the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 23, 2016
It is shocking and horrifying that so many people in Flint, Michigan have been poisoned by high levels of lead in the drinking water. And 8,000 are children under the age of 6, when their growing and developing brains and bodies are the most vulnerable to the damage and destruction suffered from lead poisoning.
But Flint is not alone.
There are at least 2,000 water systems spanning all 50 states with high amounts of lead in the water, according to USA Today. And 350 of those water systems are for schools and day care centers. A water sample at a Maine elementary school was 42 times higher than the legal limit set by the EPA–which itself is too high, since any amount of lead can cause permanent damage. A Pennsylvania preschool was 14 times higher. An elementary school in Ithaca, New York was 5,000 times higher, exposing children and adults to drinking water so laced with lead, it qualifies as hazardous waste.
No, the only difference between Flint and a lot of other cities and towns is that the people in Flint protested and demonstrated. Otherwise, politicians, government officials and business leaders would have done nothing to prevent people from continuing to be poisoned. After all, General Motors knew Flint water was dangerous, because it stopped using it in its factories. But GM executives kept that information secret from the population.
Politicians, government officials throughout the country know full well that tens of thousands of miles of water pipes are still made out of lead. After all, up until 1985, it was perfectly legal to install water pipes made out of lead!
Yet, politicians and government officials don’t lift a finger to replace these pipes because they say there is no money. They say the water agencies are going broke.
That is a lie. The proof is in our water bills. Over the last two decades, water rates have not only been increasing much faster than the rate of inflation, but faster than any other utility rate–faster than what is charged for natural gas, electricity or the phone.
Today, the people in Flint pay on average close to $900 per year for water. They pay a higher rate for water than anywhere else in the country. And what they get is water that is both expensive and so dangerous, they can’t even use it to wash their hands.
Flint might be a more extreme example. But the fact is that government officials use water utilities as a cash cow. They syphon the money off and hand it over to big companies like GM, or big real estate developers. Or else they hand it over to big banks and financiers in the form of high, tax-free interest payments on water bonds.
How much is impossible to know because it is kept secret. But in December 2012, the New York Times published a study that found that state and local governments give away more than 80 billion dollars per year in tax breaks and subsidies to companies every year. That comes to almost half as much as state and local governments spend on all infrastructure projects every year, including not just water systems, but construction of schools, roads, sewers, airports, dams, levees–everything. In other words, government officials starve spending on vital infrastructure in order to further fatten the profits of the capitalist class.
Providing cheap, safe and clean drinking water should be simple and straight forward. But in an economy dominated by the capitalist class, it is just another money making operation, another way to rip off the working population, destroying countless lives in the process.
In these times of worsening crisis in the capitalists’ own economic system, the capitalists protect their profits by imposing dangerous and destructive conditions on the population, pushing our society backwards. It is even more outrageous because there is more wealth than ever before, wealth that could be used to improve the living conditions of everyone.
May 23, 2016
Northern Alberta, where a vast series of forest fires are located, is the most important bituminous oil sand region in the world. One person out of 10 works directly or indirectly for the oil sands industry producing more than two million barrels of oil a day. 88,000 people were evacuated from Fort McMurray, a town located in the heart of Alberta’s oil sands.
Alberta has a fire-prone landscape. There have been big fires before (2011 and 1951, for example) but they were in remote areas. The current fire has laid waste to some 2,400 homes and much of the infrastructure in Fort McMurray.
Firebreaks–gaps between flammable vegetation and homes or pits–are an important way to protect buildings. There were no such firebreaks around Fort McMurray. The town was surrounded by dense, tinder-dry forests. The fire chief Al Schran claimed the city found it difficult to create firebreaks due to the amount of privately-owned land near the town. “On private land, it is the owner’s responsibility to do that [take fire precautions]–we can’t just go on to private land to help mitigate some of those things.”
The oil-sands facilities however, have wide, vegetation-free firebreaks surrounding them. In fact, no oil-sands facilities have sustained any damage from the fires and government officials said they are confident “key energy infrastructure will themselves be unharmed.”
