Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaesar14 | Hacker News Reader

I think in large part it’s due to how economically divided American society is in terms of where people live. Places like New York have excellent water - the wealthy and poor live side by side. But a huge part of this country live in suburbs and rural areas that are strongly divided on economic lines, any thus those with means are not exposed to and do not care about the quality of infrastructure in poorer areas.

View on HN

Also, metro area balkanization is sometimes the point; a wealthy area of Atlanta recently tried to secede. Merging them is out of the question too as a political third rail.

Regional balkanization has a lot of issues; not only are poor areas left with few resources and projects lack coordination and get expensively duplicated, but also they tend to compete with each other to offer tax breaks to companies, and in the end the region gives a big tax break to a company that most likely would’ve located somewhere in the region anyways.

This is the key observation: these kinds of profound utility failures only happen in municipalities where the wealthy have removed themselves from the tax base. This comes in innumerable forms, but one of the most common is building their own little (unsustainable) suburban enclaves beyond the political borders of the cities they draw their salaries from.

> these kinds of profound utility failures only happen in municipalities where the wealthy have removed themselves

The Corps got it running in a couple days. It was incompetence that caused the problem, and I doubt you will argue that poor people are less smart.

Did these water issues arise because of incompetence or lack of funds? I know Flint's crisis was not related to lack of funds. So many comments keep harping on funds.

These are connected factors: a lack of adequate funding belies insufficient municipal interest in utilities, which breeds an environment of incompetence.

And yes, Flint's water crisis was absolutely connected to a lack of funds. It was directly precipitated by the city's declaration of a financial emergency[1], which in turn caused the city to seek cheaper water sources.

[1]: https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2011/11/former_acting_mayor...

The link says who will be in charge, not that there was a true emergency requiring switching the perfectly working fresh water source to disgusting water. The state governor took over most operations due to the "emergency" and poisoned thousands of people who will be poisoned for life, and got away with it. I credit that to criminal negligence, or to be nice, incompetence, but hardly an actual budget issue. https://apnews.com/article/health-crime-michigan-indictments...

What kind of “smoking gun” are you looking for? In every public timeline of the Flint crisis, the budget emergency immediately precedes the decision to save money by using a different municipal water source. Are we expected to believe that the decision to save money on water was entirely unconnected to the city’s financial status? That beggars belief.

Lack of funds and incompetence can both exist simultaneously.

The fact that the Army Corps of Engineers can fix a municipal water system has absolutely no bearing on whether or not said water system was inadequately funded or incompetently managed.

It's not a "smart or not smart" thing: wealthy areas demand (and receive) adequate attention and funding for their public utilities. Incompetence on the municipal level is a symptom.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com