RE: Welcome to the National Dialogue

[Shelley Rains <shelley@arco-iris.com>]

Hello all.  My name is Shelley Rains and I live in rural northern New Mexico, between Taos and Las Vegas.  I am deeply involved in local water issues, as water here is supplied very locally by small water associations. We have been following the Arsenic Rule discussions with keen interest, and have been coming under increasing scrutiny/pressure from the EPA in various areas.  I was informed of this dialog by Matt Holmes of the New Mexico Rural Water Association, and decided that I would like to join the forum and see what transpires.  

My comment on the "hard to reach/hard to inform" outreach effort is that some will be impossible to reach, no matter what you do, up to and including hammering on their doors.  To illustrate, the water associations are required by law now to send a consumer confidence report to all their members, called the CCR for short.  Well I did one up and hand delivered a copy to each local household, and mailed the ones to out of towners.  Then over the next few days I queried people on their opinions of the report - only one of the members, an elderly lady who had been treasurer of the association, had even bothered to read it.  Ah well.  Maybe if we charged them for a copy they'd want one to see if we were cheating them out of something.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the dialog and meeting many interesting people online.

Cheers

Shelley