Maybe this explains why the government evacuated the town and not the production facilities? At least this is the excuse the companies give for not evacuating their workers–the government didn’t order an evacuation for workers until two weeks later.
While firebreaks can slow down or stop flames, they cannot stop the smoke. Many workers were vomiting, had burning eyes and other symptoms of smoke inhalation which can kill you and often kills people long before they burn. It became so bad that some workers quit.
Workers everywhere know the bosses never want to stop production. This is where their profits come from–not just oil–but from the intense exploitation of workers. Finally, 8,000 workers were evacuated from camps and production facilities.
In Northern Alberta, capitalism is at least as dangerous as the wildfires themselves.
May 23, 2016
California air quality regulators told battery recycler Quemetco that its plant in the City of Industry near Los Angeles is putting too much arsenic into the air, exposing thousands of residents in the area to an elevated risk of cancer.
Of course, the sensible thing would be to shut down the plant until the company stops poisoning the population. But no, instead, the officials gave Quemetco six months to ... no, not to stop spewing arsenic into the air–just to submit a “plan to reduce it.”
In the meantime, the officials said, Quemetco should “notify the residents of their health risks.” As if the working-class people who live in the area have the option not to breathe; or to just pick up and live somewhere else!
It’s nothing new. Quemetco has been operating this big battery recycling plant for more than 50 years, putting lead, arsenic and other poisonous substances into the air, soil and water on a daily basis. And state agencies have cited the company many times. Back in 1991, for example, state investigators declared lead levels in residential areas near the Quemetco plant unsafe. But Quemetco apparently continued to dump tons of lead into the soil and water. Almost a quarter century later, in 2013, the EPA found that Quemetco was responsible for 74 per cent of total lead compound releases in L.A.’s South Coast area!
And it’s not just Quemetco. Exide Technologies, the other big battery recycler in the L.A. area, shut down its plant last year–but not before poisoning tens of thousands of working-class residents near downtown L.A. with lead and arsenic for 33 years. During all those years, state regulators allowed Exide’s plant to operate on a “temporary permit,” even though they cited the company again and again for violating emission limits. Today, officials say the state (that is, taxpayers) will pay for the clean-up until Exide accepts responsibility!
Government officials putting company profits above human life, again and again, for decades–sounds familiar. It sounds like Flint, Michigan. Over and over, across the whole country.
May 23, 2016
A recent study by AARP shows the average cost of the prescription drugs most widely used by older Americans more than doubled between 2006 and 2013. Since 2013, other studies show that prescription drug costs have continued to rise at more than 10 percent a year.
“It used to be the drug companies only took one price increase a year,” said Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer at Express Scripts, a major drug benefit management company. “Now what they are doing is taking multiple price increases multiple times a year.”
Some of these price increases have been for generic drugs, where prices are normally stable or even go down slightly over time.
Why is this happening? Analysts say one reason is because of mergers and buyouts of generic drug manufacturers that have reduced competition between them. A second reason is that brand name drug companies have been paying generic manufacturers to not produce generic versions of brand name drugs when the patents on these drugs expire.
The pharmaceutical companies are only incidentally in the business of producing drugs that contribute to health. Their main business is to produce profit.
May 23, 2016
Saturday, May 14, Kaiser West L.A. provided 30 free procedures for people who can’t afford them. This included gallbladder and hernia repair, eye surgery and colonoscopy. Some of these patients have some kind of health insurance, but it’s “limited,” as Kaiser put it.
In other words, insurance companies still refuse to cover some basic procedures in their less expensive plans, despite all the talk about health care reform.
May 23, 2016
Firefighter Magaly Hernandez of the Fairfax County Fire Department filed a lawsuit laying out years of sexual harassment.
Court documents outline years of abuse starting in October 2013, when Hernandez was transferred to a new fire station under the supervision of Captain Jon Bruley.
“Bruley’s harassing behavior included physically restricting Hernandez’s movements, frequently invading her personal space and touching her, making repeated unwanted sexual advances and comments towards her, demanding hugs, and tracking her movements including when she used the restroom,” according to the suit.
