By Curmudgeon
This morning, the Standard-Examiner ran the last of its interesting 3-part series on water problems in Ogden and the recently adopted Water Horizons plan, engineered by the City Council after many years of administrative neglect. Today's story focuses on the skunky smell of tap water delivered to some Ogden homes last year [the result of an algae bloom the story says at Pineview that could not be entirely filtered out of the water.] Mr. Schwebke's front page story opens this way:
"Ogden --- Carolyn Nebeker initially thought it might be a stunt orchestrated by the city to muster public support of a $52 million water and sewer overhaul.Bad tasting water emerges from taps, and what is the first explanation that came to Ms. Nebeker's mind? "The City government" did it deliberately to convince people to approve more spending. Thus Ogden as we enter the ninth year of Matthew Godfrey's administration. I'm afraid suspicion like that is one of the inevitable casualties of having an administration that regularly pushes the envelop on ethical conduct.
After all, what other explanation could there be for the foul-smelling water that flowed from her tap last August?
"Maybe the city was trying to convince us we needed to upgrade the water system," said Nebeker... recalling the time she wondered whether the water was intentionally left untreated.
You can read today's Scott Schwebke story here.
[The earlier two stories are linked in yesterday's WCF article.]
To be fair, that's not the whole story, of course. Part of it can be traced to the Utah Right Wing's endless whining that "government is bad, government is the source of problems, not solutions" and so on. [In fact, sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other.] But still: an Ogden resident's water goes stinky and the first thing she thinks of is "the city government is doing it deliberately for political reasons." Not good. Can't help but wonder if we had an Administration whose pushing of the envelope on ethical matters wasn't the subject of continuing Std-Ex stories and editorials, if that would have been Ms. Nebeker's first choice of explanations.
The story raises another question: I thought Ogden got its drinking water from wells, not from Pineview. So, how could an algae bloom [stirred up by boaters, the story says] result in swampy-smelling and tasting water emerging from Ogden's water taps? Does Pineview's water work its way into the water table locally and so into the wells? Or are some neighborhoods in Ogden drinking treated Pineview water after all? Anyone know for sure?
