by Tim Girton
Ville Voice Eats Correspondent

Even as I type the words halo acetic acids, I wonder if I spelled it correctly. My spell check is just staring at me as if to say, “yeah, right.”

But those words became important as a story from Oldham County pointed out the water district there violated standards because last spring it didn’t report some lab results to the Kentucky Division of Water. Seems important. When a governing body needs something so that you can keep operating, you would think you’d get right on that.

The Division of Water sent a violation notice in August 2008 which stated that the Oldham County Water District needed to notify the public of the issue within a year. That’s some kind of leeway. My boss is normally asking for same-day service. Perhaps those of us in a non-government related industry have spoiled our supervisors by doing the unthinkable: being efficient. If jobs weren’t so hard to come by, I’d test the theory, but  I’d probably just look like Wally in the Dilbert comic strip. There’s precedent. He and I share the same affection for coffee.

Be that as it may, take a guess at how long it took Oldham County to alert the public. How about last month? I did the math. Spring to spring is about 12 months, give or take a little time if one event occurred at the beginning of season and the other at the end. Even from the time of the violation notice, that’s nine months. If you serve the public, something a little more responsive should be in order, wouldn’t you think?

And then there’s the question of whether people read the water bill, or any other bill for that matter. Or do people look for the bottom line amount to pay and write the check. In last month’s bill, Oldham County’s estimated 8,000 customers may have seen the words “cannot be sure of the quality of our drinking water during that time.”

Wow, that’s not scary at all.

Especially considering that the issue involved the aforementioned halo acetic acids, a disinfection by-product that may be a related cause of spontaneous abortion or cancer, according the the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.

As an explanation, Superintendent Phillip Ward of the Oldham County Water District passed the buck to the lab, Bekmar Environmental Lab in Louisville. According to the district, they got the samples to the lab, but the lab didn’t get the results to the state in time. The lab then fell on its sword and, in effect, took the blame. Without trying to sound too snarky, like I usually do, doesn’t that seem to be the kind of thing you’d say if you wanted to keep a paying client?

And the timing is troubling. If spring is in April, when the analysis took place, they couldn’t get the results to the state by August? Wouldn’t the state have asked for the results before then? No, we don’t have the most responsive government in Kentucky, but it seems rather glaring considering that, hopefully, we test water more than once a year. Superintendent Ward told the Courier-Journal, “It looks bad upon us. That’s not what we want, of course.”

And the “No Sh**, Sherlock” award goes to…