I’m not disagreeing with the boil order – it was certainly the right thing to do.
But that doesn’t mean the boil-water order was a needless hassle for up to 2 million people, officials said, noting that state and federal regulations required the order and that it was impossible to know whether the water was drinkable until tests were performed on it – and that took more than a day.
“This was a precaution. We didn’t know what the quality of the water was going to be like,” said Robert Keough, spokesman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
Hopefully, if something like this happens again, there will not be the over-the-top rhetoric (crisis? really?) from the media and the general public reaction will not be to push the panic button. And maybe some people who had the ability to boil but emptied the shelves of bottled water instead will react differently. But I’m not holding my breath.
I’ll also note that navigation within my local supermarket was difficult yesterday as I had to maneuver around stacks of bottled water that was on sale for really cheap.
Some of this seems like the unintended consequence of not letting the price of bottled water rise when it all of a sudden becomes more valuable. I’d imagine that a noticeable but nominal increase might have done a lot to discourage hoarding.