For Fredonia water users, the recent crisis was a huge headache. Twenty days of having to boil water to consume is far too long.

Making matters worse, however, was the lack of communication that came from the village administration and its board. Until the mayor’s press conference on the 18th day of the boil-water alert, there was never any indication users also needed to be “conserving water.”

In addition, there were two causes to the crisis. The first was the filters needed to changed. The second, which came from a county Health Department meeting, was an algal bloom was in the reservoir.

So was it both or was one the cause of the other?

Besides that, how could no one know the interconnect between the village and city of Dunkirk had been down for years? That was never publicly acknowledged in those years, but someone — in one of the two entities — had to know of the issue before the recent emergency came down.

And that’s the worrisome part. We’ve known for years — through our newspaper’s coverage — about just how unstable the water concerns are here. It’s almost a curse.

We live near a Great Lake, not a desert. Yet our water rates are higher than those in Tempe, Ariz., and we’re boiling water as though we are a Third World country.

Fredonia’s recent water crisis may be over for now, but history is not on its side. A crisis will return again.