When Thomas P. Jacobus, general manager of the aqueduct that provides water to the District, Arlington and Falls Church commented to the Post today, “Perhaps sometimes we don’t do the best job we could of communicating,” he summed up in a few words the main problem that has plagued the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority — which delivers water from the Washington Aqueduct to customers — over the last few years. And while it remains one of WASA’s primary responsibilities to provide clean drinking water to the District’s residents, it’s not so much disturbing that they may sometimes fall short — it’s that they seem to have trouble telling us so.

Dating back to 1993, the District’s independent water authority has had trouble communicating its troubles with its most important stakeholders — city residents. That year, the EPA threatened the District with $5,000-a-day fines if residents were not warned to boil their water due to elevated levels of bacteria. The same happened in 1996. More recently, in 2004 the Post revealed that WASA and the EPA had withheld information on elevated levels of lead in the city’s water, a problem that ultimately affected 23,000 homes. More recently, a fire at the historic Georgetown Library exposed that up to 10 percent of the District’s 9,000 fire hydrants, which are maintained by WASA, were out of service. And just yesterday the Post reported that an environmental group had found that up to 40 percent of District taps might have elevated levels of toxic chlorine pollutants.

As we mentioned earlier, WASA is trying to assuage public fears, arguing that they have the problem under control. But just like with the lead and fire hydrants, WASA’s inability to communicate with its customers has allowed the issue to blossom into a scandal. Whether or not the threat of chlorine in our water is truly serious or long-lasting isn’t so much the issue — it’s that residents are left to their own devices to hope not.

The D.C. Council has recently considered putting WASA under the control of District CFO Natwar Gandhi, a moved opposed by WASA’s leadership. While the issue is separate from these recent scandals, it does raise important questions about oversight of the water authority. Ultimately, if WASA is doing its best to ensure that the District’s water is clean and safe to drink, they may only need a half-skilled spokesman and press team to ensure that residents know it. If not, well, then something more dramatic might be necessary.