Well the water itself was within standards. (I Think). There was a shift in Ph levels and Acid but the old lead pipes reacted to the water which was well within normal purity and the old pipes just started dropping lead. Everyone who owns old lead pipes from the 40s and 50s needs to dig them up and put in PVC and everything will be fine. I sure don’t want to pay for other folks pipes though. They needed to do that but to bring charged on these men for the crappy pipes of the residence is beyond my comprehension.
“Environmental engineers that C&EN contacted say that, on the basis of how Flint treated the river water, the water chemistry was not optimized to control corrosion.
Most important, the treated Flint River water lacked one chemical that the treated Detroit water had: phosphate. “They essentially lost something that was protecting them against high lead concentrations,” Giammar says. Cities such as Detroit add orthophosphate to their water as part of their corrosion control plans because the compound encourages the formation of lead phosphates, which are largely insoluble and can add to the pipes’ passivation layer. By press time, C&EN was unable to get a comment from Flint city officials about why a corrosion inhibitor wasn’t added to the river water.”
Good article;
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i7/Lead-Ended-Flints-Tap-Water.html