Ludington City Councilor Kathy Winczewski can be a walking contradiction.  The former local science teacher, retired, has shown that her interest in science in retirement (at least) has been mostly in pseudoscience and science-fiction.  I mention this not to bring attention to the environmental activism (and 'inactivism' in real environmental causes that affect locals) she purports as she serves as an officer of the local friends of the environment group, AFFEW.  I bring attention to her use of false science to deflect the City of Ludington's very real problems with providing the citizens with water that they can feel safe drinking.

Frankly she nor other officials can deny that when the City's contractors were working on the water pipes throughout the Fourth Ward this summer in order to supply the cogeneration plant with their high demands of agua, they unearthed quite a few lead pipes, totally lead goosenecks two to three feet in length, branching from the water main to go to residential and business buildings. 

The good news is that if you lived along where the water mains were worked on (on First, Second, Sixth, Washington, Jefferson Streets, to name a few), the lead goosenecks are gone, replaced with new PVC type pipe.  The bad news is that the rest of Fourth Ward still has that problem.

Councilor Katie Moonbeam must have a conflicted path.  Both Shay and our utility maintenance supervisor have admitted there were plenty of places in the city water system where two to three foot long goosenecks connect the main and galvanized pipe to the city's shut off valve.  These are found underneath the street and were put there by the City over 80 years ago. 

Yet, even though you can't access these City installed pipes on the public right-of-way, Shay will repeat the mantra this evening that they are not the city's responsibility, they're yours by city ordinance.  This flies so much in the face of established common law, that I cannot locate any other City that has made such a claim.  Not Hiawatha Iowa, not Redmond, WA, not Washington Twp. MI, nor any sort of private utility, such as WSSC shown below, which shows the usual type of diagram that every utility other than Ludington seems to agree with.

Some areas without utility shut off valves right off the water mains that are at the side of streets may require the property owner to replace the line up to the main, but that's to be expected for such a system, but it's not the case in these old areas of Ludington's plumbing, and citizens should be rightly upset when the City tries to foist their century old pipe's shortcomings to them.

But Councilor Moonbeam didn't strike the path of legality and responsibility too much, instead she relied on something she should have been able to come in with strength due to her many years as a science teacher who has had a keen interest on environmental issues.  But as she has shown before, her first and foremost interest is in protecting her fellow city employees from citizens demanding to be able to have drinkable water issue from their tap, especially when the costs of using such water is doubling in a very short time.  

What follows is her full statement on the issue, said shortly after my last comment at the meeting of December 4th, printed in full here.  I ended with:  "Earlier this year, I humbly asked that the City of Ludington make it a policy to exchange out lead goosenecks when they come across them on water mains in the course of their work for the sake of our kids and their kids. It looks like the State is planning on making them do that and more, to the 80 year old plus pipes that have stunted our citizens growth over that same period and helped push Ludington kids to the top of the State's elevated blood lead levels for too long. Get in front of the changes like Grand Rapids." 

Here was her reply, complete with my analysis as it goes along, with plenty of refutation in brackets[], memes, and authoritative links, of what was exaggerated, misleading, or just plain wrong.  

December 4th, 2017 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

Councilor Kathy Winczewski:  (37:30 in)  I have been feeling under the weather a little bit. I have to respond to the lead goosenecks.

I got this from Daryll Plamondon [the Utility Maintenance Supervisor], our underwater guy, and they were going through the Fourth Ward and working on the streets and so forth up there, they replaced some of these lead goosenecks as they came across it in the new construction. So you can see why they are called lead goosenecks.

Just a little history, the lead goosenecks are short sections of lead pipe one or two foot long and they were used up to the 1900s until World War 2 in supplying water to a customer. These lead tubes can be easily bent and allowed for a flexible connection between rigid surface piping... Lead is no longer permitted in new water systems or new building construction... we haven't used these since after World War 2, sometime in the 1930s we went away from the lead goosenecks. Very nice for construction because you could bend them pretty easily. I actually cut this one, and I cut it with a hacksaw, so lead is a soft metal, lead is a dangerous metal [this is Wikipedia material, she's doing OK up to this point if we forgive her references to dates but then...].  


I am a retired chemistry teacher, when we used lead in school, I didn't let the kids even touch the fresh lead. I'm gonna pass this around for you guys, the stuff you will touch on the outside, and if you look at the inside of the pipe, you will notice a coating on there, so you can touch this and you'll be OK, but the fresh lead, the lead that has not been oxidized is in the cut area, and it looks like all metals, it's really shiny, it's really silver, and that's the area you don't want to be exposed to [The lead coating on the inside of her pipe was minimal and mostly reddish, likely Lead (II) Oxide.  This does protect the pipe from lead leaching to an extent, but only by 50-80%, all pipes I've seen unearthed have been the same color that shows phosphates are not being used.  The lead on the outside of the pipes is as hazardous as touching the 'fresh lead', which really isn't hazardous in itself, yet once you've touched it or the inner 'protective' layer which is also poisonous when ingested, you need to make sure you wash your hands so the lead salts and dust won't be part of your next meal when you eat finger-food.]  

