Your Town---Is Our Water Safe?

I truly do not like people. Yep. My husband used to call me Cave-Woman from time to time. Yet, I'm into observing people usually in passing by at a quicker than a pedestrian walking pace. I've ran through our little town, down nearly every street. Sometimes even a dead end or two in a run. I have done that in many towns in our county and neighboring county as well. As I'd run through our town, the next two towns and waaalaaah! I'm in Fairlawn running circles in a cul de sac. It was probably some tree-line that drew me to that street.

Yeah, tree-hugger here. But afterwards I'm soon heading more south into Hawthorne, North Haledon, or what have you into the next county. Or I'll run North and through a few towns to Montvale then into another state, New York. Its been about a year since I did that New York run, though. For 30 milers I have to be uninjured, and that not being the case recently. Also, a few years since I'd done my MP to Bear Mountain or Reeves Meadow run. I need an "A-driver" for that, usually a 50-80 mile run starting at one in the morning. "A-driver", just someone who knows my route and I may faulter just shy of home and need a pick-me-up-please.
The essence of this writing is not about running neither dead end streets. Its about a town's transparency and where it seems to have gotten either less transparent or more in your face by whomever is running the town's ship, so to speak. And its certainly not 'full steam ahead'. It's drag your arse backwards for sometime. I'll explain.
This thought has been roaming around in my mind quite often; however, this morning as I began to read an article on Data Centers being subversively built in Clinton, Iowa. An old industrial town of about 24,000. Also filled with farmlands of corn and soy, important commodities. The people and one citizen in particular there began to notice things that were not out in the open. She'd found that a large company, "Blackstone" owned multiple subsidiaries and works in conjunction with privately owned international companies, which concerned the building of data centers in their town. I won't name all the company affiliations here, because there's something else I'm pointing towards. I'm pointing towards the lack of knowledge given to the tax paying citizens of the town, or rather any town.
Nowadays, we could possibly zoom a town meeting, a townhall and the like to give townspeople the heads up if they so choose to be informed in the goings on and needs of their community.
When that space for knowledge is neglected, the taxpayers have little clue of exactly what could be occurring in their town that will not just cost them increased real estate taxes. Yet, it also could become a health hazard on so many levels and impinge on one's own property. If the companies that are involved in a town have either an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with someone in the town...or the person who can make an opening for a company that isn't compelled to be open about certain bidding or companies they have had a relationship with. Because more than likely they won't. I've worked in corporate. I have a clue. Aside from people/lawyers confessing their doings to me during sessions years ago. It was on what they'd done in a town that they now regreted.Too much death I guess. HIPPA and my own ethical compass I hold to, keeps my revealing what was stated by whom in session sealed and remaining only in that session behind closed doors.
Fast-forward to a recent gathering, which Cave-Woman does not partake often in such functions. Its the people thing and I am busy on various writing projects.
A couple weeks ago I attended a meet 'n greet with people running for office. It was done well. Too, I watched, listened, asked, chatted with a variety of people that I mostly had never met in our town. Questions of concerns on the town such as, how revenue is acquired, its transparency in its needs and uses. Too, our water filtration system, along with traffic violation issues not being addressed in our eyes, people unaware that a homeowner has a responsibility to clearing a fire hydrant covered/surrounded by snow/ice within so many feet of their property, and the need for all council meetings to be available online live for the town's people to view and perhaps partake in.
I'll give an example,  when I brought up water filtration costs with three others that evening, I explained how I wrote letters to the Utilities Board Commission,  the governor, congressmembers in the state of NJ, the water company locale office and their corporate office in Brattleboro, VT. Yeah. It seemed noone knew that the said New Jersey water company also had an office in Southern Vermont. I wrote and sent out over 13 letters. The governor's office called me twice. Then I waited. Utilities Board sent me a letter. You know, CYA letter by the Utilities Board.
About a week or so later the New Jersey water company's office called twice. In order for me to change gears, I wanted to figure a diplomatic return phone call and listed the answers I wanted that would benefit the masses of our town.
My water is your water. Its like your children are my children. That's how I think. I told our daughters this in February 2022 when the three of us were looking at California colleges. Our daughters watched me stop a crime in the middle of a roadway as we were parting Los Angeles to go north. Afterwards the potential victim (a petite female college student) ran away from the wayward much larger person who'd grabbed her, as I'd challenged the criminal,  directing them towards me. After I'd thwarted the issue and made certain the young lady got away. Our daughters seeing the young college student break-free, as her would be attacker came towards us. The criminal realized they were outnumbered as they'd gotten closer. Our daughters seeing the freed college student as we'd now left the scene and driven around the corner, the young woman still running but safe. They said, "Look mom, she's still running." I said to our daughters, "That's good. Remember, someone else's child, is not just someone else's child. They are my children too. They are our children."
Yeah, I'm not the only who wants safety, neither am I the only one that wants clean water for the masses. The bigger picture on both is getting and keeping medical costs down, hopefully.
In this water filtration conversation at the meet 'n greet, a woman in her 60s pointed out that we pay for water that is unacceptable. You either have to purchase and have installed your own water filtration system usually $3,000 for the homeowner. Or do what I do and use a on tap filter to an 18 cup PFAS/PFOA filter that removes 99% of those chemicals to two filtered pitchers. Yet, this is  not connected to our shower water. This costs me about $50-60 every 10 weeks. So about $275 per year; however, this woman made a good point. She looked at her husband and said, "The stuff we grow in our garden, that too is effected." Now she's speaking my language. I explained when asked if I'd posted anything on the town's Facebook page on how I wrote those letters innearly 2024. I stated that I had also given three or four templates of letters with addresses to politicians, Utilities Board, and the water company. That was well over 2 years ago.
I explained the conversation that I'd had back in early 2024 with the manager who called from the local water treatment plant of the water company too.  And found out we needed another $140 million plus of funds, which one politician back then in our state had gotten us $3.8 million to reduce the added expense to the town's people's water bill. This of course a drop in the bucket of what I was told originally was $144 million needed to remedy the PFAS/PFOA issues with our water.
In that 45 minute phone conversation,  the manager a relatively young man of about 38 revealed he and his wife had also been dealing with such issues personally. Instead of being at odds, we were nearly commiserating. He gave me the heads-up of how much the people of our town would be billed in the coming months snd years for fixing our system to have clean tap water.
This year has been a tremendous increase in our water bill charges. The charges are about as much as the amount of water I am charged for. Yet, one wonders when will the tap water ever reach a safe level for everyone? ---Jody-Lynn Reicher