General (11)
Susana Barrios
From:Stephanie Mercadante <burglin.stephanie@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, August 11, 2026 6:00 PM
To:Public Comment
Subject:\[EXTERNAL\] On Behalf of Marc Herbert
Warning: This email originated from outside the City of Anaheim. Do not click links or open
attachments unless you recognize the sender and are expecting the message.
For public comment on August 11, 2026:
For months, you have heard residents express serious concerns about Anaheim’s water system.
Mayor Aitken responded by labeling concerned residents the “disinformation brigade” and interrupting
public comments. Mayor, criticizing your government isn't disinformation - it’s a First Amendment right.
Residents have been consistent in raising concerns, while Craig Parker has been equally consistent in
providing virtually no answers for the Water Department he manages.
On July 22nd, at the Public Utilities Board meeting, Mr. Parker reportedly declared the water-system
matter “closed.”
Six days later, on July 28th, the water system failed.
The evening failure occurred during Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary celebration, disrupting restroom
access and other operations while tens of thousands of guests were visiting the resort.
Mr. Parker, you declared the matter “closed,” and six days later Anaheim couldn't maintain adequate
water pressure at one of the most visited tourist destinations in the world.
But was this really a surprise? Or could it have been prevented?
I suspect City leadership will say it couldn't have been.
But the evidence raises serious questions about that.
City employees had been warning leadership about deficiencies involving the newer Ion Exchange wells,
SCADA configuration, alarms and automatic shutdown protections.
Those warnings came before July 28th - not after it.
Operators reported that critical safeguards had not been properly configured or validated. And the City's
own incident review reportedly found that alarms had been disabled, SCADA security controls were
insufficient, there was no clear record of when alarms were disabled, and procedures for restoring those
alarms were deficient.
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Think about that. This is a drinking-water system.
After the Well 59 low-chlorine incident, Anaheim went back and modified and tested automatic
shutdown programming. Records indicate those corrective actions were still occurring in 2026.
Then came July 28th.
At approximately 5 a.m., Wells 56, 59, 60, and 61 reportedly shut down simultaneously.
Management was notified.
Approximately 13 hours later, the same four wells reportedly shut down again for the same Low-Low
pressure condition.
So don't just tell residents this was a technical problem.
Tell us what management did after the first failure to prevent the second.
And release the consultant audits. Tell us what they identified before July 28th and what
recommendations management actually implemented.
Because when employees repeatedly warn leadership about system vulnerabilities and then the system
fails...
That's not disinformation. That's a warning.
The question is: why isn't Anaheim listening?
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