As I was getting gas at Shell in Bandera tonight, refilling after my long trip to the big DFW last week, I took notice that the Air-Serv air/water unit was pouring water out onto the ground and into the street.

I went inside to inform the clerk, whose official response was, “Oh, well that’s not our problem. Guess somebody’s going to have a big water bill.”

Sigh.

So I went back outside and fiddled around with the thing until it stopped running like a faucet. The little squeezer wasn’t unsqueezing, so it just kept sending out a steady stream of H2O.

Apparently the Shell clerk didn’t know the fix would be so easy. And apparently she didn’t know the machine has a 24-hour 800 number you can call to report a broken machine.

I came back here to my office and promptly called said 800 number and got voicemail. I left them a friendly message that their Air-Serv unit in Bandera was on the fritz, that I was with the newspaper, and that I was interested in doing a story to “give them some good press about how quickly they responded to the situation.”

We’ll see if they call back.

In the interim, you fine folks help me keep an eye on that Air-Serv at Shell to make sure it isn’t at any given time flooding Main Street. If it is, just pull the little squeezer until it stops, then call the 800 number and remind them to fix it – and to call James at the paper about the story.

It only takes a few minutes to make a difference.

Have any stories to share about witnessing water waste in action? Drop me an e-mail, comment below, or call/text me at 830-688-1564.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Community Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.