(Warning: this post contains minor spoilers for a movie still in theatres. However, this movie is a fairly straightforward remake of a movie from the 70s, and, well, there’s a statute of limitations on this shit, man.)

I got a chance to catch ‘The Crazies’ last weekend, and it got me to thinking about water safety, our crumbling infrastructure, and the lunatic way that Americans prioritize, not to mention fund, the necessary machinery of our civilization.

A little background might help. The Crazies (2010) is a remake of a George Romero movie from 1973 of the same name. (Yes, the Zombie guy). It concerns the accidental release of an experimental bioweapon that the Pentagon had developed, no doubt with the intention of spiking the Kremlin, into a small Midwestern town’s water supply. The disease sets in, and gradually the townsfolk are driven violently insane. In the remake, the town’s mayor is even warned of the potential contamination and refuses to shut off the water, claiming that it would cost the townspeople too much money.

Sounds, well, crazy, right? Sending poisonous water into people’s homes to save a few bucks?

Whether it’s crazy or not, that is just what we’ve been doing, all across America, as the NYT revealed last December.

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards.

Instead of movie-worthy contaminants like a sanity-shattering plague, we get carcinogens, bacteria, human sewage, right in our drinking water. However, much like in the movie, your risk of drinking toxic tap water goes up dramatically if you live in a small town:

The majority of drinking water violations since 2004 have occurred at water systems serving fewer than 20,000 residents, where resources and managerial expertise are often in short supply.

As the NYT notes, since the 2008 election, the EPA has made at least a PR effort at improving the safety of our drinking water, contrasting themselves with the previous Bush administration. Likewise, there is a growing movement nationally to stop deferring our essential maintenance and actually fix our water supply. Good thing too, as we’re reaching a critical stage and our ancient pipes are constantly bursting:

Such questions are becoming common across the nation as water and sewer systems break down. Today, a significant water line bursts on average every two minutes somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.

In Washington alone there is a pipe break every day, on average, and this weekend’s intense rains overwhelmed the city’s system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.

For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.

Just one hitch: it’s going to cost money to fix these problems, and nobody wants to pay.

But in many cities, residents have protested loudly when asked to pay more for water and sewer services. In Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Sacramento — and before Mr. Hawkins arrived, Washington — proposed rate increases have been scaled back or canceled after virulent ratepayer dissent.

…

Mr. Hawkins — who at 49 has the bubbling energy of a toddler and the physique of an aging professor — told the crowd that the average age of the city’s water pipes was 76, nearly four times that of the oldest city bus. With a smile, he described how old pipes have spilled untreated sewage into rivers near homes.

“I don’t care why these pipes aren’t working!” one of the residents yelled. “I pay $60 a month for water! I just want my toilet to flush! Why do I need to know how it works?”

That sad individual making the case for Ignorance equalling Bliss got me to thinking about America. What is it about us that makes us so short-sighted? Why are so many of us so angry at the thought of paying a bit more in taxes, even if the alternative is toxic water from our kitchen faucets? What’s wrong with us?

All of which was on my mind when I read a post by Digby on Monday, summarizing a new study on psychopathy:

The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals…

The results were published March 14, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.

Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these individuals lack—fear, empathy and interpersonal skills. The new research, however, examines what they have in abundance—impulsivity, heightened attraction to rewards and risk taking. Importantly, it is these latter traits that are most closely linked with the violent and criminal aspects of psychopathy.

The larger article has some additional fascinating details. Psychopathy appears to mirror changes found in brain chemistry when taking amphetamines, only with far greater intensity, and psychopathic traits, which exist on a broad continuum and are found in many individuals to varying degrees, can be activated when considering even quite small financial rewards.

In other words, money can make you nuts. I think in our particular case, it definitely has.