Bay City, Michigan 48706
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Water Should Unite Bay City, Bay County Officials, Not Divide Them

April 24, 2011       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Hopefully the Bay City and Bay County officials meeting to resolve water issues are keeping in mind new state mandates for intergovernmental cooperation.

Also, they should reflect on our long decades of disputes over water that this corner felt, at long last, were widely understood and were on track for resolution.

The question of who is in charge of the system should be secondary to providing the best quality water service at the lowest possible cost -- no matter who is in charge. If that is the goal of this meeting, then all concerned should be congratulated.

For a community so close to one of the best water sources in the Great Lakes region, we have experienced a gross inability on the part of public officials to secure water from the best possible source.

This failing doesn't fall on the current city administration and commission alone -- it goes back to every group of city "fathers" since 1948!

The city is now forced to send out carefully parsed statements admitting that the intake in the lower Saginaw Bay produces flawed supplies that require extraordinary treatment to be safe.

Following are exact quotations from the 2010 Bay City water report (emphasis ours):

"The Saginaw Bay is the source of the drinking water for the customers of the Bay City Water System. The intake is located nearly 4 miles off shore in an area determined to be of the best overall quality for the majority of the time. The intake pipe is 4 feet in diameter.

The MDEQ has recently completed "Source Water Assessments" of all 59 public water supplies in Michigan that draw drinking water from surface water sources such as rivers, lakes, and impoundments. The MDEQ rated Bay City's source water, the Saginaw Bay, as being Highly Sensitive and Highly Susceptible to potential contaminants. "This rating does not indicate the presence of any actual contamination in the Saginaw Bay source, nor in the final treated water that is supplied to our customers. Approximately one half of the supplies that were assessed had this same rating."

Not only have we been disappointed in the sluggish pace of the proposed merger with the Saginaw-Midland Water System (that would give us high quality water from Lake Huron), now we are further concerned about the motives and instincts of local officials.

A reasonable, and timely suggestion by Joseph Rivet, country drain commissioner, to merge the city and county systems through a gradual process incited what appeared to be outrage from city officials.

It would seem that officials with the public interest in mind would gratefully accept such leadership by Mr. Rivet and embrace his ideas that seem to be sincerely put forward without political intent.

Anyone reading the long and troubled history of the city water system would immediately recognize the recent reaction as a repetition of the parochial attitude that has held us back for decades. (See MyBayCity.com Sept. 9, 2009,Thirty Eight Years After Bungled S-M Water Merger, City Finally May Try Again.")

Of course it is time -- well past time -- for officials to try again and accept the offer of the Saginaw-Midland System to supply clean water from Whitestone Point. That system's supply lines are already here (they run right through Monitor Township with a major facility located on Three Mile Road). Please, public officials, figure out how to bury the hatchet and get this done!

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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