Salina’s Water System Has a Governance Choke Point

By Tom Wilbur

One of the fundamental flaws in Salina’s water system is not simply a pipe, a chemical or a treatment plant. It is a governance choke point. Too much decision-making authority, institutional knowledge and public reporting flow through the same narrow administrative channel. The same chain of command helps define problems, recommend solutions, manage consultants, set replacement priorities and report whether the system is performing properly.

There is not enough separation of responsibility for a public utility serving every home, family and business in Salina. Much of the concern I have today— I have expressed directly to the City Manager, and to her. It’s Martha Tasker, Salina’s long term utilities director.

This concern extends to so much of our water system as it sits today. She has solely overseen the design of our water and wastewater treatment plants, the chemicals used in our drinking water, corrosion control, and whether maintenance and replacement of aging mains have kept pace with the system’s known condition. And has done so without secondary oversight. It’s her way or no way.

The EPA and KDHE do provide regulatory oversight, but regulatory compliance is not the same as independent local scrutiny. Meeting regulatory requirements does not necessarily show that Salina selected the best treatment method, made the wisest long-term investment or replaced deteriorating infrastructure quickly enough. History should teach us something.

According to a 1992 Salina Journal article I reviewed, then-City Commissioner John Divine questioned why Salina was not using plastic water mains when utilities elsewhere were already using that material successfully. This was not during Martha’s leadership specifically. That was more than 30 years ago. But the same mentality was learned there.

The important question is not simply whether Commissioner Divine was right about a particular pipe material. It is whether Salina has had a meaningful, independent process for examining concerns like this—or whether the existing department was allowed to defend its previous decisions and continue doing business as usual.

And that’s where process fails. Repeating the same things over year after year, trying to meet budgets, instead of having a coherent, forward thinking water treatment and replacement plan.

Essential public systems require checks and balances. Salina should establish:

● An independent water and wastewater advisory board.

● Outside peer review of major plant designs and treatment changes. She has made these on her own.

● Independent evaluation of chemical-selection and corrosion-control decisions. She does this on her own.

● A publicly available condition report for every major part of the system.

● A long-term replacement schedule identifying the age, material and condition of our mains. This has been a disaster.

● Annual reporting that measures results, not merely regulatory compliance. She reacts to problems instead of anticipating them.

● Direct public access to the engineering studies and assumptions behind major decisions.

Independent oversight is necessary duplication. For an essential public system, it is responsible risk management. Necessary to ensure we have clean water.

No individual director, city manager, consultant or commission should be the sole gatekeeper for decisions affecting the quality, reliability and the future cost of Salina’s water, like Martha has for a quarter of a century.

Clean water is too important to depend on one narrow chain of command. Martha is nice, but with her degree being in drafting, and her other responsibilities with things like the $88 million River Renewal project, and groundwater contamination mitigation, we need to get focused and take massive action now to correct a tired and aged water distribution system.

It’s more than urgent and is going to require a lot of time and money to make the proper corrections. Martha should move on or retire. We need fresh ideas and unbounded energy to correct the significant water issues throughout the city of Salina.