Water quality data is important; let’s all work together on issues
Water quality data is important.
Recently, Congressman Mike Turner created a community committee charged to evaluate our local water quality and best practices for water delivery. The committee’s work to report objective and impartial data, when completed, could not have come at a better time to direct any additional work, if appropriate, needed to assure our tax-paying citizens, businesses and community leaders that we all expect the highest level of quality and best and most-efficient systems of water delivery we can create and afford.
Right now the city of Dayton provides water from more than 500 wells and two water treatment plants (Ottawa and Miami) to not only its own citizens and businesses, but through a newly renewed and recently agreed-upon 20-year contract, the city treats and sells water to Montgomery County for that government entity to resell to its customer base both north and south of the core city.
I know this firsthand because the chamber facilitated these contract discussions in late 2017/early 2018 as the county wanted and needed a fair and long-term deal on predictable pricing or it might have been forced to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to create its own new water treatment plants.
The business community felt – and still does – that additional, redundant treatment plants were an unnecessary cost and burden to our area taxpayers, so we asked the city and county to develop an agreement that was both fair and predictable.
But recently I’ve noticed a bit of a strain between the city and county over water issues. This started months ago over the question of water quality because of concerns about perfluorinated compounds or polyfluroalkyl substances (PFAS and PFOA) numbers. Add to that the frustrations by the temporary loss of water delivery twice over a period of about six months.
This manifested into a more recent public debate in the local media. That debate, I believe, can achieve better longterm results if ironed out with good, relevant testing data for our elected or appointed leaders and by having them diligently working together along with the Environmental Protection Agency to better understand water quality and the recognized benchmarks on delivery and redundant back-up services.
I don’t want to try and predict what this new Dayton Water Quality Committee (Turner’s group) will uncover during its review, but whatever that independent testing and review unveil, we must be prepared to use it should we need any remediation and should the federal or state EPA’s decide to change the current lifetime levels of the PFAS (70 parts per trillion) to an expected level much lower.
Should we find out something new or different from this independent, nonpartisan review and study, we will have accurate data and information on best practices as to how we collectively should respond.
Until then, let’s all continue to work together on these water issues. It is much too early for anyone to denigrate an important community asset like our aquifer or treatment practices that, in essence, could possibly lead to the erosion of our citizens’ trust and confidence in our water supply and perhaps cause irreparable damage to our community’s long-term abilities to attract and retain Miami Valley businesses.
Montgomery County and the city of Dayton have more than just a purveyor and customer relationship; they are and have been long-term partners on these issues and much more.
On this issue, they are tied to each other’s hip with a clear mandate of providing consistent, high-quality water resources for our entire area at the most efficient taxpayer cost.
I’m encouraged by both governments’ willingness to do the right thing for all of us. But let’s work even more diligently, behind the scenes and not in the public media, to understand what lies ahead of us and how we can work together to make sure quality, delivery and price are at the forefront. That has always been our local way.