No warning on water

Let me get this straight: Our televisions and radios are routinely pre-empted by an automated emergency broadcast system to warn us of events like bad weather, child abductions and school closures. We have no choice; the warnings just come.

However, when our neighborhood drinking water was recently contaminated with E. coli and a boiling order was issued to minimize health risks, I guess it wasn’t important enough to warn our vulnerable residents. Some of us work or have lives that don’t always allow us to watch local news broadcasts every night, nor is everyone on the planet glued to Facebook.

However, if you did watch the TV news during the boiling order, one broadcast began with the latest Gonzaga University basketball game, coffee shop baristas carrying pistols, the latest drug bust and weather. Then five commercials and, 20 minutes into the broadcast, a 15-second comment on contaminated water and a boiling order in the Spokane Valley. Shame on the Pasadena Park Water District, Spokane County Health District and local media for their negligence.

Uh-oh, feels like I’m going to have another round of diarrhea.

John Owens

Spokane