THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 19, 1995 TAG: 9507190005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By CARL CAHILL
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
The 1995 Chesapeake Lecture Series on the quality of the city's drinking water has begun. The first lesson was conducted July 6 in The Virginian-Pilot by professor (and city manager) James W. Rein.
``We need to try and educate the public and explain that the improvements will improve the quality of the water,'' declared Mr. Rein.
The improvements he was promoting will cost $72.5 million and will remove - if the patron saint of city managers answers his prayers - salt, trihalomethanes and other chemicals from the water. And may even make it taste better. Yeah, right.
Sound familiar? Yep, the 1995 Lecture Series is monotonously like all previous attempts to educate the public about improving water quality.
Remember the 200 miles of asbestos water pipes the city installed in the 1970s? Asbestos, one city councilman said, while lecturing the public on its salubriousness, that if given the chance he would sprinkle it on his breakfast cereal. He was not re-elected, and the city - and the nation - later banned the pipes. The pipes, however, continue to carry water to homes in Chesapeake.
Remember talks from city officials about effort after effort to rid the water of dangerously high levels of salt? Remember the weir? The deep and expensive wells that had more salt in them than city water? The underground water-storage systems? Where have all these improvements gone? Abandoned, every one. Well, almost. The wells are of minimal use.
Total cost to the taxpayers because of intractable mayors, councils, city managers and public utility directors? No one in City Hall can count that high, but it surely is more than the $72.5 million Chesapeake voters likely are to be asked to approve in the general election November 7.
So Mr. Rein is the first official on the stump commending the improvements as a cure-all to the city's many water problems. It's a story residents have heard countless times.
But Mr. Rein throws in a threat: Either approve financing through a bond referendum or the city will use alternatives to raise money and that will cost $5 million more, or $78 million.
According to Mr. Rein, among the new and improved improvements will be four new wells. Didn't the bureaucrats learn anything from digging the first set of useless wells?
And remember trihalomethanes? Chlorine reacts with detritus in water to produce this cancer-causing chemical. But, whoa, wasn't the public educated several years ago on the city's use of a new disinfectant process that eliminated trihalomethanes? Now the city wants millions to install filters to remove the chemical. Didn't the new process work? Is the city back using chlorine again after educating the public on its perils?
Previous lecture series convinced some people that improvements were effective: Most of the city's mayors in past years proclaimed the drinking water to be excellent. What else could they say? And The Virginian-Pilot conducted a taste test in Greenbrier Mall a couple of years ago that showed people preferred Chesapeake water to any other.
What's more, the Chesapeake health director, Dr. Nancy Welch, between issuing public notices warning of the dangers of high salt levels in the water, has labeled it ``exceptionally fine.''
So between now and Nov. 7, get used to hearing city officials toe the line: Chesapeake must spend $72.5 million to upgrade its water-treatment facilities so that, finally, it will meet federal safe-drinking-water standards which, among other things, require the city to notify water users by radio, television, newspapers and water bills when pollutants or bacteria are found in the water. When has any water customer ever been warned of anything but discolored water from flushing hydrants? Never.
There seems to emerge a paucity of wisdom at City Hall when the same failed water-quality ``improvements'' are tried over and over, an unhealthy mind-set more than two decades old.
Voters should keep this in their thoughts in November if the ``improvements'' are on the ballot. MEMO: Mr. Cahill lives in Chesapeake.
by CNB