Toledo Water August 2014

http://www.toledoblade.com/Keith-Burris/2014/08/03/What-do-we-know-and-when-will-we-know-more.html

I spoke Saturday with Frank Szollosi, who is the point man for the Great Lakes with the National Wildlife Federation but is from and still lives in Toledo. He told me that there has been a 37 percent increase in rainfall in this region since 1958 and “farming practices and waste water infrastructure have not kept up.” Fertilizer runoff and factory farms, he said, are not problems of Toledo’s making.

His conclusion: “We are enduring the result of system failure.” He said the system has not changed as the climate has. And that, until agribusiness must comply with the same rules the rest of us must comply with, our water will be compromised. We need our farmers in order to eat. But we need a system that protects the water supply. He told me, “This happened last night, but it didn’t happen overnight.”

Some questions:

1) Was there human error at the plant?

Some people on the inside have told me there had to be. Others, in a position to know, have said everything was done by the book.

Which was it? We need a trustworthy answer.

2) Since Oregon has the same water supply, why does it not have the same problem?

I have heard two answers here as well. One is that Oregon has more safety procedures. Another is that it has many fewer and therefore probably has the same problem Toledo has, or worse.

3) There should be a log at the water plant. I am told that, at one time at least, the rule was that an entry was made every two hours. This is the equivalent of a black box. It must be found and analyzed.

4) Was there sufficient staffing at the water plant at the time of the negative readings?

5) I am also told that at least two expensive chemicals must be added to the water to combat algae blooms — potassium and carbon. Was there a sufficient supply of the necessary chemicals and were they added in the right amounts at the right time?

6) Can’t we put a better system in place for notifying the public of a crisis of this proportion than posting it on Facebook in the dead of night? I have to believe that, in this age of technology, we can.

7) Has anything like this happened, or almost happened before, even on a small scale in Toledo? Did we have warnings? I am told we did.

#toledo #health #lakeerie #water