was doing double duty as the head of the state Department of Transportation. She was under fire prior to the collapse for being more interested in new roads than fixing existing infrastructure and was eventually forced out of the DOT job on a party line vote 6 months after the bridge collapse.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Kay: I believe that next week actually is Shark Week.
jharp
@? Martin:
I think one of the issues is that a good portion of the runoff comes from Indiana. So maybe the idea is that Ohio shouldn’t bear all of the cost of cleaning up Indiana’s pollution.
Just wondering if that might be the case.
FYI. The Maumee River that empties into Lake River at Toledo originates if Fort Wayne Indiana.
PurpleGirl
@Kay:
But Congress has failed for years to reauthorize federal revolving loan funds for drinking or wastewater projects.
A friend of mine headed the loan agency in Maryland that administered this program. It was a very good program. It sold some bonds, made loans and kept the funding circulating. My friend left the agency and I don’t know what its recent history is.
PurpleGirl
@Roger Moore: Every so often NYC gets something right. Even though we do continue to have water main problems, we do have that third tunnel that takes a lot of the pressure off the other two tunnels, which are over a century old. Took years and mucho money to build the third tunnel, but we did do it before the situation was an extreme crisis. It was a crisis but we managed to get that third tunnel.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Barbara:
After the utter fiasco of electricity privatization in California, I don’t see water privatization getting anywhere anytime soon out here.
Barbara
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): There were noises about changing how Cincinnati’s system is structured a while ago that some people warned could open the way to privatization. Fortunately, the attempt fizzled so I didn’t have to find out how accurate those predictions would have turned out to be.
Aimai
@Kay: sharks with ebola? Film at eleven.