Commentary By Patric Hedlund, TME

This is a story about getting a clean glass of water in Frazier Park. This is also a story occurring in a place that just saw its Kern County Board of Supervisors get kicked off of YouTube due to misinformation and conspiracy theories about alleged fraud in the last election—spoken at the public comment podium while the meeting was streaming on Kern County’s YouTube channel.

“Strike one,” the YouTube umpires said. They called a “No misinformation allowed” foul. And then, a few days later, YouTube unsaid it. Their administrators had second thoughts. But by that time it was too late, because the Kern County Board of Supervisors had already decided not to stream their meetings on YouTube anymore—too risky.  People say crazy things at board meetings these days. A second strike could happen next week. Crazy is part of the public zeitgeist. A third strike could happen in a snap—and that would mean Kern County could be banned for life from YouTube. The supervisors decided they should safeguard their access to their Kern County YouTube channel by not letting unscripted Kern County public opinion near it.

But how does this go together with that drink of clean water? It does. Bear with me. Media is very busy talking about media in America this week—with the world’s richest man Elon Musk promising to spend $44 billion of his pin money to privatize Twitter “to preserve free speech for democracy.” In his case that may mean multiplying the Twitterverse tendency to become a disinformation factory, while the nation’s community newspapers that actually report facts struggle to survive.

The Mountain Enterprise has been reporting about the Frazier Park Public Utility District (FPPUD) for 56 years. We have killed a small forest of trees to publish stories on the subject. [For the record, that is not really true, our newsprint  DOES NOT come from wild forests but from pulp tree plantations that use three-inch diameter pine saplings as crops grown specifically for newsprint.]

And yet, it takes just a few minutes of journalism malpractice by a fairly new reporter at a Bakersfield television station and a few dollops of Facebook conspiracy theories flipping through local social media bulletin boards to create a small panic in this town about what may [or may not] be in the water. Yes, that is a direct Dr. Strangelove reference. And it is what is occurring here.

Reporting by a Bakersfield television station last week about the Frazier Park Public Utility District was misleading and left inaccurate impressions with the public.

KBAK didn’t bother to report competently when they put people on our community television screens making allegations that are not supported by any facts. They also seemed to suggest that those statements were also in the Kern County Grand Jury report.  But that is not true either. It was TV sensationalism with no editorial oversight to say “whoa, back up, that goes too far; it isn’t true.”

Nor did the reporter bother to Google to learn from previous reporting on the subject. And the reporter, it appears, did not bother to read the Kern County Grand Jury report that was the spark for the KBAK story in the first place.

What the KBAK report did was to whip up anxiety and demonstrate the level of willingness people have to accept permanent anxiety rather than to  bother with understanding the facts. Because facts are hard. They require critical thinking.

The Grand Jury Report

The Kern County Grand Jury issued findings of an investigation into FPPUD on Friday, April 15. They describe the challenges the FPPUD faces, the responsible measures the district’s board and management have taken to alert and serve the public in a lawful manner, and the management’s efforts to secure a contractor to replace a 60-year-old well and casing in the midst of a statewide drought when competent drilling rigs are in high demand.

The grand jury’s report also reviews the glacially-slow annexation of Lake of the Woods Mutual Water District.

That will be finalized when all conditions are met to accommodate state funding requirements, including bringing both aging districts up to modern standards.

Meanwhile—and this is the important part—both districts have worked to gain ratings of “excellence” from the  Special District Leadership Foundation for maintaining transparency in their operations.

Both districts are providing healthy drinking water that is in compliance with California Department of Public Health and federal Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Our Plan For You

So, here is what this old fashioned, wood-pulp based, fact-respecting newspaper is going to do. We will, over the next few weeks, tell you again the story of a hard-working, responsible board of directors and field crews who have kept an aging water system together, and are now being assisted with millions of dollars of state and federal tax money to do it right.

It s an exciting story in slow motion—and a hard one. We look forward to taking you on that journey.

Photo captions:

Some of the members of the FPPUD board and staff, showing pride in their Special District Leadership Foundation transparency certificate. It spotlights excellence for exceeding state standards in reporting to the public. The public district is required to be accountable and transparent in their operations.

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This is part of the April 29, 2022 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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