But over the years, as the water has gone through the pipes when you look inside here, you will see kind of a chalky white substance. As long as that substance is not disturbed, you are not exposed to lead in the pipe [Untrue, especially if the chlorination we use in Ludington was ever changed to chloramination, as what happened in the Washington DC water crisis back in 2004.]

What happened in Flint is they changed their water system, it was corrosive to this lining, OK, and then what happened is that they were exposed to the shiny part, the fresh part of that lead, that got in their water system, and lead does terrible things to your nervous systems, and so it is a real issue. I'm going to pass this around.  

"So if Ludington did anything with its water system that would disrupt that layer inside of there. I live in a house, it's over 100, 120 years old, and so I did have my service line redone 20 years ago, because we were having problems with the water and the sewer coming in, so we had that replaced.


Just to give you an idea, the EPA regulatory limit is 15 parts per billion for household utilities. That's what our water treatment plant has to meet. We cannot put out water from Lake Michigan, OK, that's higher than 15 parts per billion with lead, and we have not done that. On average, rivers have lead between 3 and 30 parts per billion [not according to this government publication -- the unit of measurement, micrograms per liter, is equal to parts per billion]

Fresh water fish have between 0.5 and 1000 parts per billion lead. If you're eating any coho, or any fresh perch or anything, you're probably getting more than you are in any kind of water system [I can't find any material supporting this wide range of numbers.  This link notes that trout cannot survive in water that has higher than 7.2 parts per billion, suggesting their fish corpses would have a much lesser concentration.  It was noted that Michigan anglers who ate a lot of local fish did have more lead in their system than those who had little or none, but nothing in the critical range]


"So here are some things people can do if they're really concerned about their drinking water; here's some things they can do. They can have their water tested. And I went to Home Depot shopping for Christmas stuff the other day, and they have free home testers of water, where you can get your water at home, send it in, and you can receive a result on that on whether you have lead or not in your water."  [I looked before at HD and found only $9 kits for lead-testing, with another $40 for the lab testing.  That was about all I found beside a more expensive version that tested for other things.  But they did have this packet advertising a free water test that any homeowner could pick up.  But, on looking inside the packet, you find that you will not be testing for lead, just four other things:  purity, hardness, chlorine and ph.  No lead testing, madam.]  

Number two, be aware of any work that can disturb your service line. OK, if you got some plumbing work going on and it's going to be by a gooseneck (if your house is over 80 years old), be aware of that.  [Work on interior pipes can disturb the lead oxide coat in goosenecks, but what can really shake them is 'water hammer' from turning off your water too fast, always do it slowly even if you don't have lead city pipes delivering your water

 

Run water before use if you have not ran it for several hours, OK? If you go on vacation, your a snowbird and you're on vacation, run your water for a while before you use it [but if you do, and you know you have a lead gooseneck, run it for a couple of minutes minimum, running it for less could get you lead-thick water].

Use only cold water for drinking and cooking and preparing baby formulas. Purchase a water filter. Purchase lead free faucets and plumbing components. Lots of the cheaper faucets have lead in them [this Winczewski alarmism was debunked earlier here, no local hardware store will sell you anything other than lead-free fixtures, it's the law]. Remove the entire lead service line if you're really concerned about it, and you feel your house may be in a situation [it's heavily advisable you replace the whole line beyond the lead fixtures, as is the governor's guidelines to come out]


Again, when this was brought up a while ago I called the health department to find out why our Mason County children may have high levels of lead, and they again pointed out to me that #1, we still have a lot of homes with lead paint in them, and a lot of kids are being exposed that way. Number 2, there's still a lot of stuff in the soil from our heavy industry. We used to, believe it or not, have a lot of factories in Mason County, and we don't have that many now [And as I brought up a while ago, many other cities and counties with more old houses and more industry have little or zero lead exposure in their kids, nor do the youngest kids have much opportunity to play in industrial areas.  For some reason, they are getting it from somewhere, and it's not likely the fish.]

But another thing too that I was thinking about; I taught in Custer three years, a lot of those kids, a lot of those people make their own sinkers, lead sinkers, they smelt them right in their kitchen. OK they melt them down, they put them in molds and they make their own lead sinkers, then those kids play with those, they're toys, they put them in their trucks and so forth, and everything else [In 2013 and other years, lead happy Custer, zip code 49405, had 3.8% of their children tested test with elevated blood lead levels, they have almost as much pre 1950 houses as Ludington (49431) where they had nearly four times that rate at 12.7.  One thing Custer doesn't have:  City of Ludington water supply].

