Brickbat: Who'll Stop the Fire

Officials in cities across the nation say they were caught off guard by a recent ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency that fire hydrants must meet new stricter lead-content rules for plumbing fixtures. Officials say that means that hydrants and hydrant parts they have already bought can't be installed after Jan. 4, and manufacturers say they'll have to completely change the way they make them. The new rules are supposed to reduce lead in drinking water, but city officials and manufacturers note that water from fire hydrants is rarely used for drinking.

Comments

[Snark Plissken]

I've heard a lot of wild stories in the media and we want to assess any possibility of dangerous and possibly hazardous waste chemicals in your basement fire hydrants.

Also, SF'd the link.

[Jerryskids]

SF'ed the link or CO'ed the link?

This is the link, I think.

[Ted S.]

Only 12 days old. Charles Oliver is pretty on the ball this time with his Brickbat.

[Bardas Phocas]

They knew what they were getting into. I say, Let em burn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn0WdJx-Wkw

[JeremyR]

Well, duh, don't you know, that's the only way poor people in inner cities can get their water? Being against this is racist...you want to poison minorities.

[UnCivilServant]

Take out the hydrants near their headquarters as 'noncompliant', then find a willing arsonist.

[Suthenboy]

This is not the first time I have heard this, but nowhere in any of the stories on it have I heard that anyone has tested water and found lead in it.

It reminds me of a story I heard a couple of decades ago, I think I have this right.

EPA standards required treatment plants to remove a certain percentage of contaminants from water before it could be consumed, rather than have the water meet some standard of purity. A town in alaska was being fined for not removing contaminants from water because....there were no contaminants in it. So they simply started dumping waste water upstream from the treatment plant intake so they would have contaminants to remove. The resulting water in the city's taps was dirtier than the source of water they were drawing from, but the EPA was satisfied because they were meeting the insane standards.

[Brett L]

This sounds true. Like the FDA, its not about getting good results, its about being in control.

[Rich]

So they simply started dumping waste water upstream from the treatment plant intake so they would have contaminants to remove.

I'll bet someone got a promotion for proposing this and saving the treatment plant jobs.

Worse than the old Soviet laughingstock of coal-carrying trains passing in opposite directions.

[Cdr Lytton]

nowhere in any of the stories on it have I heard that anyone has tested water and found lead in it

Shhh! The EPA will start testing the water via the runoff from a pre-1978 (or whatever year the lead paint ban went into effect) house fire.

[Drake]

So much for no more "Unfunded Mandates." Remember that whole wave?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Fill that fire full of lead!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Personally, I find this more interesting.

[JW]

A lead zeppelin?

[JidaKida]

lol, the US Government is a joke.

http://www.Comp-VPN.tk

[Rich]

Ixnay, Anonbot. This site is probably monitored.

[Jerryskids]

"You want to get lead exposure as low as you humanly can," Paulson said.

"You're retarded", Jerryskids said.

Money spent keeping people safe from one threat is money not available to keep people safe from another threat. Is it worth spending millions of dollars to incrementally reduce the risk of lead exposure as compared to spending that money elsewhere? Who knows? Did they do any sort of cost/benefit analysis? Does Paulson think cost/benefit analyses are unnecessary, that 'if it saves even one life, it's worth it' even if a hundred people die from other risks unmitigated because the money was spent mitigating this particular risk? Does government ever stop to think that - as noble as it may be to snatch money from people and spend it 'for the common good' rather than allow selfish bastards to keep the money they earn to simply waste it on things like food and clothing and shelter - perhaps they don't always know best what you should do with your money?

I'm sure the EPA doesn't mind a bit if, say, the food stamp program were gutted to provide more funding for their mandate and a thousand children starved to death for every one saved by their actions, but some of us care enough to think of the children. Those poor, poor children being born into a world where dingleberries like Paulson applaud mindless bureaucracies like the EPA.

[JW]

Mindlessly written regulations with the best of intentions have only positive externialities.

It's Negative Nancys like you who killed off all the unicorns on Rainbow Puppy Island.

[mb]

I know in Boston whenever they water line work, they always reroute the water supply through a hydrant with above ground pipes. Being city projects they usually last several months. I know I will buying water if that ever happens on my street. I think most people would be surprised at the exceptions government grants themselves to regulations everyone else must follow. I say this good, because I don't trust the government to supply clean water.

[Homple]

So how much lead do you think you will be exposed to from the valve seat of a fire hydrant as several hundred people also get water from the same source?

[JW]

Trying to satisfy this new rule will be like drinking water from a fire hose!

[Ted S.]

Will they water-cannon municipal officials who don't follow the rule?

[GroundTruth]

This is a (bad) joke, right?

[Radioactive]

there's no bad jokes, just bad government