The documents cite other incidents including an occasion where several male firefighters duct taped a female firefighter to her chair, and a male lieutenant threatened a female firefighter with violence without being disciplined.
“What we are seeking in this lawsuit is to put an end to the regular and systematic harassment of women in the fire department,” the attorney filing the suit said.
No one should believe it was only Bruley responsible for this kind of behavior. The fire official in charge of investigating workplace misconduct, Guy Morgan, was placed on leave for having lewd content on his Facebook page.
Some firefighters who spoke with TV channel WUSA9 were too fearful of being recorded. One retired female firefighter said harassment was so bad, she tried to kill herself. Another firefighter, Nicole Mittendorf, who was attacked on a local underground forum, did kill herself. Anonymous people claiming to be her co-workers criticized her body, her sex life, even her death.
Sexual harassment is not new. Since this story broke all kinds of things have come out. Female newscasters, for example, have been reading on air hate emails and tweets they have received from viewers.
In fact, sexual harassment in male-dominated professions is the norm. Women make up only four percent of career firefighters or paramedics. Often women choose male-dominated jobs because they pay more than female-dominated jobs.
One poster on the underground site summed it up best: “Fairfax Fire Department personnel, hiding behind anonymity, feel it is their right to denigrate and humiliate their female work colleagues via sexual harassment. This is indicative of an attempt to drive women out of the fire department.”
May 23, 2016
This article appeared in the May 20th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On May 12, the Haitian Employers Association published a statement against “barbarous and terrorist acts” that occurred the day before in the Sonapi industrial zone in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The same day, the government Minister of Social Affairs and Labor said a decree to raise the minimum wage would be published as soon as possible, bringing it to 300 gourdes ($5.65) for eight hours of work.
This is the response of the bosses and the Haitian government to the workers, who on May 11th had a strike and demonstrated in the thousands in the industrial zone, demanding a minimum wage of 500 gourdes ($9.42) per day.
This demonstration brought together all the workers in the industrial zone following a series of partial actions. For months, the workers fought in several factories of the zone against various consequences of exploitation: excessive work loads, food poisoning in the factory, wage theft, abuse and disciplinary firings, the theft of vacations, etc. But the question of wages was acute everywhere and united all the workers.
At the Fete of Lutte Ouvrière, comrades of the Revolutionary Workers Organization of Haiti gave this example: A worker in the zone earns $3.84 a day. To get to work and eat and drink something costs $3.40. There would only remain 44 cents a day to help his family live. In these conditions, a number of workers in the zone organized for weeks to demand the wage of 500 gourdes ($9.42) and a lowering of the price of staples.
While a demonstration was prepared for May 1st to put forth these demands, the government’s Supreme Wage Council announced that on that day the wage would rise to 300 gourdes ($5.65). The workers continued with their demonstration, which was a success, and expected their coming pay to prove it. But no boss paid the 300 gourdes a day wage. This is what gave rise to the May 11th demonstration.
The reaction of the bosses was true to form: arrogant, abusive, lying and stupid. The fact that the government once again promised to raise wages shows that it fears the force of the working class. In fact, while many social groups suffer and there exists an immense mass of the deprived, the working class can find itself at the head of a general revolt.
May 23, 2016
On May 16, 1916, after several months of talks, the French diplomat Picot and his British counterpart Sykes came to an agreement. The object of the agreement, which was to be known by the name Sykes-Picot, was to cut up the Middle East between a zone run by France, including the current Lebanon and Syria; a British zone, including Jordan and Iraq; and a third zone which would be under international control, Palestine.
At the time the agreement was signed, the region had belonged for three centuries to the Ottoman Turkish Empire and was unified. The great thousand-year-old cities of Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem and Constantinople (today’s Istanbul), had no borders between them and the ties were numerous and enduring. The diplomats and French and British soldiers were going to cut it up live by creating regions, then countries, solely in accord with the strategic and commercial interests of their imperialisms.
