Water this, water that.

“Water this, water that,” City of Trenton spokesman Michael Walker said in response to an email query about Trenton Water Works from the Post.

So reports Rob Anthes in a very good article in the February edition of the Hamilton Post. Anthes highlights the recent issues at Trenton's water utility that serves some quarter of a million people in Mercer County.

This past Thursday night Trenton's Public Works Director, Merkle Cherry, and key members of the TWW staff presented an update for the city council. The hope was that the city's governing body and the public alike would come out of that meeting with a fuller understanding of what the situation actually is at the water utility.

Unfortunately, that presentation came up woefully short. Kevin Moriarty blogged about the meeting on Friday. Basically, it consisted of a brief power point presentation, a Q & A between members of the council and the water works team, and then public comment.

It lasted 3.5 hours (council then had to go on to their regular business afterwards) and what was learned was that Mr. Cherry has a less than firm grasp on the operations of TWW. We also learned that some of the long time staff who work day to day in the utility don't have a much better grasp of how things work there than Cherry does. That was a huge disappointment. 

The lack of investment in the utility and the lack of staff definitely contributes to the marked increase in citations of non-compliance issued by DEP. That's certain. The lack of communication... effective, timely communication... between the city/TWW and its customers is the one thing that came up time and time again during the discourse.

One of the big complaints has been the length of time between when an "event" occurs and the public is notified. City representatives have continually sworn that they were delayed in issuing notices because they were waiting for DEP to approve the language in the advisories before sending them out.

Strangely, in the same breath, there is always mention of  "templates" that exist for the notices.

It's hard to fathom how, if there is an existing template for, say, a boil water advisory, there has to be approval from a state agency before the notice can be sent out. That sort of defeats the whole purpose of having a template, doesn't it?

Curious about this, we spent some time wading around in the DEP website. There is a lot of information available to the public there. Granted, you might have to be a bit of a nerd or wonk to delve into this stuff, but it is there for the curious. 

The following is based upon a couple of hours of browsing, following links, reading and, yes, THINKING about how one handles events that adversely effect the quality of water service. We are not licensed plant operators; we have not taken any classes in water supply operations or management. We're just reasonably intelligent parties interested in what the process is; how it is supposed to work; and trying to figure why it seems to continually break down when it comes to TWW. 

If we miss something or make faulty statements and anyone can point us to accurate information countering our incorrect assumptions, we welcome the correction. We're trying to educate ourselves and our readers as to what is the right way to handle these things. 

Water quality regulation and enforcement in New Jersey falls under the Department of Environmental Protection, division of Water Supply and Geoscience.  From the division's page, there are various links under "Drinking Water Systems; Emergencies & Security. There's a lot of information available to anyone who wants to poke around awhile. 

As stated right on the page, a water utility has to report an emergency to DEP within six (6) hours. There is a 24 hour hotline just for such purposes. There are also required follow ups with the engineering office during normal work hours and a form that must be completed an emailed to DEP.

The incident form includes a section about notifications on the second page.   

The first question asked is "Has the appropriate water use advisory been issued?"  Now, if this form is what is used to record and track an incident with DEP and DEP must be notified within six hours of the event, doesn't it seem likely that there is an expectation that notifications to the public, et al were made sooner rather than later?

There are links on the page to templates for various advisories pertaining to water main breaks. The templates are right there in a very user friendly form (Microsoft Word). The utility just has to fill in the event specific information and distribute.

But what about non-water main break related events?

Further down on the page are links to "Water Use Advisory Information".

Within that grouping is a link to a 166 page document that is a clearly written and organized EPA Drinking Water Advisory Comprehensive Toolbox. It is filled with very good, common sense ideas about how to prepare for, execute and follow up on the issuing of an event advisory. The document includes fill-in-the-blank templates, in English and Spanish. The document is so comprehensive that after reading it we feel confident that we could effectively execute the issuing of an advisory. Certainly, if anyone from TWW and/or the City of Trenton had there would not be the continual issues with fumbled notifications.

There are other resources on that section of the page. The three main types of advisories are described:

• Advisories:
• Boil Water Advisory: Advises customers to boil the water before drinking, cooking, and other potable water uses due to the potential for the water supply to be contaminated with disease-causing microorganisms.
• Do Not Drink Advisory: Advises customers not to use the water supply for potable purposes and only advocates its use for sanitary and fire-fighting needs.
• Do Not Use Advisory: Advises customers not to use the water supply for any purpose, including sanitary and fire-fighting needs.

There are also more links to templates and handbooks:

• Guidance & Templates
• EPA Public Notification Handbooks:
• Community & Non-Transient Non-Community Water Systems
• Transient Water Systems
• Public Notification Templates
• EPA Drinking Water Advisory Communication Toolbox - provides information on how to plan for, develop, implement, and evaluate drinking water advisories.

Obviously, there is a wealth of material available to help a water supply system effectively communicate about any event that adversely affects the potability of the water.

