WIWSA PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
March, 2016
I believe that everyone who attended our December Quarterly Members’ Meeting (which was also our annual meeting) agreed that the tryout of the “World Café” was a success. For more than an hour all of our board members, our Group A and Group B membership representatives and two members of the State Department of Health Office of Drinking Water sat in “conversation circles” to voice their concerns about the condition of small ground water systems here on Whidbey Island. We were able to capture the sense of those concerns and that information will morph into the themes for our four meetings this year.
Top among the concerns was the burden of responsibilities on the backs of the small water system boards that administer the purveyance of water to their customer neighbors. Webster informs us that the word “purvey” means to “furnish or supply (especially food or provisions).” In actuality, our local water system boards sell the product of fresh drinking water and therefore product liability is as much a tyrant for them as it is for the makers of cars, airplanes and Coca Cola. If our membership is to be above reproach in purveying water Group A and Group B board members must understand the rules for clean and healthy water production and distribution and, so, we will focus on those rules as the theme for our first quarterly members’ meeting this year … scheduled for 6:00 pm on March 17th at the Race Road Fire Station. I look forward to learning a lot at this meeting!
Warm regards, Jim Patton