A participant asked if the Havelock’s contamination of the water system was preceded by an unusual rain event.
Ross:
A few things preceded it, but yes there was a significant rain event a couple of weeks or so beforehand. Twenty years ago, they’d had a similar sort of rain circumstances, and there was a pathway between a pond that was in the paddock to the well. And that was what that’s all worked out in the end.
And they’ve known about and forgotten about it and on it goes. As I’ve said this was the thing, they should never have reactivated that bore or that well. They knew it was sort of wasn’t as good as it could have been. And they were just too busy doing other stuff.
One of the things also that’s come out, this sort of coming back, the operations and maintenance thing Heather, is you can get too familiar with your assets.
And you can run around and do stuff like that, the painting, all the busy work on the grounds and you just don’t see the problem because you are not looking for it.
And even with the safety of ladders going up on to a tank and stuff like that. You know that can get quite rusted, or the bolts are loose or, and people just don’t see it because they go up there every weekday or every week or whatever.
And this is just human nature I think, but it’s something that you really want to watch out for, or you only become blind to the problems because you sort to see them every day and your mind is switched off and been a problem.
Again, I think sometimes coming in at that next level up, the planning level, the strategic level, and having an audit, yes, so we call them an audit. Say, you do a process audit or a service delivery audit or whatever it is and just get another set of eyes on it, and sometimes it shows up.
Hopefully, before they happen, problems are sitting there waiting there for you just because people stop seeing them.
Particularly in treatment plants, tanks, pumps, I think that’s where, wells, that’s where those sorts of things can be quite prevalent. And I wonder with Flint; they might have been a bit of that as well.
They just forgot about the fact that they had lead pipes. Everybody knew, but sort of forgot about it there.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sunset at Albuquerque by Ross Waugh
[…] and Ross Waugh began discussing the terminology and understanding of the phrases, “operation and maintenance” and “rehabilitation and replacement” in the previous […]