Fredonians and students alike can agree on one thing: something must be done about the water. As a member of both camps, I see a connecting thread between us. We all have a right to safe drinking water and we’re wasting time and money with our current infrastructure. The boil water advisories are hostile to all of us and in the words of Mayor Michael Ferguson, “this community would be a ghost town if we don’t stop this”. We’re being shortchanged and our community — locals and students — doesn’t have to take it.

We have faced the 10th boil water advisory in the last three years.

Fredonians are united under the same paranoia: when will the next advisory be? How long will this one last? We live in a sad reality where basic necessities such as water are not guaranteed to be safe.

Access to potable drinking water is a human right, and the government is not doing its job if it can’t provide it. All classes of people — to varying degrees — have been getting inconvenienced, if not sickened, by our water.

Water is a necessity and we need about a gallon a day. Water by the gallon costs about $2 — that is, if you’re able to find it after an advisory is released — and weighs about 8 pounds. A week’s worth of water for one person would cost $14 and weigh about 56 pounds, which is $14 and 56 pounds too many.

Our elderly population is far more likely to suffer from the negative effects of ingesting the water. One could argue, “why not just go to the store and pick some water up?” How well are elderly people picking up 56 pounds of water?

Not to mention, a quarter of our fellow citizens live at or below the poverty line. Access to clean drinking water is much harder when you don’t have a ride to the store or the ability to stock up on days’ worth of water. It would cost about $50 and weigh over 200 pounds to supply a family of four with a week’s worth of drinking water.

Fredonia University students, though they don’t permanently live here, still feel the effects. To the surprise of no one, On “Go Big Blue Day,” a major recruitment event, another boil water advisory was announced just in time for the newly arriving potential students and families. How accommodating must it feel to know your drinks had to be boiled before being served, and how must parents feel?

Communications major Sal Rappoccio offered his parents’ take on the matter: “I’ll tell you one thing: my parents do not like that I have to deal with this. ‘You should move back to Buffalo so you don’t have to deal with poison water.'” The gut-wrenching amount of boil water advisories does not make him — or any of us — feel welcome.

Ferguson states, “Fredonia water alerts happen so often because we have a deteriorating system, and multiple system failures.” Our treatment plant is at max capacity, according to Sarah Laurie, the university’s director of environmental health and safety and sustainability. Our dam has been uninsurable for 25 years due to its decrepit state. All it takes is a nasty hundred year flood, as Ferguson puts it, to knock it down and kill or displace any one of us downstream.

Historically, the plan has been to postpone and let the next administration deal with it. Fredonians have been left frustrated and alienated from the pattern of behavior from our administrations. Our needs have been pushed to the side as a mere inconvenience.

Our current administration seeks to buy our water from Dunkirk through the distributor North Chautauqua County Water District. The proposed costs could rise over $25 million, about double our yearly budget. Some citizens, like those of the Save the Reservoir group, are vehemently against it.

They instead seek to renovate our existing water treatment plant but according to Ferguson, “A water treatment plant alone just to replace it four years ago was priced at about $38 million just for the water treatment plan. So you’re probably looking at $42 or $44 million now. The dredging would be hundreds of millions of dollars because you have to build a road to get the equipment into the water.”

Deciding who’s right is like swimming in Canadaway during a storm. We are struggling to come up for air amidst a torrent of debate, and the answers and actions we need are obfuscated by the murky waters. What is the cost of postponing action again and again? All of our community deserves better.

Rappoccio, who lives off campus, described how the repeated advisories cause “a gut feeling” that another one is coming. Rappoccio has even gotten sick from the water which he said was “two or three times ago, which is a crazy thing to say.” Rappoccio added that people flood Tops and Walmart as soon as the advisory goes out.

Fredonians are already busy enough; having one more spur of the moment chore to do is more than an inconvenience: it’s unfair. Accessing water from a store may not feel like a privilege but what if you are without a car? What if you’re wheelchair bound and there’s two feet of snow on the ground?

Individuals aren’t the only ones affected. Businesses along Route 60, to a lesser extent, are still inconvenienced. They provide a useful tax base as well as jobs for the community and take hits when the advisories are issued, leading to a decrease in profits.

I’ve worked at Denny’s and I’ve had to work through a boil water advisory. I can attest it slows the flow of nearly all business. I interviewed Morgan Brown, a current Denny’s employee and writer for The Fredonia Leader. She stated “We have to shut down everything. We can’t use our soda machine. We have to pour individual drinks from 2-liter bottles. It’s a hassle every time.”

Just as Rappoccio and Brown put it, what we have to put up with is crazy and a hassle every time. New York State is more than capable enough to provide a basic human right. The governor’s office, at least in theory, supports that sentiment. Governor Kathy Hochul signed an infrastructure bill that offered $1 billion in aid to water infrastructure in struggling communities, saying: “New York is committed to funding water infrastructure upgrades because every person has a right to clean water.”

We shouldn’t have had to wait decades to get what we are owed. It’s important we recognize the injustice we face as a community. We can all chip in. Go to weekly Village meetings at 9-11 Church Street. Make your complaints known: voice them at meetings or post on social media. Call the governor’s office (518-474-8390) and give her a piece of your mind. The money we need is already available, we just need to fight for it. Think of how appreciative the community — students and locals — would be to finally have some lasting change. Everyone deserves accessible, safe, and clean drinking water. It’s time we stand up for that right.

Patrick Cotter is a junior political science major.