The unrecognized and unmonitored power of the WV Department of Health and Human Resources was likely the reason for the recent overhaul within the agency in Charleston. The corrective actions took place due to the overloaded child welfare system, where in January the DHHR had a reported 50 percent increase in abuse and neglect filings since 2014, but only 30% of Child Protective Service Workers were filled.
The WVDHHR is often thought of in this manner, but the many hats of the DHHR are seldom realized by a society that relies on their competence for health and safety. When you break down the definition of Health and Human Resources, this is a government agency with the power of life and death, and yet, unless you’re a name on one of their case files, the general public seldom gives them thought.
Perhaps you should.
Calhoun learned the hard way through Calhoun EMS and the fact that until it reached crisis level, and our EMS service lost it’s license to operate the State Department of Health and Human Resources did very little monitoring. And now we seem to be dealing with the same issues on safe drinking water. Just as they were aware that Calhoun was having issues with EMS, their follow through took considerable time. The same seems to be true in their monitoring of public water.
David Johnson, Chief Operator of the Grantsville Municipal Water System, runs a tight ship on drinking water safety. And by way of disclosure, of course I’m bias, he is the husband of Ridgeview News. However, my bias, doesn’t change truth. He is currently at the age of retirement, a consideration that was further incentivized by frustration from a recent violation from the WVDHHR.
Grantsville Municipal Water Plant received a violation for September 2022 when Johnson failed to test the turbidity during a 15 minute overtime cycle. The turbidity testing must be done ever 4 hours when the plant is in operation. When he worked an additional 15 minutes over and did not provide the reading (which was done) for that 15 minutes, he was violated. A violation that cost the city financially in publication fees and tarnished an almost impeccable record of consistent monitoring for greater than 25 years. To further his frustration a second violation came after 18 months of inability to feed fluoride due to the unavailability of granular fluoride during the Covid era. Powdered fluoride was available but it gummed up the saturater and would would not feed. This issue was notated on his monthly reporting form in January of 22 to alert the State that this was the case. Flouride is an optional additive for water systems, but once it’s added, state approval must be granted to stop. Even though he advised the state of his inability to run fluoride, it was 18 months before it was mentioned. When he reached out to the WV DHHR Environmental Division to discuss the matter, DHHR staff returned his call two days later to discuss it. Because Johnson’s attempts to reach the Environmental Engineering Division of the WV DHHR officials frequently fail, he asked how he was suppose to notify the state the issue. The DHHR representative informed him to call his District office, which Johnson responded that “the District Office had been aware.” After his multiple attempts to reach the Environmental Division failed he reached out to the Governor’s Office, the Office of Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, and Senator Donna Boley’s office to advise them of the lack of cooperation from an agency that had the power to violate his plant, but not the courtesy of helping him to resolve the matter.
David Johnson has taken his job so very seriously over his lifetime of serving the community as Chief Operator because of the dangers to public safety if it’s not taken seriously. A matter of concern not felt by every operator across the State, or every system in charge of public water.
Currently both Mount Zion Public Service District, and that of Pleasant Hill have failed to provide the Monthly Operational Reports to the State. Mount Zion has failed to do so for nine of the past twelve months. Pleasant Hill for the past 2 months. Other matters of compliance has been with chlorine, E coli, TTHM, and HAA5.
While Ridgeview News is not suggesting that these matters of compliance have placed the public in danger, it has certainly placed us at risk.
The Compliance and Enforcement Program determines whether a Public Water System (PWS) is in compliance with all state rules and federal regulations pertaining to the Safe Drinking Water Act. Such determination is based on results of the chemical/contaminant monitoring required for each PWS. If a system is out of compliance, a violation is then issued requiring the PWS to do public notification activities to inform the public that here was a problem, what happened, and what they are doing to fix it.
The public is notified typically through a legal advertisement in the local Newspaper. For Calhoun that would be in the Calhoun Chronicle. The legal ads are the very small printed listings usually in the back of the newspaper and often overlooked because of the print size and legal jargon that is not of interest to most readers.
This issue has raised the question, if State Violations are for the purpose of corrective action, why is there no action after the violation if measures to prevent it from continuance haven’t occurred?
For more information on specific violations for each system go to https://wvdwv.gecsws.com
Below is a current violation for Mt. Zion PSD Received this week by the Mt. Zion Office.
E.coli bacteria are harmless and exist in the intestines of people and warm-blooded animals. However, some strains can cause illness. The presence of E. coli in a drinking water sample usually indicates recent fecal contamination. That means there is a greater risk that pathogens are present.
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