This past weekend, Boston was hit by a tragic, dare I say, life changing event.  No, it wasn’t a SARS epidemic, or the eruption of a volcano, or even a train derailment.  2 million people had to boil water over the course of 3 days.   eeekk!

I would be surprised if you didn’t read about it since it was considered a national event.  On Saturday evening, a big pipe that supplied water to Boston and many surrounding towns burst at a seam. (News article).  Now, before you get weepy eyed over the agony faced by those that fought for bottled water or that needed to boil water for one minute to protect themselves from drinking lake water, understand that the pipe was fixed (within 2 days) and it turned out that the water from the lake tested fine.

However nightmarish this event was, rest assured that our government pounced on this like a kitten on a ball of yarn.  Governor Patrick surveyed the hole created by the broken pipe (is he an engineer?) with rolled-up sleeves.  And thankfully, it didn’t stop there, he was able to convince our president to declare a state of emergency, calling on the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to aid in the rescue efforts (from what is still unclear to me).  And not to be out done, the state senate will hold hearings to “get to the bottom of this” and determine why a 7 year old 10 foot in diameter pipe that carried tens of millions of gallons of water daily could possibly fail.  They want to make sure they find those at fault and get their pound of flesh.

A number of questions have popped up in my mind.

• Who thought it a great idea to have such concentration in our water supply?
• Are we past the point where mechanical things break just because?
• Is it really so costly and drastic of an event that required national assistance?
• Why did our president react faster to this than to the Gulf oil spill?
• Shouldn’t the state senate be asking why we are so dependent on one system rather than asking how to make that one system more sophisticated?
• Why were store shelves depleted of bottled water yet were stocked with milk and fruit juices which cost less (on average)?

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