Sunday, November 1, 2009

"They're sometimes a little slow"

Mayor Jerry Bos, KC Star 10/31, page A4

That's a quote from Jerry referring to KCMO Water Services Department and their two day lag in reporting the latest sewage spill into the lake. Questions abound, aside from the obvious why did it take KCMO two days to notify WL?
  • Is it possible no residents on the East side noticed the commotion?
  • Is it possible no police officer on patrol noticed the unusual?
  • Is it possible nobody in Public works saw the activity at the pump station?
  • Nobody from WLIC noticed the bubbly (not referring to champagne).
  • When was WLIC informed?
  • Why wasn't an email on their (WLIC) listserve sent out?
  • The City has the capacity to send emails to those signed up on the website (I signed up), why wasn't it used?
  • Who determined the size of the spill?...and how?
  • What is going to be done?
  • How did the goofy robocall go down and how much did it/they cost?
Deja vu? Go back to my post on August 26, 2008 (Wake Up) if you have forgotten...or Aug 27th 08, or Sept 19 08, or Oct 8 08, or Jan 4 09, or Mar 28 09, or Sept 11 09. Enough?

I will make a few predictions:
  • KCMO will say they are "Sorry".
  • The 1000 gallons will be referred to as" minor" by all parties.
  • Jerry will appoint a committee to look into the matter...and they will do nothing.
  • The BOA at their meeting Tuesday will make loud noises...and then do nothing (see last spill).
  • The WLIC Board of Directors will be "deeply concerned" at the Annual Meeting...and then do nothing (see above).
  • The Improvement Company will focus on improvements, less on protection of our lake.
  • There will be no monument erected to designate U cove as "Stinky Cove".
  • The just released Trout and Walleye will think they got a real poopy deal (hey freedom has a price).
On the issue of" minor", so you can get a better grasp. A typical toilet flush is 1.6 gallons per flush. 1000 gallons divided by 1.6 equals 625. Imagine 624 of your friends and neighbors, plus you, lining up along the shoreline at Stinky Cove and at the designated moment squatting or shooting (your choice) of human waste. Don't have that many friends?...no problem, some of that waste belongs to KCMO, I'm sure they would oblige for the event.

8:39PM - Another RoboBob (don't they know it's the Word Series?) to tell us the Lake is Closed. Yipes, hope there aren't any Open Houses on the Lake...explain that to a prospective buyer "you can look but you can't touch".

No Chiefs football this weekend, forced to do yard work. Hope we will be upwind.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the news it was mentioning power failure as the cause of this. If that is the case someone (either W/L or Pub Works) could put a backup generator. They have outdoor units that go up to quite a few KW for houses. It would need to handle the surge voltage of the pump motor(s), etc and would probably have to be decent sized.


You can either put a propane tank on them or put them on natural gas for the fuel source.

One of these bad boys would probably do the trick.

http://www.homepowersystems.net

(I have no relationship with this company it was just the first thing that popped up in the search results)

Infrastructure this critical should be protected by a backup power source anyways. Imagine a power outage of 2 - 3 days during a heavy storm.

A W/L Citywide backup generator for the houses and all power lines would give me more peace of mind than the entrance monuments and might be around the same price..would need to find an electrician to figure out the total loads, etc.

Anonymous said...

Agree that it's a good idea....

But the problem is that we don't own the pump station. It's KCMO's. It would be doubtful that KCMO would give us access. And, if they did, it would remove any onus on their part when failures occurred. Could be very a very costly mistake in the long run.

Perhaps in a settlement for all these sewage spills we could force KCMO to purchase one?