Let me introduce myself before you read further. My name is Jack McFeeley. I am a member of the Norfolk Board of Selectman and a constant reader of NofolkNet. I am very supportive of the efforts that Vijay and Andras have been achieving with this site. They have done a tremendous job of reaching out to everyone in Norfolk and I commend them for their tireless efforts.

I am posting this note to steer straight into the questions that have been posted and not to avoid them. I hope the readers appreciate my attempt to answer their concerns.

I have read with a lot of interest all of the recent postings to NorfolkNet. I am sincerely happy to see the number of people who are interested in our Town. In the best of times, in the worst of times. Too bad it's the latter right now. Needless to say, many of us have been very busy the last few days. So have many others at Town Hall, in particular the Water Department and the Board of Health. I have now had a chance to read all of the notes posted here on NorfolkNet and I am willing to put my head in the Lions mouth by trying to comment on some of these. However, as I do so there will inevitably be a few points that I will miss, so when I miss something please bring them to my attention and will rectify the oversight. I will not hide anything.

A cursory reading of the postings to NorfolkNet show that many of the earlier questions are speculative and are answered by subsequent events. I will try to address these and also those that are not answered.

First, the general theme is that the Town and the Water Department did not do well in notifying the residents and allowed a dangerous situation to linger.

I do not agree. I think we all did well.

The Town was unexpectedly notified of the BOIL ORDER by the State on Monday afternoon August 7, 2000 at 3:30 PM. The order was lifted then next night just past 5 PM. In that twenty-five plus hour period there was a Herculean effort on behalf on those involved in the Town to notify the residents and correct the problem. We were so successful in isolating the problem (at the water tank) and mega-dosing the system with chlorine that the problem was over before all of the residents were notified.

Jim Martin, the Water Department Superintendent, isolated the large storage tank on Monday night and treated the tank and distribution system separately. By noon on Tuesday it was obvious that the problem was going to be quickly corrected and Jim was continuing to work with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to collect samples to verify the success of his efforts. That afternoon the problem was over. The Boston Herald even had a headline stating that ``Wakefield could take a lesson from Norfolk'', because of our exceptionally rapid response to the situation. Wakefield recently had a similar problem where there was apparently some questions about that town adequately notifying the residents..

Yes, we missed some. Sure, letters were not sent to the water-takers. There wasn't enough time.

There are only a limited number of people in the Water Department. There are three people. Besides Jim there is only one worker and one clerical staff. To supplement this staff in the emergency, Jim called the Walpole and Franklin Water Departments and on Monday night and they came with equipment and helped us.

If letters were sent out on Tuesday, they would not have been delivered until Wednesday. At that time the problem was over! At that point it would have only exacerbated a controlled situation.

Instead, the Board of Health quickly responded to the emergency on Monday afternoon. Betsy, the BOH Administrative Assistant, immediately notified all of the local and Boston media by phone and fax such that by 6 PM that evening the notification was complete. It was on all of the news channels that Monday evening. Norfolk Cable was also notified and it was also on the NCTV bulletin board that evening. Furthermore, I was in the Board of Selectman's Office at 3:30 PM that afternoon at the same moment that the state faxed the town about the BOIL ORDER. Vijay Radics of NorfolkNet was also in the office at that moment and the information was conveyed to her. She was able to post the information on this bulletin board to the Town that evening as well as the other efforts that we were taking. Please see the initial 8/7 posting from Vijay and the two 8/8 Updates as well as the Post Office posting. [ Editor's note - Vijay was in town hall for a completely unrelated reason, and was not told about the E. coli. No-one there thought to mention it, or to show her the flyers they must have been getting ready. She heard from a neighbor later that evening, who heard from another neighbor who heard on the radio. ]

This drew two responses,

8/8 10am I understand that Norfolk has three wells from which water is drawn for residences. Do we know which well(s) was suspected? - RCC

8/8 Whether we have e coli or not there should be a review of how the info gets to people. Is there a plan in place that gets activated when a situation arises like this ? Nothing on local tv etc. - JO.