Obviously, this agreement remained secret. The English and French were going to promise everything to everyone, from tribal chiefs in the desert, to city merchants, Arab nationalists and Zionists, to whom British Minister Balfour promised to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was a question then of enrolling everyone against the Ottoman Turks, who were allies of Germany. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the English and French put the agreement into effect and took possession of the divided territories, installed their troops, their administrations, their overseers and their exploiters.
The agreement was also a secret from the French and British populations. It couldn’t be revealed that the soldiers buried in trenches in the major battle grounds of World War I had died so their leaders could divide the oil wells and good business opportunities on the day after the victory. The secret treaties were published–but only in Petrograd in November 1917, when they fell into the hands of the government that came out of the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks wanted to show the real aims of the Allies, the pillage and division of the world, to reveal, as Lenin said it, “the contradiction between the interests of the capitalists and the wishes of the people.” As for what concerned the Middle East, it was blatant.
The League of Nations (the forerunner of the United Nations) had just been created. The French and British sent their soldiers to kill in the name of the law. They didn’t call these new possessions colonies, but the League of Nations granted the big powers mandates to put them under their control. That didn’t occur smoothly or without revolts. The imperialists employed their habitual methods: massacres, depopulations, the forced movement of people, terror. To crush the Druze revolt, for example, the French Army in 1925 went to bomb Damascus.
After World War II, the mandates came to an end, but the new states were created along the borders drawn up in 1916. The situation was complicated by the creation of the State of Israel on the one hand, and the growing and finally determining intervention of U.S. imperialism on the other. Western military interventions still aren’t over in the Middle East, and are increasing up to today, leading to the true decomposition of the entire region. The maintenance at any price of imperialist domination over a strategic region, rich in oil, has led to a chaos without name.
May 23, 2016
According to the Internally Displaced Monitoring Center based in Geneva, 40.8 million people have had to flee their country in 2015 due to war. More than half the refugees come from Syria, Yemen and Iraq. This is a record figure, 8.6 million higher than in 2014, and it has been growing for four years. One of the signatories of the report indicated that, “this figure is the highest ever recorded.”
The report gives no explanation for the explosion in the numbers, for that would point to the responsibility of the imperialist powers, who lead wars throughout the world to ensure their domination. This is the case in the Middle East with Syria and Iraq for the control of oil wealth. It’s also in other countries, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya.
The U.S. is currently attacking these countries. Its bombs and its decade-long wars devastated Iraq and Afghanistan. It has created a human catastrophe, with tens of millions forced to leave their homes, living on the roads, trying to scrounge a bit to eat, crossing borders to reach a safer place.
Today the U.S. receives very few refugees from these disasters. This country which claims to be so pious and charitable has given almost nothing to aid the millions of war victims it has created. The richest country on the planet has countless billions for its military and virtually nothing to aid the human suffering caused by its destruction.
May 23, 2016
Since the beginning of March, workers have been protesting across France, in days of action, strikes and demonstrations. They were opposing the draft “El Khomri law”—which would abolish most of the Labor Code, a series of protections workers have imposed on the ruling class by fights over more than a century.
In France, working conditions and rights are almost entirely defined by law, established collectively for everyone. In the U.S., that’s true of very little other than the minimum wage and Social Security.
In France, national laws establish working hours (a 35-hour standard week) for everyone, as well as the overtime premium that must be paid. Everyone has the right to a five-week paid vacation, regardless of the employer. The conditions under which people are hired and can be fired are also fixed by law, and appeals against unfair treatment including firing go directly to a tribunal that has much more enforcement powers than does the NLRB, for example. Protections against unfair dismissal, protections on health and safety in the workplace are established in the Labor Code, etc. Most industries are covered by legally binding national agreements setting basic working conditions, violations of which can be addressed to the labor tribunals.
Now, the French bosses want to push workers there back to the reactionary situation under which workers in the U.S. slave. Under the draft law, a permanent contract for a job would become little more than an open-ended temporary contract which could be terminated at any time. Companies could lay off workers without any possible redress by just showing a fall in turnover for two quarters. They would be able to increase the basic working week to up to 60 hours, while reducing the compulsory rest time between two shifts. Overtime would be calculated over a period of three years and only paid at the end of that period, possible at a rate as low as 10%.
