Water, Water, Everywhere...

And not a drop to drink...and more.

You might have noticed a lack of water pressure a week ago Sunday, or you may have seen the advisory posted on Nixle (you can sign up to receive their advisories).  It became a non-event as water pressure was restored within an hour.  The back story is interesting.

The cause of the water outage was an empty water tower.  How did that happen?  A valve did not open which caused the tower to empty and not refill as it should.  Despite Mayor Botbyl's claims of upgraded software for the tower as one of his achievements, there was a failure.  The failure could have gone well beyond inconvenience...what if by coincidence and bad luck a home caught fire during the outage.  Catastrophe.

Who came to the rescue?  Oddly enough Alan York.  He happened to notice the lack of water pressure and immediately called George (Public Works Director).  Unable to reach George after multiple calls, Alan called the WL Police, who then put out the Nixle advisory.  George eventually responded to the phone calls and made his way in to WL to open the valve.  (Neither George nor any of his staff live at WL, so they have to travel in to attend to business).  Emergency averted.

It does raise the question of emergency preparedness in the City.  Nobody within the City could deal with the valve...Alderman Clark pointed this out at the last BOA meeting and requested to be trained as a backup, which is being done.  Clark actually lives a couple of football fields from the tower.

It does bring into question the preparedness of the City to deal with emergencies.  Is there a plan, is leadership aware and what happens in worst case scenarios?  My guess is there is work to be done.