A-Pall-ing FEMA Failure

I spoke with a colleague on the hospital's board of trustees who is an engineer for a local company, Pall Trinity Micro, that make filtration devices, including mobile filtration units that can take in severely contaminated water (as in nuclear fallout contamination bad) and deliver potable water on the other side. These filtration units are built into 18-wheeler trailers and run on diesel. The four existing units can crank out a total of 1.2 million gallons of potable water each day.

These units were on lease to entities in Oregon and another distant state (I forget which one). These customers were called and asked if they wouldn't mind if those units were sent to the Gulf Coast to help provide water to New Orleans. They agreed, and in exchange, Pall suspended rental payments. The units were sent in the general direction of New Orleans as my colleague contacted FEMA to coordinate location of these units. The only thing requested was military protection for the operators of the machinery. Otherwise, they would be supplied without cost.

Those units now sit in Kansas and Arkansas, unused, because FEMA can't figure out how to place them where they are needed. My colleague is fed up trying to work through the bureaucratic BS needed to get them located where they can do some good. Instead, Pall eats the cost of not collecting rent, of transporting the units cross-country, and storing them where they sit unused; in return, Pall doesn't even get the warm fuzzies for having done something for the public good.

It is disgraceful that this capacity exists, the company that manufactures it is willing to donate it, and it sits unused. One would think that 1.2 million gallons of potable water from diesel-powered units would be of great benefit to New Orleans. But FEMA, it seems, has more important things to do. Maybe if they could deliver the water to Arabian horses, FEMA would move faster...