Clean air or clean water?

March 11, 2007

MySA.com: Clean air, clean water interests collide over Helotes debris fire

Into this toxic haze steps an angry man, Helotes Mayor Jon Allan, perhaps the lone heroic figure in this 2 1/2-month disaster.

When Allan speaks everyone listens, and this is what he’s saying: Resume fighting the fire with water. The strategy of using a crane to pull the pile apart — but no water — is stupid and doomed to fail. By discouraging water use, the San Antonio Water System is fueling unreasonable fears and hurting everyone who breathes.

The state’s environmental agency agrees. On Saturday, it began dousing the pile with water.

“Our air,” Allan says in a message posted on the Helotes Web site, “is being held hostage by SAWS.”

SAWS takes another view. It won’t risk contamination of the Edwards Aquifer, which supplies water to 1.7 million people.

The most inept firefighting battle in memory, perhaps in Bexar County history, has evolved to this: clean air versus clean water.

We need both, of course, but the bumbling, ever-changing strategies of the state’s environmental agency — are we on Plan E now or Plan F? — have turned noble advocates against one another.

Allan: “You have a choice whether to drink the water in the aquifer. You don’t have a choice to breathe the air.”

Steve Clouse, SAWS vice president of production and treatment: “Is contamination of the aquifer worth one day or one week of air quality in Helotes?”

Clouse points to the contamination of nearby wells. Allan points to a mystery behind the contamination. No one knows if the fecal coliform is coming from the burning debris or another source.

Clouse reminds that firefighting residues have contaminated other wells. Allan says he opposes contamination, too. But if water became undrinkable, it could be treated. “This is a money issue,” he says.

Clouse: “I understand people getting very frustrated with what’s going on. They heard we’d be done with the fire (last) week. Now we have no idea when we’ll be done. I empathize with the mayor and the roller coaster he’s been on.”

I was particularly struck by Steve Clouse’s question “Is contamination of the aquifer worth one day or one week of air quality in Helotes?” I have to wonder if he meant to sound so very cavalier about air quality in Helotes. That question might even be relevant if it was one day or one week of air quality issues we are dealing with but it is not. It is two and a half months of air quality issues we are dealing with and for all we know there might be another two and a half months in front of us. I have to agree with Helotes Mayor Jon Allan that using a crane to pull the pile apart but not using water to put it out is stupid and doomed to fail. Zumwalt really put us between a rock and a hard place. Clean air or clean water should not be a question any of us should have to decide.

Technorati Tags: Zumwalt, Helotes, Steve Clouse, Jon Allan, mulch fire, Henry Zumwalt, Texas

Posted in Edwards Aquifer, Helotes, Helotes fire, Henry Zumwalt, SAWS, San Antonio Water System, TCEQ, mulch fire, texas