The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Our town of La Harpe, Illinois made headlines last week, and not on a positive note.
A boil order went into effect for La Harpe's water supply which resulted in the restaurant (Country Cafe) closing which put people out of work and inconvenienced a lot of other people. The school closed and days will have to be made up at the end of the year.
On April 10th, a city council meeting was held with many questions being answered and many unanswered.
A resigning of the city attorney Diane Diestler (who in my opinion) acted very unprofessional at the meeting as the city attorney, hiring of a new attorney, Mr. Chris Scholz (good luck with your new job as La Harpe's attorney), and many other problems discussed that our city has and needs to be resolved.
I'll end this letter with a quote from Sir Walter Scott who says, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
In my opinion, that is what has happened to our town of La Harpe. We, as citizens, need to get it back on the right track.
Libby Olson
La Harpe
Dear Editor
I want to express appreciation to everyone for 35 years of service to the community.
I would also like to set the record straight on a few items. The mayor, Ryan Kienast, has attempted to make the La Harpe water system look as bad as he can.
The boil order that was imposed on April 8th could have been resolved within 24 hours by simply collecting a sample. This should have been top priority for the mayor, but this sample was never collected until Wednesday, April 12th.
The sample passed and the boil order was lifted Thursday. The school and restaurant should never of been closed, had a sample been collected over the weekend.
The cause of this boil order was due to lack of knowledge of running the surface water plant which resulted in a turbidity violation. This should of never of happened, but rather than correct the problem the mayor chose to allow this to continue on.
Many of you may not realize, but the two city employees have been running the well plant around 14-16 hours a day to keep up with demand. This has been going on for over a week now as the mayor will not allow them to use surface plant. The surface plant has settling tubes in the clarifier, under these tubes is a sludge bed that helps remove turbidity in water. This bed has been disturbed by possibly improper chemical feed causing bed to rise through tubes and go over to filter overloading filters and causing high turbidity readings.
The under drain system has to be cleaned every so often and a new bed built up to prevent this. This is the only thing wrong with surface plant.
The mayor wants everyone to believe that it is years of neglect when actually it is a maintenance item. There has never been a problem like this, but after two short weeks of a contractor from Macomb running the plant this is what happens.
Now the mayor has tried to convince the community how bad the water is. The water has always been and always will be safe and this should of never have happened.
Sincerely
Tim Graves
Former plant operator
La Harpe