We’re not sure what kinds of games are being played at the City of Franklin’s water department but, so far, we don’t like what we see.
To be fair, the city has made progress finding and installing valves in the water distribution system and bringing both water towers back on line. That came after concerns were raised by the Banner-Tribune in previous editorials. But, we still see evidence of a lack of focus on how serious and necessary it is to maintain an uninterrupted water supply.
When you operate a city water system that is necessary for the health and safety of a municipality, there is no such thing – other than complete destruction of the water plant – that is or should be beyond your control. If you need one pump running you better have a spare online or nearby; if circuitry is critical you need a bypass or a backup; if power is necessary you should have an operable generator, preferably two. There should always be an electrician on call for speedy resolution of problems.
It seems we are lacking in all of those items that are definitely not circumstances beyond our control. The recent problems are not due to “inherited” problems or mechanical issues, they are problems rooted in employee apathy and managerial dereliction.
We were also disappointed to hear the cover story for the July 4 weekend/Monday outage since we believe the story omits specific detail. Specifically, there’s no such thing as being unable to get a part when needed, holiday weekend or not. The repairs for the holiday weekend’s electrical issues were simply not done in a timely manner when they, in fact, could have been rectified over the weekend.
Another outage Monday after the holiday caught the city with its pants down due to not pursuing a weekend repair. Consequently, citizens spent two hours without water. Fortunately, there were no fires.
Now, it seems the city is continually pouring treated, drinkable water on the ground because water plant employees can’t or won’t pay attention to fill levels in the storage tank at the water plant. Guestimates are the city has treated and dumped 100 million gallons of water in the last three months. That’s about $200,000 in unnecessary, neglectful waste.
While a $2 million rebuild is in the planning stage and parts of that work will begin soon – that is no reason for the suffering, the lack of water or the boil orders the city has had to issue.
Those problems are self-induced and, sadly, did not have to happen. If there were a simple change of attitude and sense of purpose and responsibility by city water plant employees, most of the city’s water problems would never have happened.
The current level of continual service disruptions is unacceptable and it is up to the mayor to correct these personnel issues or get some new personnel.