Earlier on we established that NJ DEP must be notified within six (6) hours of an event. Diving deeper into the subject we discovered EPA guidelines (linked to from the DEP site, so we assume these are the operative standards in New Jersey) for three levels of notifications.

You'll note that in Tier 1 (Immediate Notice) events water suppliers have 24 hours to notify {our emphasis} people who may drink the water.  TWENTY FOUR HOURS!

That seems like a long time. We assume because the guidelines are applicable to systems of all sizes in densely populated areas as well as sparsely populated ones, the federal standards are somewhat generous.  We also assume that common sense dictates system operators would get the notice out as soon as possible, well within the 24 hour deadline.

We feel it is important to note here that at no time has TWW made the argument that their delayed notifications have fallen within the allowable 24 hour time period. Rather, they keep falling back on the excuse of having to wait for DEP approval of the text and/or translation into Spanish...EVEN THOUGH TEMPLATES FOR BOTH EXIST AND ARE AVAILABLE!  In addition, for all of our fishing in the rules and regulations we have yet to land any evidence that DEP requires approval of the verbiage of advisories prior to them being released.

We have also found, repeated, reference to the 10 items that must be included in an advisory:

Notices must contain:

• A description of the violation that occurred, including the contaminant(s) of concern, and  the contaminant level(s);
• When the violation or situation occurred;
• The potential health effects (including standard required language);
• The population at risk, including subpopulations vulnerable if exposed to the contaminant in their drinking water;
• Whether alternate water supplies need to be used;
• What the water system is doing to correct the problem;
• Actions consumers can take;
• When the system expects a resolution to the problem;
• How to contact the water system for more information; and
• Language encouraging broader distribution of the notice.

Anyone with basic English composition skills and the required information at hand should be able to craft an acceptable advisory notice in less than hour without a template. With a template, the notice should be ready for distribution within minutes. Not hours. No external approvals required!

From what we have found, it is readily apparent that the failures of TWW to notify customers in a timely manner originate internally. Whether it is due to the acknowledged shortage of qualified staff, management indifference or both doesn't really matter.

What does matter is that they are failing to execute critical responsibilities. Instead of pointing fingers to outside agencies, they need to look at their own processes and procedures and fix them. Immediately.

Another strike against Jackson

It's not funny anymore.

The situation with Trenton Water Works is bad, but the issue of poor communication from the administration of Trenton Mayor Eric Jackson is way out of control.

The latter compounds the former.

Today, Trenton's water utility experienced another issue with poor quality resulting in a boil water advisory for customers in Trenton and parts of Ewing and Hamilton.

It was the NJ DEP who called for the boil water advisory and who, ultimately, got the word out. Trenton's communication mechanism was apparently paralyzed by the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

As word spread, first on social media, then via newspaper articles posted online, then a notice sent out by the Hamilton Township municipal government, there was nothing from the City of Trenton.

No robocalls, although several had been sent out reminding residents of no trash pick up today.
No posting on the city website until way after the fact.

This begs the question, yet again, #WheresEric?

The problems with the utility have been well documented elsewhere. It is unfathomable that a man who spent a good chunk of his career with responsibility, first as Public Works Director and later as Mayor, of the TWW couldn't get a handle on the issues even a little bit.

There have been problems with staffing for years and Trenton's residency requirement for employees was often cited as a problem. In 2014, Trenton's city council passed amendments to the ordinance that allowed the city hire from outside the city boundaries if need be. Still, TWW has been cited as being woefully understaffed.

Trenton was ordered to make cover and make other improvements to its reservoir. The money is there, yet the work has not been done.

The state Department of Environmental Protection, citing the city's continued failure to properly staff and manage the utility, told them to move ahead with contracting for an outside operator to take over.

That hasn't been done.

With each repeated failure of the water treatment plant, customers wait for information and advisories from the city. And wait. And wait.

The mayor is an "experienced" government officer who sold himself to voters as someone who could "hit the ground running" and successfully handle the running of Trenton. He's brought back lots of equally "experienced" city hall veterans as division and department directors. And he has well paid public information officer. Yet Jackson and company are incredibly tight-lipped when there's a problem with the drinking water supply (or missing employment tax funds or any other negative issue). If team Jackson communicates anything at all, it is late and lacking pertinent details.

Just look at today's notices posted on three municipal websites about the water issues:

Here's Ewing's notice to residents:

Hamilton posted this one:

And Trenton, finally...well after the fact...put up this very spartan announcement. 

Finally, just a mere 12 hours after first becoming aware of the problem, the city of Trenton utilized its robocall system to contact TWW customers.

It certainly shows that the first term mayor and his hand chosen team are not up to the task of running a water utility or a city; and certainly not both.

How can the mayor say he's working on economic development when he can't communicate? How can he claim to be making Trenton a better place to work and live when he can't safeguard the water supply? How can anyone feel good about investing in, moving a business to or residing in a city run by a bunch of mute misfits?

It remains to be seen if Jackson is going to run for a second term. As of a week ago, he had not filed his campaign paperwork. And we know he hasn't kept up with his finance reports from the 2014 campaign.

