November 15th, 2022
Dear Warner Parents and Staff,
Here is an update on our water issue. We are still plagued with arsenic in our water. Since 2014 we have worked with the state to no avail. We have a large engineering company and many state water experts trying to solve the issue and the end result was that they recently moved our issue to a completely new team for fresh eyes. In the meantime, we continue to have bottled water brought in for students and staff to drink. The kitchen uses a point-of-use Arensic filter for cooking and washing dishes. This solves our arsenic issue till a permanent solution can be found. There is no risk to anyone’s health who attends or works at Warner Unified.
In the late May of last school year, we received a boil water alert with E.coli bacteria present in our water. This creates an issue in the kitchen as they now have to use prepacked food which isn’t as good as the homemade food that we pride ourselves on. We also have to use handwashing stations instead of our bathroom sinks. This problem was only to be a month or two during the summer but it keeps dragging out. The cause of the bacteria is not known, we have brought in a cross-connection specialist, we have had all of our piping x-rayed and tracked, and so far we still can’t determine where the bacteria is entering the system. We currently are chlorinating the water that kills the bacteria but this doesn’t lift our boil water order.
I have put political pressure on the governor’s office. The last I heard was that my summary of the problem was on the governor’s desk and to wait a week. We have our monthly meeting this week, if the meeting is status quo, with the same answer of “kicking the can down the road” then I will be looking to take drastic measures to help bring more attention to this problem. I want to assure you that students are safe at Warner and that we are doing everything we can with our limited resources to fix this problem. It creates a huge inconvenience to the students and staff and we are tired of waiting for our government to do something. I will send out an update as soon as there is something to report. If you have any questions you can email me at david.macleod@warnerusd.net.
Sincerely,
David MacLeod
Superintendent