A friend of McHenry County Blog attended the water symposium at McHenry County College the Saturday before last and sent me the following notes:

The Community Water Forum, organized by the Environmental Law and Policy Center on November 17, 2007 was an ominous statement about the priority of water in the minds of the people of this county.

I counted about twenty people in the audience aside from the MCC class that was there for the first half of the forum. Of those twenty people, more than half were presenters or organizers of the event.

Support from county and municipal leadership was nonexistent. I only counted one elected official and one candidate for office, both of whom are already aware of the issues.

The forum was a very basic, audience participation, clicker type of info delivery that was clearly geared to those who did not come – people who don’t know or care that we have a problem.

Some very well educated and informed speakers spent the afternoon breakout sessions presenting to each other, which is always valuable, but certainly missed the point of having a “community” water forum to begin with.

I could be wrong, but I did not see any press there, and the coverage given to advertising the event ahead of time was minimal and in the case of at least one paper, gave the wrong start time.

All in all, a distressing and telling afternoon.