The answer to the first question is that the tank appears to be the culprit and not the wells. The answer to the second question is NO. Not for a situation like this. However, there will be. We are now discussing several options including a reverse 911 and a Civil Defense option where we can preempt the Cable TV Broadcast with an Emergency Alert. Actually there are pro's and con's to both in this type of situation. There are different degrees of emergencies and the question is do we need to use the sledgehammer for all?

The Board of Selectman held their meeting that Monday night. We made a complete announcement the moment we went on the air at 7 PM and added that we will repeat the announcement in about an hour and a half later. We asked our viewers to notify their neighbors and friends and to watch at that later time for updates. We hoped that our appeal would be well received and we believe it was. At 8:40 PM on Monday night we repeated the appeal and discussed all of the ramifications. Based on the comments that we received this was extremely helpful in the emergency.

A further review of subsequent postings to the bulletin board show that Vijay and Andras were quite proactive in keeping the message active within the town. My sincere thanks to both of you for your efforts in helping our town.

I was sorry to read the next message, which states that,

8/8 7:08pm I live in Norfolk and only heard about this E. Coli problem today (8/8/00) through a family member who notified me of a newspaper article. Up until late this morning, I have been using the water to shower, brush teeth, wash vegetables, etc. I think it is disgusting that the town has not taken a proactive role in getting this information to towns people. In a life and death situation such as this, resources should be expended to either knock on every single door in the town, or at the very least, drop a note in EVERY MAILBOX. Additionally, I understand that chlorine can kill the bacteria. It would have been preferable to hear that you should not use the water due to high chlorine content than to hear (THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE) that you can contract a deadly disease by using the TRUSTED TOWN WATER. - AD

AD, we're sorry we missed you. By 7:08 PM on August 8, 2000 the problem was over. We did make the high chlorine announcement the night before at the Selectman's meeting. We stated, apologetically, please ignore the `chlorine taste' in the water while we aggressively attack this problem. We were very proactive. We also asked family members, friends and neighbors to notify those who we may have missed. Apparently that part worked for you since a family member notified you. Next time we'll try to do better to get to you sooner. You can count on that. In the meantime, we'll also work on not having a next time. Please be assured that if we detected a clear and definite immediate threat to the public health in the distribution system we would have been knocking on every door in town. There was no problem detected in the distribution system by Monday and we then isolated the source. As such, our measured response was appropriate and, in retrospect, on the mark. We have to guard the public health but not create a panic.

There was also a question of signs posted within the town to warn the citizens. The following two postings addressed this situation. On Tuesday Morning the Town Administrator ordered the Highway Department to prepare BOIL ORDER signs for the center of Town. I personally asked the Town Administrator on that day to included signs for the entrances to town to be posted along with the familiar Water Ban signs. So the web-site posting shown below that was received on 8/9 was already answered the night before on 8/8. Actually, by 6:30 PM the BOIL ORDER was revoked and the sign was lowered.

8/9 11:55am It is truly unacceptable for the town not to have notified all residents of the problem. It should be mandatory to post large warning signs at all entrances to the town, such as they do for water bans. Alternately, a flyer in every mailbox would do the trick. This failure to notify could result in serious illnesses for towns people and legal ramifications for the town. I am the parent of a one year old, who falls into the "greater risk" category, I am outraged that more was not done to alert people of the danger. - JLM 8/8 7:22pm The town has put up a sign at the intersection of Main St. and Route 115 advising residents about the boil order. Unfortunately, by 6:30 pm the sign was only legible to pedestrians crossing from the Sunoco toward Town Pizza, as it must have been knocked over by the wind and was lying on its back in the mulch on the traffic island.

I should also add that we cannot put notices in the mailbox as JLM asks. We need to mail them. I've already stated the reason why we didn't mail letters since the crisis was already ebbing by Tuesday afternoon. Federal law prevents us from depositing circulars into mailboxes or on mailbox posts. There are no exceptions to the law! This would be a big legal ramification for the town if we did so.

