Seattle's water fountains and the June heat wave

Dear Diary,

In today's Seattle Times, a front page story indicates shut-off water fountains (sigh, park drinking water fountains) as one of Seattle's heat wave preparation failures.  Now, you and I documented those shut off fountains in May, but a comment on one of your pages, dear Diary, and a fountain I've observed repeatedly for myself, but not yet told you about, showed that during June, the city had turned at least a few more on.  And after the heat wave, we've found and revealed numerous park fountains on that were off in May.

Furthermore, Seattle Public Utilities, before the heat wave, published a pseudo-map of running street water fountains.  It was incomplete, and it lied some, as I've documented since belatedly learning of it, but most of the fountains it lists that I've checked both exist and were running when I found them, as were a bunch of the fountains it omitted.

From my perspective, having followed Seattle's water fountains desultorily for years and rather more assiduously for the past year-and-some, Seattle's water fountain response to the heat wave wasn't a failure.  It may not have been any better than a C, but it wasn't a failure, and at the very least, post-heat wave, Seattle is heading towards an A.  (It is not, in this case, stupid to close the barn door only after the horses escape.  There could very well be more heat waves this summer.)

Let's back out.  The excuse officials have used, probably coast to coast, but certainly around here, to save on water bills by shutting off drinking water fountains, is a valid excuse, it just isn't a good one.  Early in the pandemic, dear Diary, even later than when you were born, it was accepted wisdom that COVID-19 could be spread by touching a surface on which the virus was concentrated.  This is what underlies the mania for sanitiser that has driven much of this country's hygiene theatre this past year and more, for example.  This accepted wisdom was wrong, however, or at least beside the point:  maybe it really is possible to catch COVID-19 by touching infected surfaces, but it's much easier to catch it by breathing, and that's how the vast majority of patients caught it and are still catching it.  You may remember, dear Diary, that at the same time as this touch thing was believed, we were also being told not to mask.  That's how committed, in particular, the CDC was to the touch theory.

Even after the CDC backed down, which it did far too late last year, it continued to represent the touch theory in its detailed pages, notably those relevant to outdoor water fountains.  My belief is that it did so because what those pages actually called for was frequent cleaning ("at least daily"), and cleanliness is next to godliness anyway.  Yes, I really think the CDC maintained that advice, thus justifying this year's Durkan Drought, on the basis of something that unrelated to COVID-19 and unresponsive to strained municipal budgets.  Most of the advice in the main page cited in this context isn't really relevant to outdoors (the rarity of outdoor transmission is another thing the CDC was slow to admit), but when I researched this on May 18, a more often updated FAQ specifically recommended against trying to disinfect sidewalks.  However, a page about buildings, of all things, gives reasonably clear outdoor-specific instructions, and backs up this idea of washing outdoor water fountains.

Now, dear Diary, if any of your readers have been checking those links, they've found that the main page about parks, the first link in the previous paragraph, has effectively been cancelled.  It's "no longer being updated".  The Internet Archive shows that this notice was inserted sometime between June 9 and June 24 of this year.  Far too late, but still before the heat wave.  A city that was thinking of publicly available water as a Good Thing, that it should try to offer its citizens, would have checked that page regularly, and noticed that notice before I did so this morning.  For all my complaints about Seattle's policy throughout the pandemic, it seems clear that Seattle did that, hence the changes announced in June and those I've found so far in July.

It's hard for me to believe that I'm defending the City of Seattle, on water fountains, against my friends at the Seattle Times, but it's true, dear Diary.  Now let me recover from that shock for a while before explaining how Tacoma's response has differed.