EDITORIAL: Water Board's poor notice of non-fluoridation harms residents' health

Jan. 17—All Buffalonians who read the small type on the last page of the city's water quality report from 2015, please raise your hand.

No one? It wouldn't be a surprise. This notification should have been printed in larger, bold type, and on its own separate page. If not leafletted throughout the city.

Here's what it should have said: The Buffalo Water Board has stopped adding fluoride to the water system. It's seven years later, and Philip Reed spoke to The News about his 7-year-old son, Jonas, who brushed his teeth every day and still had five cavities. The elder Reed did not know about the absent fluoride. Likely most of the more than 200,000 other customers of Buffalo's water system also did not know.

The Water Board stopped adding fluoride to the water in 2015, citing what its said was a need for upgrades and capital improvements to its system. The small-type notice seems insufficient for change that was bound to affect dental health around the city.

Buffalo water officials expected fluoride to be restored sometime after March 2016. Then the estimate was delayed to December 2017, then 2018 and 2019, when predictions ended. Instead, the board settled for a statement indicating it did not expect fluoride addition to return until "completion of various capital projects."

Water Board Chairman Oluwole A. McFoy explained that the city in 2015 began replacing its "archaic" dry sodium fluoride system to a more effective wet fluoride system. The board put the project on hold after the water crisis in Flint, Mich., which prompted nationwide awareness of the dangers of sudden changes to public water systems. The private company Veolia, involved in the Flint water crisis, also manages Buffalo's water system.

Fine. But seven years?

McFoy said the city worked with the University at Buffalo to develop a "state-of-the-art" pipe laboratory to test the new fluoride system. The wet fluoride system has proven safe, he said, and should be installed next year.

Too late for the Reed family, which has since moved to North Tonawanda, whereupon the father confirmed fluoride is being added to the water. Buffalo residents are still waiting.

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