Questions, lessons left after water on again

The Pine Bluff water crisis, like the record-breaking weather from last week, will go in the books as an event unlike any other. In our reporting, we have touched on the many facets of this failure of humankind against nature: the hospital unable to take patients or heat its own buildings without the help of water trucks; university students shipped off to area hotels because of a collapse of the heating and water systems in their on-campus housing; businesses closed; other medical facilities sidelined; the fire department on pins and needles because the water at the hydrants is under such low pressure that maybe there’s not enough to water to fight that big fire; not to mention every citizen who turns on a faucet or reaches to flush a toilet and can’t because the pressure is insufficient or nonexistent. There’s been no boil order, but conditions have almost required it.

It was good to see the Gov. Asa Hutchinson come to town this week. He met with area leaders and offered the state’s assistance. We’re not sure what the end result of that meeting will be, but it was comforting to know that the top person in state government has our collective back.

We have been pleased to report that conditions are improving. Liberty Utilities said it was going to push as much water as it could to the hospital, and that worked, to the extent that starting Wednesday, the hospital was back to being able to admit patients and perform surgeries. For a few days, if you had something happen to you that required ER attention, you would be patched up at JRMC and sent home or to another hospital. As Wendy Talbot, a hospital executive, put it, if a hospital can’t take in and care for patients, no one gets any sleep.

But, of course, there’s the rest of the city that needs water, some areas to a greater or lesser degree than others.

The problem? From Liberty’s perspective, it was the day after day and night after night of sub-freezing temperatures that burst pipes and sent water spewing from places that had gone unnoticed in the past. The old Pine Bluff Commercial building was one. A once-proud building, it sits vacant now and for sale by those who used to run the newspaper. A 6-inch pipe there froze and burst. It was the same story for the old Sunbeam Bakery building where a pipe burst from the cold. Those and more than a hundred other leaks have been identified and fixed or shut off.

Another perspective is that Liberty had done little to nothing to prepare its water system for such a calamity and that it had not done enough to ensure the delivery of safe water to its customers. Certainly, there is frustration. We are one of the biggest cities in the state and have been suffering from this crisis for what a growing chorus would say is too long.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. Had the weather not been so harsh, no one would be having this conversation.

To that end, we are encouraged that other state agencies will be looking into Liberty and the city’s water system problems. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced that her office will open an investigation into the situation, and the state Public Service Commission is looking into the problems as well.

There will certainly be time enough to get to the bottom of what happened. For now, numerous agencies and entities are working handin-hand to put matters right in a way that makes us proud to be from these parts.

As County Judge Gerald Robinson put it when talking to a Liberty executive, everyone is working together to help the cause and to ease the suffering of those who are trying to operate with little to no water, but don’t be offended that we are also looking into whether Liberty fell short in its obligation to the public. That’s exactly how it should be.