Can't Keep Up Like This, Can We?

“It would have been nice if Trenton notified all the people that it serves. That would have been good customer service.” – Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo

Good Morning, everyone! Here at the Moriarty household, we use Wegman’s “Food You Feel Good About” Spring Water for all of our potable drinking water needs. How about you?

What a cluster bomb this has been. It’s now becoming clear that problems at Trenton Water Works started developing Sunday, and got worse yesterday, as the pumps from the Delaware were shut down, for a few hours on Sunday, and then again yesterday morning as intake filters were cleaned.The pumps started up again in the afternoon. But since there was a lot of turbid water in the system, causing city faucets to run brown water, backup plans were activated, releasing water from our reservoir and bringing in water from outside the TWW system via interconnections with our friends (Hi, Guys!) at NJ American Water. In the meantime, we are advised to boil our water before using for any drinking, cooking and the like. Great.

This is a problem that this morning affects all water customers in Trenton, Ewing, Hamilton, and Lawrence. Most of whom did not even hear of any problems with water quality until later yesterday afternoon. The Mayors of Hamilton and Ewing didn’t hear until the afternoon. Mr. Bencivengo had to hear it from Mayor Ball of Ewing, not from our Mayor. Even though this problem started developing over the weekend, the Mayor’s Office didn’t become aware of the problem until yesterday morning.

The papers today reflect a lot of scrambling,at TWW and at City Hall. The official party line, from city spokesperson Lauren Ira and “Acting” Public Works Ralph Burchaciello is that high, muddy water this weekend in the Delaware is to blame for overloading the filtering system, even though the Delaware came nowhere near flood stage after last week’s storms.

The Trentonian continues to quote an unnamed TWW “insider” as ascribing the failure to address the problem on Sunday not to the high water but to the failure of a key technician to show up to work that day.

In the Times account, Mr. Burchaciello dismisses that explanation:  “Plant superintendent William Mitchell is more important to operations than technicians, and he was available, Burzachiello said. This would have happened no matter what,” Burzachiello said.”

Doesn’t sound like much of a denial to me. Mr. Burchaciello doesn’t refute – as far as this article says – the absence of the technician. And I am not reassured to hear that the plant supervisor was there top cover for that person: as anyone who has worked on complex systems knows, a supervisor is not always ready and able to immediately step in for workers on the line. Even if the supervisor is fully trained – and current – in proper procedures and operations, there are likely other duties and responsibilities the supervisor has that will likely distract from noticing a situation as it becomes  critical. If the technician wasn’t necessary, he or she wouldn’t have been scheduled, don’t you think?

In any case, I am not convinced that human error was not the leading cause of yesterday’s problem. I don’t know if a situation like this automatically triggers some kind of investigation or post mortem, on the part of the State DEP or perhaps the US EPA. Does any of you know? I hope we get to the bottom of this, and find out how to avoid a repeat of this the next time we get rain. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long fall and winter.

Looking beyond this, though, I see this as another instance of the leadership vacuum that continues to fester in our government. As discussed here a few weeks ago, our city laws require the nomination and confirmation of permanent department Directors  no later than 90 days after a vacancy occurs. We are now 96 days into the Mack Administration, and we still have many, if not most, of our departments headed by Acting Directors. Including “Acting” Director Burchaciello.

I’m not saying that had a permanent director been sitting in Public Works this weekend we might have averted this specific problem at the Water Works. I am saying that a culture of temporary leadership, across all of city government, contributes to bad management, bad morale, sloppy supervision, and the kinds of human error that’s led me to quaffing Wegmans Spring Water this cold wet October morning.

Who knows where the next crisis will arise? Who next will be asleep at the switch, or AWOL?

Acting leadership has given us leadership that seems to be acting, not leading.

The primary responsibility for this current state lies with the Mayor. It is his job to seek out responsible and qualified managers and leaders, in a timely manner, and submit them to Council for approval.

I also have to wag a finger at Council, too. Council hasn’t lived up to its legal responsibilities to play its role in the advise and consent process. Every person who is serving today as an Acting Director beyond their 90 days needs to do so via explicit resolution of Council. To the extent Council does not pass such resolution, or the Mayor does not nominate permanent leadership, our acting leadership serves in violation of city statute. And our city will careen down the road to the next problem situation. And the next one. And the next one. Again, I don’t think that getting permanent leadership in place is enough to turn things around. But it is absolutely necessary to ensuring at least some minimal level of competence and accountability.

And it’s not as if the Mayor and Council weren’t aware of this process. Every member of this Council, and this Mayor, acknowledged that the selection and hiring process – at all levels of the city but especially at the top – was among their most important jobs. At tonight’s session of Council, the members will review the nomination of Janet Schoenhaar to be the city’s Chief Financial Officer. That’s good in itself; but this pace is way too slow to be acceptable.

Everyone elected this spring made several campaign promises to get this process right. Mayor Mack continually reminds us that the campaign is over. Which leaves us with promises.

Time to keep them.

UPDATE:

This is a comment to my entry yesterday from William Pyle. Mr. Pyle wrote  several well-informed comments to some of my posts during the TWW referendum this past spring, thereby raising the intelligence level of this site significantly. I asked him whether this kind of incident might trigger any mandatory reporting to state or federal agencies, or any investigations by third parties.  His reply below. Thanks, William!

Kevin,

I am not aware of any State or Federal requirements that require a water utility to conduct an investigation and prepare a report for filing and review after loss of treatment at a facility or loss of pressure in a distribution system.

A New Jersey water utility like Trenton’s is subject to the rules and regulations contained in N.J.A.C. 7.10 The Safe Drinking Water Act. Within that act is a requirement that the water utility notify NJDEP in accordance with the following:

7:10-2.4 Reporting of changes to plants and emergencies

(b) A supplier of water shall notify the Department by
telephone at (609) 292-5550 during business hours, or (609)
292-7172 during non-business hours, within six hours of the
occurrence of any emergency that may tend to lessen the quality
or pressure of delivered water, or increase the likelihood of
delivery of water that does not meet the standards set forth in
N.J.A.C. 7:10-5.

The chapter does not specify what action the utility should or shall take after remedying what caused the utility to notify the NJDEP.

Incidents that trigger boil water orders are not that uncommon. However, they are usually the result of large water main breaks that cause system pressure, either locally or system wide, to fall to levels that may not prevent back siphonage from customers. Based upon the newspaper reports, it appears that yesterday’s boil water order was issued due to the reported loss of pressure in parts of the service area and was not issued due to the problems at the treatment plant. Although it was reported that dirty water was pumped out of the plant, it is highly unlikely that the people in charge of the plant allowed that to happen. It is also highly unlikely that any water that did not meet regulatory requirements was pumped out of the plant and delivered to customers and to the reservoir.