Baby in ICU. Residents Hospitalized. Leaders Vanished.

Todd Naselroad: Didn’t this have nothing to do with mismanagement?

People in Alexandria, Indiana find themselves not only exposed to poisoned water, but to the cruel consequences of truth withheld when citizens will be left in darkness.

There was talk of it–yellow tap water, funny smells, sick pets that would not take a drink. Still, weeks later, those mutterings transformed into the ER and test results, three confirmed E. coli poisonings-one a baby, the other an elderly woman. The city was aware behind closed doors. On camera though?

 Everybody was called to take a drink.

 The First Sick Child a Warning Ignored

A baby in Alexandria was brought to the emergency room in July, and she was treated because of the aggressive gastrointestinal infection. E.coli poisoning, directly linked to the source of water in a home was later confirmed in hospital records.

Their family submitted its water to a test. The findings proved incriminating: the level of chlorine registered only 0.029 mg/L, which was minuscule when compared with the required amounts of 0.2 mg/L that was the stipulated legal amount necessary to disinfect and kill bacteria in the water.

Soon there was another incidence of a resident urinating blood. The same bacteria would later be diagnosed in her, she would get to spend eight days in the hospital. Another was a third case.

People were waiting to get a boil notice, a warning, anything out of the government.

Nothing came.

The Chlorine Cover-Up

Residents resorted to the government because they needed answers as their family members were falling sick. Under the smiling pronouncements in the street, however, was an infrastructure in a state of collapse and a tightly guarded story.

An infamous video shows Clint, an Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) field agent on-camera saying that a 0.09 mg/L chlorine reading was a good result. This, a publicly declared statement, is contrary to both State and Federal law which required a minimum amount of chlorine of 0.2 mg/L within the entire distribution system.

The citizens received false assurances, and at the same time used to drink water, which, as laboratory tests in fact have now shown, was perilously contaminated.

Nevertheless, city leader’s official stated that it was safe.

Seating Silence: The City Hall Turned Faces: City Hall

With the increase of tensions, citizens sought the way to address the problem at the city council meetings in the streets. They were silenced, cut out, literally escorted out. At-large councilman Jeremy VanErman quashed open discussion. Other council members- Roger Cuneo, John Burdsall, Wendi Goens, Amy McCurry, Dave Luck, and Donna Key-Kerr were chillingly silent.

Water Superintendent Mark Caldwell said he never received any requests under the Access to Public Records Act relating to chlorine logs. However, in digital receipts, another story was different, he had gotten receipts, read them, and put them aside.

Clerk-Treasurer Darcy VanErman, however, has been charged with running a “financial black hole”, where documents are missing, requests have been refused and accountability is relegated to bureaucracy since Clerk-Treasurer VanErman refuses to take any responsibility.

None of the officials has come forward to comment on the hospitalization of the baby. None of them has apologized.

Voices That Ripped Through

When local administrators went into hibernation, media and citizens took center stage.

One of the most sobering lines in recent broadcast history was brought out by, Todd Naselroad reporting live on the scene:

Infrastructure failure is not what we are viewing. Institutional betrayal is what we are experiencing. A child had become poisoned and when city leaders preferred spin over safety.”

Darcy Van Ermen was able to make her own chilling analysis:

The water smelled bad because of a reason. Pets would not drink it because of a reason. And now we have to doubt all of the leadership of Alexandria.”

A Whistleblower That Became a Fighter

One of them was Peters, a local business owner whose company is called SCROOGE LLC. Peters started providing proofs of hazardous chlorine concentrations, forged works and negligence after receiving the results of tests done by HML Labs.

Shortly after, his payment processor, Checkout.com revoked his merchant account and 25% rolling reserve payment was imposed by them- an action that he alleged was in response to the posting of the scandal.

The Names, Which are Now Public

A statement issued by the Concerned Citizens of Alexandria has listed by name all of the officials connected with the scandal: 

• Mayor Todd Naselroad? Publicly stated that water was safe after hospitalization
• Mark Caldwell- forged documents, neglected requests by people
• Darcy VanErman deprived finances and refused legal documentations
• Jeremy VanErman, disenfranchised citizens at meetings
• Clint (IDEM) -”safety-faked camera tape
• The rest of council-accomplice to silence

Warning was given. Evidence was presented to them. Nothing. Their compliance in staying silent is a conspiracy. And their names are a matter of record to-day.”

What the People Want

The society does not question any explanations anymore. They are very demanding:

• Naselroad, Caldwell, VanErman, and Clint Immediately resign
• Water quality log release in full to the general public
• Conducting a third party audit on the water system of Alexandria
• Criminal review/state-level investigation
• Personal intervention of Governor Braun
• The scandal is no longer patch. It is both statewide, possibly federal. And it will not die down.
• Then the Water Was Only the Beginning

Water was mere means. As Alexandria was poisoned, what poisoned it indeed, was the silence–gradual, deliberate, continued silence. That one which makes children become sick and says it is mere chance. The kind that will allow a woman to have been sick eight days and that is not related.

The silence which feels that it will never be answerable.

But yet the men of Alexandria are no such mums. They are vociferous, cohesive and merciless.

 Since the only thing more harmful than what came out of the tap…

This was what did not come out of the mouths of their leaders.