Fundamentally, the draft “El Khomri law” would eliminate the framework under which employment rights apply collectively to all workers, whatever their circumstances. Companies would be able to by-pass industry-wide collective agreements by organizing “in-house referendums”—for instance to blackmail workers into agreeing to wage cuts under threat of closure.
Opinion polls show a 70% opposition to this law! And workers have been mobilizing against it for the past two and a half months.
The article that follows is an editorial from the newspaper of the revolutionary French workers organization, Lutte Ouvrière discussing the current situation.
The overwhelming majority of working people are hostile to the “El Khomri law.” For more than two months, hundreds of thousands of workers have said this by going on strike and demonstrating. In the National Assembly, the administration hasn’t been able to get a majority to vote for it. So in order to impose it, Hollande and Valls invoked Article 49-3 of the Constitution. This law will be adopted without the vote of the Parliament.
They tell us, “the people have power.” Well, “people” exercised it by electing the President of the Republic and the parliamentary deputies who are supposed to vote on the laws.
But was Hollande elected to wipe out the Labor Code? Was he elected to increase the Value Added Tax (the national sales tax), to generalize blackmail to increase the competitiveness of business? Was he elected to give a gift of 46 billion dollars to the bosses, with the pact of responsibility? No, that was the conservative program of Sarkozy, whom he ran against.
Even if there had been a majority vote in the Parliamentary Assembly for the Labor Law, that wouldn’t have been democratic. Because those who claim to be the representatives of the nation only represent themselves. Once they are elected for five years, they want to preserve their office and their privileges and don’t care at all about what the majority of the population thinks.
We of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle) have never trusted Hollande. We were among the few who refused to call for a vote for him on the second round of the presidential election in 2012, because we wanted to warn the workers that he would betray the little that he promised.
But, like these voters, we are revolted by so much arrogance and cynicism.
Laws aren’t born in the heads of ministers and members of Parliament. They are drawn up by Medef (the organization of big business), in family meetings and by the Board of Directors of Peugeot, Dassault, Bolloré, Arnault and Mulliez.
And all administrations carry them out, whether they be right-wing or left-wing administrations. Because above all, to run the affairs of state means to run affairs of the richest.
Anger with the “El Khomri law” is a good thing. For years, the workers have suffered attack after attack: the lengthening of the age of Social Security retirement, increase of work speed, lowering of purchasing power. The bourgeoisie hasn’t let up waging the class struggle and workers have suffered. It’s necessary to reverse this.
The “El Khomri law” is the last straw, but the anger which is expressed is much more general. It must continue to be expressed....
Beginning on May 18th, despite the equivocations and narrow self-preoccupation of the union leaderships, a part of the railroad workers will go on strike and demonstrate against the worsening of their working conditions.
Truck drivers went on strike beginning May 17th. To this are added the strike days and demonstrations called for by the national unions for May 17th and May 19th.
Valls and Hollande were able to close the parliamentary debate and hope to impose the “El Khomri law.” But they can’t stifle the anger which has accumulated. And it must make itself heard!
May 23, 2016
A delivery guy, Kyle, wants answers. His money disappeared. He invested money he got when his grandmother died. He was assured it was a sure thing. Where did it go? How does this even happen? Angry and frustrated, he takes hostage the TV guy, Lee Gates (George Clooney), who told him the investment was more secure than his savings account. Lee is arrogant and naïve. He has been wined and dined by the Wall Street players. He thinks he is a peer but he is only a tool for them. His TV show, with all its gimmicks and catchphrases, helps maintain the con game. Keep people playing at the world’s biggest casino—Wall Street. Money Monster takes on Wall Street, so-called "glitches," TV shows that give financial advice and how these things affect regular people.
