Comments | iamnikchick: Response from the SHA

iamnikchick

Response from the SHA

Jan 07, 2008 09:54

Forgot to mention that the Seattle Housing Authority is all over the issue of possible lead in the water at New Holly (which I guess is officially spelled NewHolly). January 4th they had people all over the neighborhood sticking letters on doors. I transcribed it here for future reference.
( The SHA's response )

sha, new holly

Comments 6

mysticalforest January 7 2008, 18:03:37 UTC

Uh ... what the hell?

It was tested positive, then negativeso they left it at that? Wha ... what?

How is that not actionable?

iamnikchick January 7 2008, 18:08:23 UTC

They got the answer they wanted and they stopped looking and didn't bother mentioning it to anyone else. Yeah, I'm thinking they'd better be pretty damn sure on something like "lead in the water" myself.

hackard January 7 2008, 18:07:48 UTC

I think my next step would be investigating how (and how expensive it is) to test for lead in your own water, rather than depending on a statistical sample. I don't care how likely it is that my water is safe; I want to KNOW that it is safe.

And, if it's not, I want to be able to wave a test result in their face and say "Fix this or see your faces on the evening news."

iamnikchick January 7 2008, 18:12:16 UTC

It took getting the SHA members off our Homeowners Association board and someone going to the media to get this response out of them in the first place, so yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if it's going to take more of the same to get problems fixed going forward.

Agree that at this point I'm not going to trust their statistical sample. Best to do it myself. So far we haven't seen any of the signs of "failure" in our system that others have reported but one woman (who owns two units here) had to replace both of them at her expense more than a year ago and has been the squeaky wheel trying to get them to own up to the issue all this time. If not for her, I'm pretty sure they couldn't have been "discussing the heating system issue" with anyone.

adamjury January 7 2008, 18:34:29 UTC

In 2006 SHA hired Pressler Forensics, Inc. to investigate why these systems were failing, so that SHA could take appropriate corrective action.

I read that as "creative" action ... but I'm not so sure I'm mistaken.

bbcaddict January 8 2008, 05:20:23 UTC

dang. that's a real "cover your ass in case of potential lawsuits" letter!