Water Problems

(editorial by the Outlook’s Dave Schmidt)

“Water, Water everywhere but not a drop to drink.” Well they’ve outlawed smoking in Ohio, I think it is time we now outlaw Celina water. Nobody will be able to afford it anyway, you won’t be able to drink it or make that lawn turn green. We ruined the taste, bring back the old days when you could smell it and taste it, those were the “hey days” of good old Celina water. The other solution is to start bottling it and selling it at events like the Lake Festival and Fair for $2 a bottle (maybe $3 a bottle after they raise the rates). Plus bottle water doesn’t have to meet many requirements to be sold, over the years you can test most municipal waters compared to bottle water and even Celina City water tests better. But don’t tell the EPA they don’t understand.

Now whom do we blame? Let’s blame the guys that built the lake in the 1800’s; hey they were overpaid at a quarter day and a shot of whiskey. Nah, we can’t do that they were drinking whiskey; they didn’t even drink the water, probably because it wasn’t built to drink out of anyway. We could blame all of the geese that fly over every day of the week and make daily deposits and swim in it, that won’t work they don’t care anyway. How about those little amphicars that come to Celina every year and splash and churn up the lake just for the fun of it. Maybe we could ask the sun to quit shining for a year a two so we don’t have the water turning colors and making weird things that later swim around in the lake. We could blame those city people who decided to try and find new water supplies and hired over-priced consultants to build wells that we never used because they were on the wrong side of the continental divide.

We are going to need someone to blame. I don’t think anyone on city council will claim any rights to having messed up this deal or any members from the past. City Administration would probably say it was because council tied there hands on all of this. The EPA is never wrong, just ask them, the only way they make money is to fine cities like Celina. So I’ve decided to take the blame for the entire mess, I’m a big boy and I worked for the city for 30 years. Here is why they came blame me, I read water meters for over 10 years of my employment with the city and once a month I had to read the meters in the water plant, every month I saw how they processed the water. That would make you stop drinking water if you saw that, which I usually did for a day. It is not a pretty site to see the raw water come in and settle, so I should have said something to the boss. I was also employed at the city when they decided to try a new process from Europe that would save the day, it did take the smell and taste out of it, but those crazy THM’s kept showing up, so I should have said something. Probably the best reason to give me the blame, I was a part of the big “make Pepsi the soft drink of Celina”, how dare I do that. You have been a bad boy, after all the city will now make money off of this and help the Lake Festival and the Governor’s Cup Regatta survive. It is probably my fault because the water felt left out of the mix because in the past all anyone talked of was “Celina Water”. So I will take the blame for the problems with water, besides there are enough city council and city administration that don’t like me anyway and now they can rally around this. I think it is my duty! Now we don’t have to worry about finger pointing in this process.

Now how do we fix that problem? It seems that money will solve the problem; the more you spend the more you can fix it. The citizens of Celina are wondering what is next in this entire process. It is no longer a “laughing” matter it is a huge concern for the future. Plus the other problem in the water system is that there is no funding available in the future to replace existing water lines that date back to the early 1900’s. Over the months we have heard from city officials that everything was under control, don’t worry about it we know what we are doing. The recent bid openings for a proposed new water plant came in higher than expected and not even close to estimated projections. The problem is now, not tomorrow and needs to be fixed today.

Who’s going to pay for all of this? YOU!