Toledo mayor enlightens others about water

Sep 25, 2014 - Toledo Blade - Collins shares tale of Toledo water woe

Excerpts:

Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins regaled the Mayor’s Summit on Drinking Water Protection conference with his frustrations from the weekend of Aug. 2-4.

He called the Toledo water crisis his “nightmare among all nightmares” in the meeting of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative called by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“This was the canary in the coal mine,” Mr. Collins said during his 15-minute speech. He said there was no plan for waking Toledo up to a do-not-drink-the-water advisory, no standard that gave him, as mayor, direction.

“We had not one shred of paper to guide us through an incident. Nothing,” Mr. Collins said.

Collins and city officials did not need a How-To procedural document. They needed common sense, which obviously they lacked during the incident.

I wonder if these topics were covered at the Chicago summit:

• The City of Oregon borders the eastern edge of Toledo. Oregon gets its water from Lake Erie. During Toledo's alleged water crisis, Oregon had no issues. We filled containers with Lake Erie water at an Oregon fire station.

• When Toledo issued the water ban very early on a Saturday morning, the text contained a dire health warning if the water was consumed. But Toledo government failed to warn local hospitals about the ban, and Toledo government failed to notify officials in the other communities that receive Toledo water because Collins did not want to wake someone.

• Toledo failed to use social media to its fullest. Early on Saturday, Toledo government made the occasional, informative post to their Facebook page. But for the rest of Saturday, all day Sunday, and early Monday, the city rarely used its Facebook page. In 2014, a lot of people follow news through Facebook. This was a major failure by Toledo government.

• During the alleged 80-hour or so crisis, Toledo government posted one tweet.