72nd Street Residents’ Suffering Has Been Lost in the Dyster Shuffle

In Bangalore, India, people, without running water supply, wait for water supply tankers to fill up the village tank so that they can collect water for the whole day.

 

The Reporter has printed jokes about the water pipes filled with winter ice and we’ve analyzed the ins and outs of the problem from one end to the other for more than two years. Finally, the mayor says he’s going to take the proverbial bull by the horns and, in a manner of speech, “get ‘er done” as Larry the cable guy is won’t to say.

While a crafty Mayor Dyster moves to address a problem that he knew full well should have been fixed as soon as it reared its ugly frozen head 30 months ago, something has been lost in the mix: a real-time appreciation for the suffering of the residents who have been forced to live without the basic right of access to fresh running water.

A person can’t cook, can’t clean, can’t shower and can’t use the toilet without running water.  Fresh running water makes it possible to survive day-to-day, and if you don’t believe that, shut your own water off for 24 hours and feel the elemental burn.

72nd Street is lined with modest, neatly maintained homes and somehow it has been forgotten that there are people in those houses…real, live, people…men, women and children of all ages and of all manner of health and individual personal circumstance.

Advising the residents without water to visit the fire hall down the street hardly constituents a fix to the problem. And, residents desperately, creatively, running garden hoses from a house with water to a house without water is no solution.

Municipal infrastructure fails in the best of run cities. That’s life. But it’s the manner in which a city government deals with such failures that defines that administration. In this case the Dyster government has been weighed and found to be critically lacking.

The mayor’s recent attempts to politicize the problem and portray himself as the White Knight while he has been, in reality, Black Bart, is too much to stomach. His behavior in attempting to re-write history would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

Mr. Mayor, there are people…real, living, breathing residents of your city that occupy those homes on 72nd Street. You’ve let them down by denying them the right to fresh running water for two winters and for that there is no excuse, no spinning, no press release long enough or slick enough to make it all better.

Mr. Mayor, the personal drama of your re-election pales in comparison to your duty, as the duly elected leader of the city, to assume responsibility for the problem and immediately bring a legitimate solution to the residents of 72nd Street.