When it
comes to solving problems in our contemporary political world, we expect our
government to (ideally) tackle whatever problem is at-hand quickly and
effectively so that it doesn’t come up again; however, the real world has a
problem with things not working out in ideal ways. Whether it’s due to
political bickering or an ineffective solution, our political system always
seems to find a way to impede problem solving and has a tendency to kick the
problem ‘down the curb’ for the future to deal with.
In my previous post, I outlined a
local issue here in Ann Arbor, the contamination of local groundwater with a
toxic plume of 1,4-dioxane, how I felt this issue constituted a democratic
failure, and how future posts would address this. In the wake of my
investigation, I decided to go directly to the local Ann Arbor City Council and
interviewed Councilwoman Sabra Briere (D), who since her election to the council
in November 2007 has made solving this issue a top priority.
Councilwoman Briere (D) has been involved in Ann Arbor politics since the late 1970's. (Source: Ann Arbor Chronicle)
“This has been an issue that has
been known for quite some time, but we’ve recently been trying to get the state
to do more about it,” she explained. As it turns out, dioxane is completely soluble
in water and there weren’t adequate methods in the 60’s (when the problem began)
to document it. “When the dioxane was discovered at 3 Sisters Lake in the 80’s,
we knew the plume had spread into the local groundwater. Thankfully the city’s
water comes from a different source, but the threat of it spreading through the
groundwater to Barton Pond is there,” she added. If that were to happen, and
there’s no way to tell if/when it could, then Ann Arbor would have a very
serious problem with no short-term solution.
So, what has the local government
done to solve this issue? As mentioned earlier, the city has made an effort to
ratchet up pressure on the state to do more about cleaning up in the wake of
Flint, but past efforts include a lawsuit in 1997 against Gelman Sciences;
however, the result was a bit of a mixed bag, as the terms of the settlement only
required Gelman to contain the plume
rather than try to fix it and “…excluded the city from conducting future
negotiations [with Gelman]” over the plume. The issue then became the state’s,
who has maintained a ‘contain, but don’t clean up’ strategy to save money. With
their hands tied but fear ever still present over the future of the plume, the council’s
repeated calls for state action have not been adequate enough to prompt the state
to comply.
So, we have a local issue that
cannot be handled by the local government, and the state does not recognize the
problem as serious enough to step in. This
is exactly why this is a democratic failure. As stated in my previous post,
John Locke’s theories of classical liberalism apply well here, and it seems to
me that the governmental promise of protection of property (the ‘chief end of
government,’ according to Locke) has been sacrificed in the name of budgetary
constraints; the safety concerns of a local population aren’t the priority, money
is. The state believes there are larger issues at hand, and while their
arguments may have merit (they need to focus on the immediate crises like
Flint), the fact that the local government cannot do anything to help its
people means the state should step in on the city’s behalf. Yet, until this
issue becomes a full blown crisis, the state won’t pay any mind to it.
This implication conveys a lot
about the state of our current democracy, and I will continue to discuss the
significance of this implication. This isn’t just about water contamination, it’s
about our government’s habit of ‘delay, contain, limit, etc.’ and its inability
to fulfill the needs of its citizens. How should we respond to this? Our friend
John Locke can provide us with some possible answers…
Locke,
John. Two Treatises of Government.
Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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