Letter to the Editor: THE FAILURE THAT IS UNITED WATER

Dear Editor,

United Water New York is run by a foreign enterprise consistently putting profits above customer health. Aliases of recent vintage include “Suez” and “Gaz de France.” But hold aside the security question of off-shore control of our drinking-water supply. United Water’s August 16 mailed notice arrived on the 26. It indicates that my July drinking water violated “turbidity” (cloudiness) regulations. Turbidity can lead to “disease-causing organisms.” UWNY didn’t send a timely notice to provide real-time options. UWNY sent the notice only because the law compelled them to do so – and sent it post facto, as late as possible.

United Water failed to prepare for hot days in July, and resulting elevated algae and manganese levels in the Lake DeForest Reservoir. A similar mailing arrived when United Water delivered arsenic-contaminated drinking water to Rockland County in 2007 (not to mention notices issued in the decade prior regarding radium in United Water Toms River’s water supply, leading to indictment of two UWTR managers). Now, United Water New York wants our families to drink “desalinated” Hudson River water sourced directly downstream from Indian Point nuclear facility’s strontium-90 discharges and other toxins. As reward, United Water wants a rate-hike approaching 20 percent, from homeowners. They sell our Rockland County water to Bergen County customers and then blame us, the victim, for the concocted fiction of short supply. Instead, UWNY must dig deeper, conserve more, and practice safer treatment and filtration. If United Water can’t, then regulators must either compel it, or else pull their franchise.

Very truly yours,

John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Ramapo

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