BAC, below, also refers to putting something into the mailbox. I'm sorry that we missed you also in our notifications. If you have suggestions on how we can do better let me know. Call me at 528 0202 and I'll be glad to talk with you. The town government is not run poorly. It is in fact run by a few permanent people and a cadre of volunteers. If BAC can help improve this situation, that's great. I do take exception to the comment about the ``Casual attitude that was displayed on the Norfolk Cable channel''. They had the message on the air promptly on Monday evening and then again on Tuesday evening. With respect to BAC's comment about ``I'm sure that none of our elected officials have ever experienced a family member becoming sickened by E.Coli''. Your comment is a bit presumptuous. Yes I have. He had AIDS. He died. Its easy to use hollow words. It's harder to act with your heart.

BAC writes,

8/9 3:58pm The water quality may have been restored, but the problem persists -- I am outraged at the way that the E.Coli situation has been handled. I have two small children and cannot understand why we were not notified sooner -- We had been using the water for 3 days before finding out on the nightly news that we had a problem. How can a town government be run so poorly? Surely if this had happened in a major corporation, someone would have been fired. Maybe it's about time our town be run like a business -- Notices should have been placed in each and every mailbox in the town of Norfolk. How is it that Water Ban information gets out to the townspeople quicker and more efficiently than a Life Threatening situation such as this?!!! And one last thing... I am angered by the casual attitude that was displayed on the Norfolk Cable channel regarding this situation. I'm sure that none of our elected officials have ever experienced a family member becoming sickened by E.Coli, because if they had, I assure you it would have been handled better. - BAC

Next. LW also comments about the need for signs and notices on cable TV. These comments were already addressed in this text. I will not address these further. Cable TV was very proactive and signs were posted. If LW has some specifics where it didn't happen please comment or call me. LW also says that, ``That last posting from 8/9 @ 3:58 says it all.'' I think I already addressed that question above.

PMD also writes,

I would like a response from town officials. I want to know who is in charge, if anyone, of conveying this information to the public...you know, the same public that keep this town running with their hard earned money. This is the information age and most people have computers, cell phones and even fax machines in their home along with their telephones. We are willing, however, to accept flyers in a mail box as an acceptable means of spreading the word that we are all in danger. Unfortunately not even that was done. In the Boston Globe an article announced that the residents had been "notified" of the contamination. I would like to know which residents those are...the friends of the person who tested the samples. - PMD

Yes, I notified my friends! I also asked them to notify their friends! We also sent an appeal to everyone in town to notify their friends! I'm sorry that PMD wasn't notified as a result. The other rhetorical questions that are raised in this posting have been answered. With regard to computers, cell phones, and fax machines, lets be realistic. How are we supposed to use these to notify the people? We don't have an email database. We don't have people's cell phone numbers. We don't have their fax numbers. This is not a bad idea, but we haven't reached the point where we have started such a database to be able to functionally benefit by this technology.

Finally on 8/10, JO writes,

8/10 8:56am The answers by the Water Dept are not acceptable. A review is needed of the present procedures. - JO

Yes, we agree. The meeting that we had with the Board of Health and Water Department tonight on Thursday, August 10, 2000 addressed these issues. As I was writing this tome, I noticed that Andras correctly summarized the events of the evening so I won't repeat them here.

In conclusion, let me just say that we have just past through a traumatic event in the life of the town. It is over. If we are diligent it will never happen again. However, let me add that we have to learn from this episode and put in place safeguards that will not put the citizens of our town at risk again. This will be our next action item. We can breath a sigh of relief that the crisis is over, but we have to look ahead to the opportunities for improvement that lay in front of us. The Norfolk Board of Selectman will commit itself to the public that we will not have these events repeated. We will not fail in this effort.

Thanks,

Jack McFeeley