[nkycincinnatikid]

“The Wall St bankers weren’t the problem here”

Lending other peoples money to “incompetent, corrupt public officials” while personally enriching themselves, personally corrupting public officials, personally walking away from the consequences of their personal actions and hanging the public with their gold plated disasters.

Problem, what problem?

[Alberta's Child]

Joined by well-intentioned citizens from the Cahaba River Society, the EPA sued the county to force it to comply with the Clean Water Act. In 1996, county commissioners signed a now-infamous consent decree agreeing not just to fix the leaky pipes but to eliminate all sewer overflows — a near-impossible standard that required the county to build the most elaborate, ecofriendly, expensive sewer system in the history of the universe. It was like ordering a small town in Florida that gets a snowstorm once every five years to build a billion-dollar fleet of snowplows.

I'm wondering why the author of this article holds the "Wall Street bankers in contempt," while those who were ultimately responsible for imposing the sewage treatment requirements on the county -- the EPA and "well-intentioned citizens" from an environmentalist group get a free pass.

I would venture to guess that there's a reason why this county never had a modern, state-of-the-art sewage treatments plant before 1996: It didn't have the financial means and/or the technical expertise to: (a) determine what kind of sewage treatment facility best suited their needs and their finances, (b) figure out how to finance the construction and operations of the facility, and (c) get it built.

None of this has changed since 1996. The county still can't afford a modern, state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant and still can't figure out how to build and operate one. The only difference is that now they have one, whether or not they can even afford it or operate it.