A Wake Up Call
As much of eastern Oklahoma struggles to break the grip of a crippling ice storm, many thousands are without electricity and the many things we all take for granted and which are dependent upon electricity to function.
Several eastern Oklahoma towns are currently without water owing to the lack of electricity to operate pumps, treatment plants and other infrastructure necessary to keep the water flowing to homes, businesses, hospitals, shelters and fire departments.
Once the current crisis has passed, the debris has been cleaned up and life returns to a semblance of normal, Oklahoma needs to look back on this disaster as a wake up call and enact legislation mandating that water districts, both rural and municipal, maintain standby generators with an adequate fuel supply on hand to operate ‘off the power grid’ for at least one week.
Certainly such a mandate will be costly for some water districts, especially the very small with few customers and the very large with multiple facilities. However when one considers the implications of an entire town without water to drink, cook, bathe, flush toilets and more importantly fight fires, the costs are not that prohibitive.
