The Maui news. [volume] (Wailuku, Maui, H.I.) 1900-current, 1921-10-04
A T FOR

1t sounds bad, all will admit, to say that children in a school
are being supplied with Glitch water to drink, but sometimes
words give an impression of conditions worse than actually exist
and perhaps such is the case as to the water supply for Maui Gram
mar and High School. 1 ii true that water is taken from a ditch
but it is a covered ditch and the point from which it is taken is
said to be far beyond where there are camps or houses. Others say
such is not the case, however.
Pure water is highly important to every community Is it is
to every school and t is only in more recent years that it has come
to be recognized how dangerous to life and health is a contaminated
and on farms to see an open well within a few feet of the house,
of an clubhouse, a cesspool or an open drain. Even today in some of
the rural school yards such sights may be seen. Agreed, that such
conditions should not be permitted to exist. Agreed that the fact
that they do exist in some places is no excuse for a lack of the
Maui has more than its proportion of small rural schools which
are far away from communities that are large enough TO allow
the county to install water systems. There are schools that are
dependent on rain water caught and stored in tanks and there are
other schools that get a meager supply from other sources. To put
in a water system for each rural school, piping the water down
from springs or putting in reservoirs far up in the hills would
bankrupt the county. Equally does it seem impracicable to pur-
chase supplies of distilled water for all of the public schools at the
expense of the taxpayers and reports that come in from time to
time show there are other schools that are in worse position than
is Maui High.
Surface water is not necessarily deeterous to health when
drunk, if the water shed is free from sources of contamination.
such as typhoid. Much surface water flows into the lao reservoir
and through the WanukuKahului mains. BY no means all, prob
ably only a small proportion of such water users, boil their supply
for the table or use distilled water for beverage purposes. Condi
lions at the high school are not so much worse than in Waikiki
but they sound worse when the words Glitch water are used to
describe the supply.
The children were offered spring water that is said to be pure
and refused to use it. There is no other supply than the one at
hand that could be secured except through an outlay of thousands of
dollars. There is no provision in school funds for the employment
of some one to run a water distilery even should one be installed
and it is said to be impracticable to boil each day the quantity
needed in the kitchen. AS a matter of fact, distilled water can be
purchased considerably more cheaply. But if the county buys for
one school it must buy for all, or else discriminate against some.
There thus appears to be only one way out, the way that the
Parents Teachers Association is reported to be undertaking, to
assess each family sending a child or children to the school 20 cents
a month for each such child during the school year for the pur-
chase Of distilled water and sanitary drinking cups. This comes
to less than one cent a day for each such child during the school
year.
In the school the water supply is just as good, or as bad, as is
the supply for the community adjacent to the school and the same
is probably true, as far as the county can make it, of all the schools
of Mani Titt1a rnOra cn ha cka IF h ouptu acpaoaIv IN n
face of days of financial stringency.