Our government in action:

FEMA dumps 400,000 liters of donated water

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

DALLAS — A million cans of drinking water donated for hurricane relief ended up at a scrap-metal business in Balch Springs, Texas, where the water was dumped into a sewer.

The water — 400,000 liters of it, enough to supply a typical Dallas household for more than a year — hadn’t been dispensed when evacuees from hurricanes Rita and Katrina left shelters in Texas and Louisiana. So the 18 truckloads were sent last month to Lake June Scrap Metals, where the cans were put through a machine and drained. The water was dumped and the flattened cans sent for recycling.

“We didn’t need it anymore,” said Don Jacks, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who said the water came from various donors, including the Coca-Cola Co.

The cans were 12-ounce unpainted aluminum and labeled “Filtered Drinking Water.” Joe Perkins Jr., foreman of the Balch Springs scrap-metal processor, said all the cans he saw were stamped with an expiration date. At least some of the cans had expired.

Coca-Cola donated about 40 million beverages during the relief effort, a company spokesman said, and more than 90 percent of the donated drinks were packaged water. Some of the containers did have an expiration date, but the spokesman, Ray Crockett, said he didn’t know why.

“We’re looking at it,” he said.

Though water doesn’t spoil, Crockett said, it may eventually acquire a peculiar taste from its container, though it’s still “very drinkable.” He said Coca-Cola’s Dasani water, for example, has an expiration date of a year after bottling.

And how many days of supplies are we advised to keep handy in case of a disaster before these nitwits send help? Three days? A week? Everyone should have a month's worth at least!

Sue

Amazing...I think our brains (or at least the brains of THESE idiots) are DE-volvling.....

Can you imagine the uproar at the next disaster when cans of water with expired dates were handed out? It's a no win situation.

How can water be expired or near expiration just a mere four months after the hurricane? It sounds like a case of CYA on the part of FEMA and the recycler. If they are telling the truth, and I do not believe they are, the water must have been near expiration when trucked to the disaster scene. I personally believe that canned water would be good..............indefinitely. If not drinkable, it would have many uses at a disaster scene such as bathing, cleaning etc.
I wonder what all that scrap aluminum brought in dollars and who got them. I've got a pretty good idea. I sent a copy of this news article to Mr. Bush at the White House. Not that I expect that he will ever see it.

Do you suppose they had a surplus of MRE's and dumped thousands of them also? <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

if I remember right, they dumped a lot of British MRES

You are right, hillbilly. Seems that they claimed that they were no good or something. I had forgotten about that incident until you reminded me.

In a similar vein, I saw on the news tonight that a lot of the US aid to the tsunami folks was on the black market within 24 hours. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

The British MREs were "condemned" and burned because the US currently has a meat embargo against the UK because of Mad Cow disease.

The containerized water was from several of our beverage manufactors who's products get labeled skunky when their expirations expire.... <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Ben

I have never been able to understand why people think expiration dates apply to almost anything. The dates are only there because govt dweebs "thought it would be a good idea". Do people really think that when June 30, 2006 comes, the stuff is rotting in the container by July 1???

The expiration dates really don't mean a thing, for most products. Tests were done on a large range of medications (you know, the ones that expire in 365 days), and they found that for most meds, they were perfectly good ten YEARS down the road if they weren't subjected to temperature extremes.

I've drunk water from those little foil packs I bought in a military surplus store about 15 yrs earlier, and they tasted just fine. And those laminated foil packs are exactly the same as what you find meat, fruit, nuts and lots of other stuff packaged in at the grocery store. If the stuff was okay when it went in, I'll bet it's perfectly fine five years later.

Think for a minute: if you have a mylar bag of figs sitting in your cupboard, and by the time you get around to being in the mood for figs you notice that the expiration date has come and gone, so you toss it without opening it, what happens?

You go to the store and buy a fresh one! TaDa! And the store makes money off your unwarranted fears.

Sue

Regarding expiration dates, I was watching the History Channel the other night. They had a show (Modern Marvels) on containers, including the humble metal can. One of the factoids was that in the 1940's, a can of meat from an Artic (or Antarctic) expedition from the 1820's was opened and fed to a cat with no ill effects. And cans from those days were closed by hand soldering.