One thing the movie doesn’t touch is capitalism itself. The movie doesn’t look at the layoffs, stagnant wages, and speed-up—all the things that make Wall Street possible. The movie with its populist message is reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Sanders or even Trump could have written the script.
The movie points out how Wall Street is a big casino and things are rigged against small investors, against workers who try to make it big. That fact isn’t wrong. But the problem with Wall Street is not simply immoral, greedy people—even if they are immoral and greedy. It’s not about one bad man. Capitalism has evolved over time. Now, financial capital—the very real "money monster”—is taking over the planet. It is laying waste to cities all over this country in much the same destructive way that Godzilla would.
Today, companies don’t invest in their workforce or in production. Instead, they roll the dice on Wall Street. The working class gets only a small fraction of the wealth it produces. There is some evidence in the dilapidated schools our children are subjected to, roads that chew up our cars for breakfast, lead in our drinking water, the list is a mile long.
Money Monster is still worth the investment if only to see Kyle keep questioning, keep refusing to accept any more lies and excuses from arrogant rich men.
May 23, 2016
The Innocence Project has taken up the case of Davontae Sanford, who was 14 in 2008 when he was wrongfully tried, convicted and sentenced for four murders in Detroit that he never committed.
Innocent people going to jail is not unusual in the U.S. so-called justice system. But this particular case is so egregious.
First, Sanford’s confession was coerced, done without a parent or lawyer present. It was not videotaped. His first confession, in which he gave the totally wrong information on the type of guns used and the number shooters involved, doesn’t match his second confession.
His second confession is videotaped clearly showing a police sergeant asking yes or no questions–spoon-feeding Sanford the right answers. And everyone on down the line accepted this, including his own lawyer.
Sanford’s lawyer, Robert Slameka, has been censured 17 times by the state Attorney Discipline Board for improperly representing clients. “Improper representation” is a gross understatement in this case. This lawyer is the one who tricked Sanford into pleading guilty to second-degree-murder. He claimed that the prosecution had an air-tight case and if he plead guilty he would one day get out of prison. On top of that, Slameka waived opening arguments and NEVER cross-examined the detective who questioned Sanford.
Two days after Sanford was imprisoned, Vincent Smothers, a hired hit man, confessed to the four murders along with eight other murders. He told police he was hired by drug dealers to kill one of the victims. The other three were collateral damage. Even though he gave the right answers, in detail and without prompting–two days after Sanford went to prison–the cops and prosecutor’s office ignored it–as they ignored the fact that the gun was traced to him.
“I cannot emphasize strongly enough that Davontae Sanford was not involved in the Sept. 17 murders on Runyon Street in any way,” Smothers wrote in an affidavit filed in Wayne Circuit Court last year.
The prosecutors and police would have us believe a 14-year-old, with learning disabilities and no criminal record, alone gunned down five adults working in a dope house, killing four of them–and never suffered a wound himself!
The University of Michigan Innocence Clinic and the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University School of Law have now produced evidence which supports the hit man’s story and proves that Sanford did not commit the crime. Prosecutor Kym Worthy was forced to ask the state police to investigate.
They have produced a report which would exonerate Sanford–and it also calls for criminal charges against one of the cops involved.
So Sanford may get out of prison. It’s obvious that for the cops and prosecutors, Sanford’s life has no value. It did not matter to them that they were throwing away a human being.
The Innocence Project may have salvaged Sanford–eight years of imprisonment too late–but how many other Sanfords are there?
May 23, 2016
The bourgeois media in Detroit, in mid-May finally began to dig into what is behind the catastrophe at Flint, that is the building of the Karegnondi water line from Lake Huron.
The following text was adapted from a section in a SPARK forum given in Detroit last February 21, already looking into the problem.
So how did things get to the point of the lead poisoning and Legionnaires’ Disease in the Flint water system? Why did Flint switch to Flint River water?
You keep hearing on the news about Detroit water, and Flint water, etc. Well it’s not “Detroit” water. It is Lake Huron water vs. Flint River water. The Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) is the water system that has long provided the water for much of southeast Michigan. Almost all of the suburbs and going up into the rural areas, all the way up to and beyond Flint, have been provided water by the Detroit water system for a long time.
