A group of members recently circulated a letter making a series of inflammatory claims about Eastsound Water’s operations and that letter and our response is below:
Dear Members,
Thank you for your letter and for the engagement of so many members who signed it. Our volunteer board takes member concerns seriously, and we want to respond to each point you have raised directly and transparently.
Financial and Workplace Concerns
Before addressing your specific requests, we want to take a moment to correct some of the assertions in the letter, because we think an accurate shared understanding of where things stand is essential to any productive path forward.
On the claims of financial malfeasance — including the potentially libelous allegations of fraud — we requested factual, verifiable supporting evidence from those making these assertions, and none has been provided. The Board nonetheless took these allegations seriously and conducted a detailed investigation overseen by an outside law firm, devoting considerable time and resources to reviewing documents and interviewing witnesses. That process concluded unequivocally: the allegations are entirely without merit.
Given those findings, we are reluctant to spend more of our members’ money to relitigate allegations lacking evidentiary basis, without further information to justify such a cost. We stand by that conclusion and believe it is important for members to know that we conducted a comprehensive investigation and found no wrongdoing.
On the toxic workplace allegations, the Board’s position has been consistent: we have investigated — and will continue to investigate — any allegation brought forward with enough specificity to act upon. We have done that with every allegation that met that standard, and in each case, the allegation did not hold up. We recognize that some members dispute this conclusion, and we want to be direct about why we reached it. General or subjective allegations, without supporting evidence or specific detail, cannot be the basis for a formal finding of wrongdoing — not here, and not in any fair process. We have asked repeatedly for specifics, but those requests have gone unanswered.
We also want to correct the claim that operators have no forum to raise concerns. The Board has consistently invited specific, documentable concerns to be brought forward through proper channels. That invitation remains open today, and the pending Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) offers additional options.
On the Request for a Third-Party Investigation
We are open to this conversation, but we think the sequence matters here.
EWUA is currently in the final stages of negotiating a CBA with IBEW, which represents our seven-person bargaining unit — a process we hope concludes in the near term. The proposals tentatively agreed to directly address several of the workplace process issues raised in your letter, including the establishment of a formal grievance procedure. In other words, some of what you are asking for is already being built into the structure of how this organization will operate going forward under the terms of a new CBA.
Launching a parallel outside investigation while those negotiations are still active would not lead to a fair outcome for anyone involved. It could complicate a process that is close to resolution. Once the CBA is ratified, we commit to sitting down with member representatives to discuss in good faith whether an outside review is still warranted, and if so, how to structure it in a way that is fair, credible, and genuinely useful to this community.
We would also note that the cost of any outside investigation is borne by all members of this cooperative, which means we share responsibility for ensuring that any process we undertake is appropriately scoped and delivers genuine value to our members, who are ultimately financing the work.
We appreciate the passion members have brought to this conversation, and we look forward to continuing it.
Respectfully,
Teri Nigretto Board President,
Eastsound Water Users Association
An Open Letter to the EWUA Board
At the recent Board meeting on May 19th, over 75 members attended and delivered a clear and urgent request through public comment and applause: We need a 3rd party investigation into the workplace environment at EWUA.
This meeting was also attended by EWUA’s operators, who have had nowhere to go with their serious concerns about a deeply toxic workplace and grievances about the General Manager. Members were read a public letter written by all six of EWUA’s certified operators which detailed how working at EWUA has gone from a “dream job to a place we dread working,” how their “morale is at an all time low,” that “serious concerns have been dismissed,” and how “this is why operators are leaving and why we are on the brink of losing more.”
During the response from Board members, some Board members shared their concern and need for action, some shared they felt things were going pretty well, and another repeated that all allegations and concerns with the General Manager had been investigated by the Board and debunked.
The Board claims to have investigated all grievances while not a single EWUA operator has been interviewed about their grievances or allowed to present their concerns in any kind of formal forum. This discrepancy further highlights the urgent need for a neutral 3rd party to intervene and investigate the workplace.
Furthermore, the Board’s claim that they cannot talk to operators because of the ongoing union contract negotiations has been refuted by the operator’s union representative who confirmed that “Union negotiations do not prevent the Board from conducting a neutral 3rd party investigation into workplace concerns, and the Board is not prohibited from communicating with staff members regarding workplace or operational issues”
Only with an impartial assessment of the troubles facing this organization can the tide begin to turn towards stabilization and growth.
This is what we ask of the EWUA Board:
1. Immediately begin the process of identifying and employing a specialized 3rd party workplace investigator to interview all parties: employees, management, Board members, and former employees who have left in the past two years.
2. Prior to June 3rd, engage with a committee made up of members to review the options for a 3rd party investigator and discuss timeline and implementation. A suggested volunteer member committee will be presented to the Board.
3. At the June 16th public Board meeting, present to the membership the 3rd party agency who has been hired for the workplace investigation and a timeline for the investigation of Board-GM-Staff interactions.
4. Once the investigation is complete, make the results publicly available to all members, and implement a public timeline for addressing report recommendations.