Press Secretary Charles P. Reyes yesterday said he “cannot really cannot comprehend Rep. Sablan’s hostility for the governor. This is now a moot issue. We have established reliable power and the schools no longer have this concern. Besides, the governor was only acting in the best interests of the…school children, moving to protect their health and safety, by merely acting on the best advice and recommendations of the regulatory agencies…. He acted quickly on their recommendations to close four schools and he also acted quickly to open those schools once the regulatory agencies were satisfied that the schools had complied with the standards.”
For Sablan, however, “this emergency declaration raises serious doubts about the governor’s credibility and judgment, and about the justification for the numerous other emergency declarations that have been issued during this administration.”
The governor claimed that “dangerous levels” of total coliform bacteria had been detected in the water tanks at Marianas High School, Kagman Elementary School, Koblerville Elementary School and Oleai Head Start Center, and that these bacteria
“presented an immediate and extreme threat to the safety and welfare of children.”
But Sablan, Ind.-Saipan, said “when a public water system has more than one positive test result for total coliforms, they are required to notify customers about these results within 30 days — hardly an emergency. The standard [federal Environmental Protection Agency] notices…that are sent out also advise the public that total coliform bacteria are generally not harmful.”
She added, “When a public water system has a confirmed positive test result for E. coli or fecal coliform, then public notice is required as soon as possible but no later than 24 hours — this is considered an ‘emergency.’ ”
Sablan said “total coliform bacteria are generally not harmful. They are found naturally in the environment, in the soil, and in the water. They are tested for in water because their presence may indicate the presence of pathogenic bacteria. If total coliform bacteria are detected, then the water is also tested for fecal coliform bacteria, and resampling is done. If the resampling is clear then the mere presence of total coliform bacteria does not in and of itself constitute an emergency. Public notice within 30 days is required, but that notice should also advise the public that the presence of total coliforms might have indicated a problem with either the water treatment or the distribution system, that the problem was not considered an emergency, and that corrective measures were taken. An immediate school shutdown was simply not justified for tests that showed only the presence of total coliforms which are found everywhere in the environment. The governor either received his information from incredibly incompetent public health officials, or he blew the whole thing out of proportion of his own accord and for his own purposes and caused unnecessary chaos and upheaval at four public schools.”
Sablan has a degree in conservation science from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico where she graduated summa cum laude in 2003. She is a former waste reduction and recycling coordinator of the CNMI Division of Environmental Quality.
Fecal coliform bacteria are harmful, Sablan said.
“I looked at the test results and only one school tested positive: Oleai Elementary. The school immediately cleaned out their water tanks, and the water was resampled the next day and came up clear (negative) for both total and fecal coliform. The test results for that school came out before the emergency declaration was issued.”
Yet Oleai, she noted, was not one of those schools that were shut down.
Sablan said if “the governor were genuinely concerned about the so-called immediate and extreme threats posed by total coliform bacteria, he would have, for the sake of consistency, shut down Garapan Elementary and Seventh Day Adventist School as well. These schools also had positive total coliform results the week before school started. Also, he would not have allowed Koblerville Elementary to reopen on Wednesday, because as of Monday, one of Koblerville’s water samples tested positive for total (not fecal) coliform. But the point is, the test results did not warrant an emergency declaration, so none of these schools should have been shut down in the first place.”
She added, “If it’s true that water samples couldn’t be taken from the four ‘affected’ schools before Monday, Sept. 8, because there was no water, why did the governor not mobilize all resources to ensure that the tanks were cleaned out and that clean water was purchased for these schools? Did he do anything at all to help the schools that he was apparently so concerned about, or did he just shut them down?”
Sablan said “if it’s true that there was such a public health threat posed by the water tanks at those schools, why didn’t [the Bureau of Environmental Health] or DEQ intervene of their own accord, based on their own findings? Did this really rise to the level of a gubernatorial declaration of a state of emergency?”
Sablan also noted that the administration waited until the week before school started to “suddenly inform schools that they all needed to have their water tanks tested.”
The governor’s shutdown order, she said, “caused significant chaos and upheaval for hundreds of students, teachers, school officials, and families. Children actually wept when they were turned away from school. And for what?”
Sablan said she is still gathering more information.
“I don’t think I have all the test results, and…I [had] tried unsuccessfully to find out if there was a summary report or some kind of transmittal letter from DEQ or BEH to the governor recommending shutdown of the schools,” she said. “I keep thinking for some reason that I might be wrong about all this, but that might be just because I can’t imagine why anyone would knowingly and deliberately do something so reckless — and to children, especially.”