DWSD has three current intake water tunnel systems to supply water to this big area. The most recent to be built came into service in 1973, supplying Lake Huron water to Flint and other areas. This system from Lake Huron has NEVER been used to its full capacity.
Nonetheless proposals were pushed through to create a new water line (the Karegnondi Water Authority, the Indian name for Lake Huron). For simplicity’s sake, everyone calls it KWA.
KWA will be getting water from Lake Huron, just like the DWSD system. In fact the new pipeline is only about six miles from the current pipeline and runs parallel almost the whole way to Flint. It defied logic that it would be cheaper to build a whole new water system including intake tunnels in Lake Huron, plus lines stretching 50 or more miles all the way to Flint, plus a new water treatment plant out in the middle of nowhere, when you already have this in place.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that building a duplicate system, costing anywhere from 275 to 600 million dollars, and paying off bonds for the next 30 years is NOT going to save money. It’s only logical instead that it would cost MORE money to do this.
The new KWA system is supposed to be finished later this year. But in the interim, the state appointed Emergency Financial Manager who was running Flint decided in 2013 to switch to dirtier Flint River water—to save money!
If this unneeded KWA water line had never been built, there would have been no need to switch in the interim to Flint River water. If there had been no switch to river water, there would have been no lead poisoning.
Who profits from KWA? It is clear that politicians of both parties were behind the push to build a new water line. The news media is finally starting to look at the construction contracts and who paid off whom to build an unneeded water system.
Jeffrey Wright, Genesee County Drain commissioner is also the CEO of KWA. He got campaign contributions from some of the very companies building the new KWA system. When he was interviewed by Channel 2 about his getting paid off, his response was “others got money too.” You can imagine a lot of politicians had their hands greased with money.
But the corruption doesn’t begin to explain everything. No matter which politician got paid off, you can be sure it was done at the urging of the big rich corporations.
The area east near Lake Huron is ripe for fracking, and fracking needs a LOT of untreated, yet clean water. DTE Energy (who you all know of because of your electric and gas bills) was a player in getting the new KWA system built. Big agricultural businesses run through a lot of farm country. And there still are big factories in the Flint area. All of these players want clean yet untreated water, and want it cheaply, that is, they want someone else to pay for it. Well, Flint is paying for it, with people’s health—and with new water rates that are scheduled to double.
The other part of the building of this new water system that raises questions is the placement of water treatment plants. The DWSD system has water treatment plants right near the shoreline, which is what ordinarily would happen. But with KWA, they will be way inland. That means the treated water either has to be shipped BACK to the communities near the shore, or they will have to build their own water treatment plant. Or there is a yet to be revealed reason why someone wants untreated water, and lots of it—and that comes back to fracking and DTE and agriculture all wanting untreated water.
All these decisions—to build KWA, to switch to Flint River water, instead of the much cleaner Lake Huron water, to build treatment plants inland—these decisions all boiled down to money. The building of a new water system, which led to this whole catastrophe, was all about building a new water line to serve the interests of big businesses, to give them better rates on water, and if needed give them lots of untreated water that big agriculture and big businesses want and want cheaply.
The decisions made about Flint had nothing to do with the well-being of the people.
In human terms, it is almost impossible to understand what it means that you can’t use the water, unless you actually experience it. It’s not just about drinking water, but cooking, washing dishes, bathing, washing your hands, etc. About the only thing the water in Flint is clearly safe for is the toilet. Just as an example: There have been many people donating water to Flint. The city of Detroit quickly sent 500,000 bottles of water to Flint. That sounds like a lot, right? In reality, that is only five bottles for each of the 100,000 residents in Flint. That will be taken up in ONE meal—if you include the cooking, washing your hands, drinking a glass of water and then doing the dishes. People in Flint are having to bathe their children using bottled water, heated up on the stove. As the Detroit Free Press headline said a few weeks ago, “NOBODY SHOULD BE LIVING LIKE THIS!”