||| FROM ALL SIX EASTSOUND WATER USER OPERATORS |||
First of all, we want to express to the membership how seriously we take our commitment to providing safe drinking water to our island community. One of us is available to you at every moment of every day.
We want you to know that there has been nowhere for us to safely express workplace grievances without fear of retaliation-this is why we chose to Unionize.
It has been very difficult to lose four of our coworkers. This point cannot be underscored enough. They served EWUA with great dedication and deep system knowledge. They played critical roles on our team. For all of us, this went from a dream job to a place we dread going. We have been trying to take all the appropriate routes towards being heard without speaking publicly but these roads lead nowhere. THIS is why the operators are leaving and it is why we are on the brink of losing more.
Employee morale is at an all time low. Despite our efforts to meet with board members and express our serious concerns we have been dismissed. Meanwhile the members were told recently in the “Myths vs. Facts” email that all is well and that the organization “owes it to the dedicated men and women who keep this utility running-and to the members- to respond with facts”
Yes they do owe us that. WE ARE the “dedicated men and women” keeping the water flowing, and the fact is that we are not being respected or heard.
**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**
I’ve grateful that our remaining EWUA water operators and other staff have brought these matters to the attention of the rest of our members and the general public, especially while likely threading nondisclosure agreements and other forms of potential legal intimidation of the sort that large Corporations regularly employ. Just try to obtain a copy of our membership email list, in order to present members with views that the current GM and Board don’t endorse, while the only way to effect any large changes appears to be contacting all members with a proposal to vote on.
I’m also quite concerned by the degree of wasteful spending that apparently has taken place over the past few years, drawing down our formerly large cash reserves (about $1.5 million, according to the 2020 IRS 990 filing) which had dwindled to about $580k (cash plus receivables) by the end of 2024. We don’t have access to any financial information for 2025 at present, let alone this year.
Several current and former employees and board members have told me that since 2021, we’ve spent about $345,000 in legal fees, and $68,000 on an excavator which is rarely used, since contractors to EWUA have their own excavators. A Kubota rock hammer ($12,000), never used, still on the pallet it arrived on. Have those $27,000 Kasco tank mixers ever been used for anything? If not, are there any future plans for using them as part of our water system? Did we really spend $3,600 on a Suzuki ATV, and $87,000 on a new vehicle?
Brian Ehrmentraut, who had been EWUA Board Chair for roughly a decade during the Kamen era, told me that when they would need another truck, they’d go out and find a good used one, like our OIFR is doing to find the best value possible for replacement fire engines.
I imagine that it’s easier to spend money when you are spending other people’s money. I would love to see leaner and meaner budgeting in the future, also keeping in mind that it is our Board that has the fiduciary responsibility to our association.
In a recent Note from the Board sent by its email system to (presumably all 1200+) EWUA members, it was stated that “We are aware that a small number of individuals have been circulating claims about Eastsound Water . . . that do not reflect the reality of our operations.” Anyone present at last Tuesday’s meeting (as reported in another article in these pages) could recognize that such a statement was PATENTLY FALSE.
For one, there were close to a hundred members present (I counted 55 on one side of the aisle), almost all voicing strong dissent at EWUA relations with its employees — hardly “a small number.” And there were over three dozen signers of a letter published recently in the Orcasonian, again hardly “a small number”:
https://theorcasonian.com/letter-to-editor-crisis-at-eastsound-water-users-association/
Among them were three former EWUA board members, one of them a previous board president, three former EWUA employees, three current OIFR Commissioners, and a former San Juan County Prosecuting Attorney.
A board that does not pay sufficient attention to such valid concerns, responsibly and repeatedly voiced, is habitually DEAF to its members and should be RECALLED. Unfortunately, some of us tried that over a year ago and failed to remove the core leadership responsible — due in part to the abuse of the EWUA email system as above, repeatedly demeaning the efforts of one of our number and sewing uncertainty among the wider EWUA membership. Members should therefore read these emails in the future with a very large grain of salt.
And it therefore unfortunately may become necessary to appeal to Higher Authority — the Department of Health and Attorney General’s Office — to address these very valid concerns about the stability of the water system on which we all depend.