Basic ingredients | Editorial

Published 10:05 am Tuesday, September 30, 2014

What is worse — being without abundant clean drinking water or electricity to light and warm our homes? Depending on the time of year, it is a toss-up. Yet as evidenced by the health advisory to boil water this past weekend, each are hard to do without. For the most part, these breakdowns are inconvenient but usually brief. But for business owners they can mean losing money. For others compromised by health issues, they can is dangerous.

It is too early to discuss how the E. coli bacteria got into the Island’s water supply or what needs to be done to make sure it does not happen again. But  is clear that work needs to be done on making sure all residents are  informed about the situation as soon as possible.

While we have nearly everything in this world to aid a comfortable life, it all seems lost without the single ingredient basic to all life— water.  Yet water was still available to us despite the health advisory.  But it needed to be dealt with – boiled or purchased.

What the advisory meant was that we had to THINK about water in a way that we are not accustomed to doing.  Instead of reaching for the tap, we had to judge if the water was safe.  Maybe it was not safe to drink – but was it OK to wash clothes?  To cook with? Wash our dishes? Just like when we lose our electricity, we are shocked and dismayed and a bit helpless.

It is ironic that water rates were discussed just days before the boil water advisory, at a City Council meeting on the budget. A good portion of what we pay for water is maintaining the water delivery system. This might be a good time to consider additional safeguards as well as fixing any glitches in our emergency communication networks.