There is a popular advertisement right now that uses scare tactics to convince civilians that American tap water has dangerous levels of lead. Even though the vast majority of water in the country has far fewer than 15 ppb (traces so low that modern science has difficulty detecting them), they want to sell water filters by mimicking the alarmist tactics of the global warming community.
Unfortunately, this scare tactic is not entirely untruthful. While declaring a “national water crises” would be too extreme, there is a real problem, and learning about it will only further demonstrate how Trump is the exact leader America needs, exactly when he is most needed.
Flint, Michigan
You’ve certainly heard a lot about the Flint water crises, but we’re going to overview the real facts. In 2014, officials attempted to tap into a new water supply to save money and update the city plumbing. While the construction was underway, they rerouted the water source to the Flint River. Quickly after the change, the water source was seen to be unsafe, so it was treated. The treatment added to many corrosive agents to kill bacteria, and the underlying plumbing began to leak lead.
This is an extremely summarized account, but it hits the main points. The city tried to aid the water budget with a cheaper supply. The transition was botched, and then the attempts to fix the problem made it worse. What happened after that is a cumulative effort of failed bureaucracy. The entire year of 2016 was rife with lawsuits, and very little action was taken to actually fix the corroded plumbing. While Flint is the media darling, it is only one small example of a larger problem.
Water Issues Around the Country
The water in Flint was abnormally bad, but recent studies have shown that as many as 3,000 different residential areas in the country have elevated lead levels. Many have already dubbed this a national “water crises,” but alarmism is rarely a healthy approach.
In reality, most of the elevated lead levels are still harmless, but they are early warning signs of something that could turn sinister. In almost every case, the lead levels are rising because of old and corroding pipes and waterways.
Across the country, billions of dollars of infrastructure are transitioning into an age and state that will require widespread replacement. Thankfully, the problem has been identified, so a solution should be pretty straightforward, right?
The Liberal Solution
Sadly, liberals have had a lot of power since these issues started coming to light in 2014. Rather than approve funding to start replacing bad pipes, the liberal response has been to increase regulation levels and the number of bureaucrats overseeing the testing. Even though the tests are already conclusive, their plan is to invest more in tests rather than actions that will actually clean the water.
This is no more apparent than in the handling of the Flint situation. The EPA was aware of lead contamination as early as February of 2015. It took until October of the same year for them to officially announce that the water was unsafe.
Since then, the pipes have not been replaced, and as recently as November of 2016, more than a year later, bottled water has been shipped to residents because no one is actually fixing the problem. Worse yet, this asinine approach is the standard model by which liberals govern. Obama himself declined authorization for emergency funds that could replace corroded pipes and instead authorized an additional $5 million for water testing.
The Trump Solution
If you’re frustrated at this point, you should be. People have endured very real suffering over bureaucracy and inaction. Thankfully, Trump now gets his say, and his plan is clear. The money that liberals want to spend on bureaucrats and redundant tests will instead be invested directly into infrastructure.
The hundreds of billions of dollars that he will push into the budget are enough to replace all of the decrepit water systems, along with a large number of other aging pieces of infrastructure. And, even while this directly solves problems, it does so in an economically sustainable way, pumping money into builders and producers that will help the economy surge.
It is every version of ridiculous that things came to this state in the first place, but if we must look for a silver lining it can be this: we have learned the dangers of inaction and excessive regulation from eight years under Obama. Now that we no better, we can decisively move to repair the damage.
~ Conservative Zone