"So I think there may be places that people in Mason County can be exposed to lead, but I do not believe it is coming from Ludington's city water situation, so thanks for putting up with my tirade on that. [As she collected the multiple lead pipes excavated out of the Fourth Ward this summer-- I have a wide collection too]"

And that ended her six minute self-confessed tirade that was surprising short on accuracy and real science, as you might expect from an official using her science background to back-up the city's weak argument that their archaic water system is not the cause of the county's elevated blood lead levels.  

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Another fine article of documentation on our lead problems X, thanks for your service. As for Moonbeam Cathy, she again has a tirade of misinformation and plain out lies to achieve her higher goal of making the city's water system look soooo pure and gooood for all, when it's simply not. And, listen to her again at the 42:09 mark when she says, "some of the new cheaper water faucets still have lead in them". I thought she got the message many months ago about the strict 1986 laws that makes it illegal to have any lead in any faucets or plumbing anymore, but, apparently, she's still ignorant to that law and mfg. requirement. She is an expert in deception and monopolizing a conversation to make her appear far more intelligent and informed than others. Yet, when you take the time to uncover exactly if her dialogue of knowledge is really factual, you find consistent flaws and misinformation abounds. It would be nice if the LDN would post this entire rebuttal, but, I know they never would, because the game of city deceit must not be questioned nor interfered with. Thank you again XLFD, for continuing to provide locals with the decent factual information that we are lacking from the COL.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, didn't someone in history, plus the Bible itself, say that fish consumption was brain food, and very healthy. When Moonbeam Cathy says that fresh fish like coho and perch are more infectious than lead in water, it's obvious she hasn't consumed any or much, because, she's mostly braindead imho. And that's what's been teaching our kids science for many years? What a JOKE!

Aquaman, I'm not sure what Councilor Moonbeam reads and takes to heart in her off-time, noting her alignment with 'wacky-weft-weaning' causes she may read the host of material from PETA that would scare any fish-nibbler from finding sustenance from seafood.  

A more moderate source, Consumer's Report, has health benefits, and some minor concerns about mercury.  For those who love the local fish, the risk seems to be noted mostly for species not inherently in our area.  The councilor suggests that our lakes and streams are crawling with native lead up to 30 ppb , twice the hazardous intake level being regularly drank by fish and other wildlife and passed onto our dinner plate.  Thankfully us citizens have the water treatment plant which cuts that lead content to zero ppb before we drink it coursing through the city's fully-protected-from-exposure rusted lead pipes(*sarcasm*). 

Well done X. Another informative article on the silliness at City Hall. I think Moonbeam was exposed to chemicals in her classes that has affected her thinking process or at least the part of her brain that she should be using for logic. All of this could be avoided if the Council would take the money that will be used for the useless improvements at the Ludington Ave. beach and use it to commission a  study to find out exactly where the lead contamination is coming from then spend the rest of the money to fix it.

Andy Rosales, a mechanic for the Lansing Board of Water and Light, digs for lead water piping to replace on Mahlon Street in Lansing.

Then we have other Cities like Ludington, namely Flint who sat around with their thumbs up their rears and let the lead problem grab them by the throat. Now Flint wants the Government to bail them out. In other words they want us, the taxpayers,  to bail them out while cities like Lansing gabbed the bull by the horns and replaced all of the lead lines in the city and used their own money.

Ludington may not have the best lead level testing in their children but they damn sure will have the best useless dead end main street improvements on the west side of Mason County and that being the hideous paving of a beautiful beach and the elimination of some 60 much needed parking spaces. To say the least, Ludingtons leaders such as moonchild Winczewski, along with her twin the Mayor and a City Manager that cannot tell the truth, the whole lot of them are not acting in a manner that represents Ludington's citizens.

Ludington's Shyster Shay will never approve the real testing nor removal of all the lead lines, until the St. of Mich. mandates it. And even then, the COL may just ignore it, like they do many other Michigan laws nowadays, and into the future. Moonbeam gave that HD free test, probably knowing it doesn't even test for lead either.

Maybe Moonbeam is supplementing her retirement and city councilor wages by plugging water softener companies.  Thanks Freedom Seeker for confirming that the free water test was an advertising gimmick, that's what I had presumed.  I'm going to soak one of my sawed off goosenecks in some tap water for a couple of days and send it to the lab, and see what they say about my water.

And if I may suggest X, please send that sample water to an independent lab for testing, and make sure that they test for lead too. Don't send it to our own health dept., or the State of Michigan, whom are sure to test it as good and clean, without the obvious conflict of ethical interest, and collusion that we have there now. I would even send it to 2-3 independent labs, to see if all agree or not.

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