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 alert officials in the other communities that receive Toledo water about the ban because Collins did not want to wake people. Extremely negligent behavior by Collins.

• 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, regarding modern communication.

• During the alleged 80-hour or so crisis, Toledo government posted one tweet to the city's Twitter feed. That one tweet said to pay attention to the media for updates, which was interesting when viewing the next bullet point. Not everyone spent the entire weekend, lounging in the living room, glued to the television set for the latest info. That's the old way to get news. I never watched TV that weekend. I relied on the web for info. We were mobile that weekend too. We shopped on Saturday morning at the downtown Toledo farmers market. We grilled out in the backyard. We weren't in lockdown mode. We lived fairly normally. We had coffee.

• According to people who watched TV and from viewing recorded video of press conferences, mayor Collins exhibited a disrespectful attitude toward local media during that weekend event. At times, Collins was rude and combative with the media. Classless behavior. Collins would browbeat the media if he thought a question was silly. But no question was inappropriate during a water ban. You can't post a tweet, telling people to follow the media for updates, and then verbally mistreat the media and not share pertinent information with the media (public).

• Throughout that weekend, Mayor Collins withheld elementary information from the media/public. None of the information that came out in the days after the water ban was top secret or so complex that it could not be understood. Collins's desire to withhold simple information was bizarre. Collins told a local meteorologist that the TV weatherman was not smart enough to understand something like "parts per billion." The reasons for the numerous tests, and the reasons for the delays in receiving test results all made sense AFTER the ban was lifted and the info was released. This info should have been published on social media immediately and shared with media at press conferences. Major, major failure by Collins. This was inexcusable.

But at least Collins shared the worn-out phrase "canary in the coal mine" at the Chicago summit of token concern about the Great Lakes.

#toledo - #politics - #moronism - #water - #lakeerie