If he does run, there isn't a single voter in Trenton who should give up his or her vote to this failed mayor.

If he doesn't run let us hope he isn't given an appointment in the administration of incoming governor Phil Murphy. We can't think of any one less qualified for a continued government paycheck.

And, if Jackson doesn't run, voters would be well advised to not vote for any candidate or slate that gets a Jackson endorsement.

Eric E. Jackson has failed Trenton and it is time for the voters to fail him.

Stop playing games

Trenton Mayor Tony Mack is insistent upon staffing up the department of Recreation, Natural Resources, and Culture that has been a quagmire for the past two years. Soon after taking office in July 2010, Mayor Mack cut staff and demoted some of the remaining employees, ultimately gutting the department in the 2011 layoffs.

In the meantime, the “department” has run through its budget and then some with little to no accountability. There have been inquiries and investigations into use of facilities, splintered contracts that avoid the bidding process, time sheets and more. Festivals and parades have been produced with no real oversight as to what was being spent, who was getting paid and what the real benefit was.  Favoritism has been shown in funding certain sports leagues over others.

Now, the mayor and business administrator Sam Hutchinson have proposed to city council that the city hire a department director and staff to run the various programs and events that the mayor wants.

Here’s a simple counter proposal, and it is not a new idea.

The department of Recreation, Natural Resources and Culture should be done away with. The maintenance functions should be moved into the division of public property (part of the department of public works) and the rest of the functions rolled into the department of health and human services.  

It is not unheard of for municipalities to have a department of health, recreation and human (or senior) services. Indeed, Trenton used to have the department of health, recreation and welfare.  The last term probably fell out of favor because the county took over the administration of the assistance programs and because the word “welfare” started to have negative connotations.

The point is we have a competent director and staff in the health and human services department. It would be simple to add a couple of staff people to that department who would interface with the outside organizations to provide programming and services at the various city owned facilities.  From Artworks and Passage Theatre to the Trenton Museum Society at Ellarslie and the Trent House Association; from the Boys and Girls Clubs, CYO, PAL, YM and YWCA’s; from Babe Ruth League, the various Little Leagues, the NJTL, soccer leagues the health and human services staff would coordinate the use of facilities and help find money (but not totally fund) the programs. The city would lease or enter into MOU’s with these various organizations to do what they by design do. This takes the cost off of the cash strapped city for providing “recreation” programs.

An added bonus is that elimination of the department of RNRC frees up space for the splitting off of the water and sewer utilities from public works, an idea that has also been brought up before.

The creation of a separate department housing only the utilities makes sense. They have their own separate budget anyway. It will be easier to focus on improving the infrastructure and service provided. One would think it will make our suburban neighbors/customers happier to see the water utility operate more transparently and effectively. And it could isolate the utility staff from layoff or furlough actions affecting other departments.

This can all be accomplished with or without the mayor’s approval. Restructuring the city’s administration is done by ordinance.  As we have all learned recently, it only takes a solid five votes on council to make this common sense move be veto proof.

There is no reason this shouldn’t be taken on immediately. It would be an effective way to streamline the city administration while refocusing on the core functions of municipal government.

What does the Trenton Water Works have to do with the Mayor’s Learning Center Libraries?

That’s what we wondered after noticing Paul Harris at Monday’s ribbon cutting at the former Skelton Branch Library building.

Mr. Harris, if you recall, was hired as an “intern” by the Mack administration on August 9, 2010. His rate of pay was $15 an hour. On October 15, 2010, Mr. Harris received a 33% pay raise to $20 an hour, just a few weeks before the city’s first wave of layoffs and demotions of regular employees was put into effect.

Ostensibly assigned to the city’s department of Health and Human Services, no one was ever really sure Harris’ described job duties were. It was pretty evident that Mr. Harris was to serve basically as yet another assistant to the mayor. He seemed to spend all of his time taking photographs and videos of the mayor in action (or would that be “the mayor’s inaction?”); working on the city website; trolling Facebook and other online sites for any negative comments about the Mack administration.

In a memo dated February 14, 2011, Joseph Rubino, then the director of HHS, informs Harris that three days a week he is to report to Gwen Carter to assist with the Health Clinic.  The other two days a week Harris would be assigned to “ancillary projects” working with other units under HHS.

In an accompanying description of his duties, Mr. Harris appears to be assigned to marketing and other activities relating to the city’s senior centers. It is interesting to note that this “intern” is also charged with helping to “supervise” certain employees stationed at the centers.
(NOTE: we really hope to delve further into the Mack administration’s use and abuse of the term “intern” in a future post)

But all of the above almost seems sensible when compared to what has recently transpired.

Sometime this year, Mr. Harris was “transferred” to the Trenton Water Works. His payroll information from March 1 forward clearly shows him being paid out of the TWW administration account.

Yet there he was at 3 pm on a Monday afternoon, recording the mayor's ribbon cutting for posterity but being paid on the water customer's dime. 

Hence our question: what does the TWW have to do with the Mayor’s Learning Center Libraries?