I’m running for Water Resources Commissioner in Oakland MI, in part because, as an engineer, I think I can do a better job than the current fellow providing clean drinking water. The city of Flint has a serious lead-poisoning problem that began, or got much worse, in April 2014 when it switched its water supply from Huron Lake to the Flint River. The Flint river water had no lead, or other significant toxins, but the river water turned out to be ‘corrosive’: it extracted iron from’ iron pipes and lead from lead pipes and lead solder. The result was disgusting, brown, drinking water for all, and excess lead in the drinking water of homes fed by lead pipes. Making things worse, the city did not add anticorrosive phosphates (my sense is the officials didn’t realize they had to). The city switched back to Lake Huron water in October, 2015 after a University of Virginia study, and reports showing elevated lead levels in children. It started adding additional phosphate in December (yum), but damage was done. Supposedly, the city is back to being within EPA lead levels, but things are not OK.

Lead pipes showing the many colors of corrosion.

The EPA-allowed lead level is that 10% of homes fed with lead pipes and/or lead solder can show 15 ppb lead in the tap water. It’s a very lenient standard, and most folks would not tolerate drinking that much. Ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick claims that there were elevated lead levels well before the switch to Flint river water, but he gives no specifics. When the city was using Flint River water, a University of Virginia study found that the water from the top 10% of at-risk homes had 25.2 ppb lead, nearly double the EPA standard. The EPA manager and city manager were fired, but not the mayor, and president Obama declared the city a disaster area. Now, after switching back, the lead levels are EPA acceptable, but not good: now only 8% of at-risk homes show more than 15 ppb, but this must be cold comfort for the 8%. Even with additional corrosion inhibitors, some 0.5% of at risk homes have 100 ppb lead, and the single worst Flint home has over 1000 ppb (1 ppm) — really quite toxic.

The current lead levels, plus the elevated levels found in older-old blood samples suggests that Kwame isn’t totally off track in his claims. Clearly, you can get lead in your tap water even when there’s none in the source, and even when there are added corrosion inhibitors; here’s my theory of how it happened. I’d like to suggest additional testing and pipe replacement, not only in Flint, but in Detroit and in our county, Oakland. Like Flint, we have many old lead pipes, and many pipes attached by lead solder. Because of this, I expect there is lead in our tap-water. Currently, our county water resources commissioner does not test for lead at the taps. I suspect that’s because he’s a political scientist and not an engineer. He appears to trust our Department of Environmental Quality despite their inability to understand how Flint’s water could have lead when the river did not. He also appears to trust that neglect occurs only under Republican watch: greed causes all problems, and only Republicans are greedy, or so the theory goes. For my part, I think I could do better. As a chemical engineer, I think I’d better understand the reports I see, and would react to them better. I also believe that lead is non-partisan, affecting Democratic-controlled and Republican controlled pipes equally. If elected, I plan to check for lead, and plan to fix the worst of areas first. For now, if you think you have toxic water, take a sample and call (517) 335-8184.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, January 26-31, 2016. Elect me, I’m an engineer. And here’s a song (pollution, by Tom Lehrer).