The Washington County Water Conservancy District is on a logical holiday. Again.
Responding to geophysicist and retired dean of engineering Wayne Pennington’s excellent and detailed expose of the manifold and dangerous flaws in the Washington Water Conservancy District’s Dry Wash Reservoir plans, Zach Renstrom, the WCWCD’s general manager, truculently insists the “current design is sound.” Except, it’s not.
Pennington has provided the WWCD with extensive documentation proving the hazards of their design, including ground-water encroachment, landslide potential and the “threat of windblown dust carrying material that has precipitated from the reuse water.” Pennington, a prudential professional not prone to hyperbole, said, “In fact, I think the model the district has will not stand up … Frankly, I think if any professional engineer put their imprimatur on that model [he or she] would lose their license.”
Completely oblivious to the deplorable design which leaves 43 acres of post-sewage treated chemicals and toxic dust to blow into nearby Ivins homes, Renstrom says, “the district has not encountered dust problems at its other reservoirs.”
Perhaps Renstrom is taking a memory vacation as well: Not one of the WWCD’s other post sewage treatment reservoirs leaves 43 acres of noxious dust exposed to wind. Not one is in the middle of a neighborhood populated with young children and seniors. And none are as hazardous to human health. According to Dr. Ellen Arch, who spoke at a recent Ivins City Council work meeting on the subject, Dry Wash toxic dust will result in “the exacerbation of respiratory diseases and a significant increase of exposure to toxins, carcinogens and neurotoxins that cause cancers, birth defects, autism, Alzheimer, ALS, pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases, Parkinson’s disease and a whole host of other medical problems.”
Stop the Dry Wash. It’s just too dangerous.
Kathleen Brown Sanders, Ivins
