Editor:

The Discovery Bay Community Services District (CSD) has contracted with Southwest Water to provide expertise, preventative maintenance and mechanical service abilities. Southwest's mechanical service has, to my knowledge, been satisfactory. Its onsite expertise, as evidenced by the unsatisfactory handling of the 110,000-gallon sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) is questionable.

My real concern is the lack of preventive maintenance. Southwest Water is the expert and we look to it to provide appropriate maintenance, but Southwest Water hasn't been doing it! I am confident it knows how to routinely check the safety limit switches or put its eyeballs on a pump after a shutdown, to ensure it is operating. That simple act would have prevented this costly sewage spill.

Our general manager is paid $95,000 a year. One of his three areas of responsibility is to oversee Southwest Water's operation and preventive maintenance of our sewage system. The five members of the CSD Board are responsible for ensuring the general manager's satisfactory fulfillment of his responsibilities.

Change is needed now! We need to start with new directors on the CSD Board. In November, I will be casting my vote for Mark Simon and Ray Tetreault.

Lowell Thomas

Discovery Bay