Lessons from a waterline break

We were reminded this week that nothing makes you appreciate the necessities of life like not having them.

If, upon awaking Monday morning, the first thing you did was take a shower, fill your coffee pot or brush your teeth, consider yourself fortunate. 

Those options weren't available in dozens of households east of town — not then or even now.  As this is being written mid Wednesday morning, crews were still working to repair the broken line about a mile east of town. For those who have been without water since early Sunday morning, the wait continues.

It's pretty apparent that something needs to be done about the 17-mile water transmission line. It's not a popular decision — rarely is when rates go up to pay the bill — but it's an investment we need to make in our community's future, like those who came before us did in the '60s and '70s.

If you want to learn more about it, including the impact it will have on your future water bills, or feel differently than I do, a public meeting is set for Monday at 4 p.m. at Town Hall.  

Back to the issue at hand.  What happened isn't anyone's fault.  All any of us can do in any scenario we face is our best and learn from it along the way so we can do better if/when it happens again.

Since Sunday morning, the town's had two battles to fight.  The first one was against the broken pipe — finding it when no evidence of it existed on the surface, then figuring out how to fix it and ultimately making the repairs. 

It's an incomplete now just because the wait continues, but given the challenges and the intense pressure they've been under, the town crew is heading for a strong passing grade.

The same cannot be said, however, for those responsible for communication.  None of the dozen or more impacted people who spoke with us, on or off the record or just in casual conversation, had received any kind of update from the town since the outage began. 

The town's approach seemed to be, let's give people a minimal amount of information and let's use our Facebook page to convey it.  Both approaches were flawed. The town never got in front of the crisis.

Those affected needed more information about what the crew was dealing with, what services were available to them and that they should boil water when it's ultimately restored — and they needed that information far sooner than they received it in the case of boiling water.

The crew was trying all sorts of things to find the repair on Monday, including using a drone.  That should have been conveyed. What would have been the downside?

As for Facebook, there's no denying that it's a fast, easy way to communicate.  The town should use it, but by no means should it be the only approach.  It should be part of a multi-prong strategy that also incorporates texts, the town website, newspaper and radio. 

Also, we live in an era of high tech, but not everyone chooses this lifestyle, nor will that tech always be available in a crisis. Phone calls, printed notices, and door to door are still effective ways to share information and check on people. In a situation like this one, better to over-communicate than under-communicate.

Moving forward, the town ought to redouble the efforts to gather contact information that began under its previous administrator.  Nearly everyone has a phone.  Nearly everyone receives texts. The town has a text-line, just for disseminating information. All you have to do is sign up. From my own experience, it's pretty slick getting updates about upcoming events, although nothing has come in over the last week pertaining to the water outage.

As residents, we need to do our part, too, by taking advantage of these services and making it easier to be reached in times of crisis.  

Everyone’s going to get through this.  Let’s learn from it and be better.