serinde

A funny thing happened on the way to the computer last night...

The phone rang about 10:30. It was an automated recording from the borough, saying that all residents should boil their drinking water for 3 minutes until further notice "as a precaution"...but not why. That's okay, think I, I have TEH INTARWEB.

There was no mention of this event whatsoever on the web sites of: the borough; the county; the state; their respective OEMs; the local paper; the local TV stations; any other news sites. Good work, guys. Great job on informing the public.

Eventually, by trolling through other headlines of local sources, I found a story about a body being found in a tank at the Totowa water treatment plant. This didn't say anything about what sort of tank, or even what sort of treatment plant or if it had a damn thing to do with drinking water (nor was I sure where Totowa was, but the article mentions "Passaic Valley blabla" & which we are right by Passaic County), but further gooooogling for that story turned up another one that quoth:

The water commission's 800,000 customers did not have their service interrupted. Water was provided from alternate sources while the search was conducted.

While tests showed no signs of contamination, customers were being advised to boil their water for three minutes before cooking or drinking as a precaution.

What this says to me: "You've been drinking water from the tank with the body in it for the last 24 hours, but you should stop drinking the water now that we've drained the tank and the water is coming from a different reservoir, because now everyone knows about it, and, like, ick."

So I went to the tap and had a big honkin' glass of water, because by then I was damn thirsty.