From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week the high stakes battle for U.S.

Senate ignites with a bitter clash between the candidates.

Also, Ty Masterson and Cindy Holsinger collide in a rowdy, jeer filled showdown at the state Fair governors debate.

But first, a generator failure and plant shutdown plunge half a million Kansans into a sudden tap water crisis.

Why did it happen?

And why is the new half $1 billion water treatment facility still not operating?

We'll break it all down right now on Kansas week.

Welcome to Kansas week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

Half a million residents across Wichita.

Eight neighboring communities and McConnell air Force Base woke up Wednesday to a stark warning.

Don't drink the water.

Wichita Public Schools canceled after school programs.

Wichita State blocked off drinking fountains.

Restaurants faced sudden disruptions.

The chaos starting at the city's 88 year old, soon to be mothballed water treatment plant.

A precautionary switch to backup generators went wrong when two units lost power and two others failed to start.

The plant went dark for 45 minutes and that crashed the system pressure across the entire region.

Water pressure has since been restored, thank goodness, and the boil order lifted after testing showed no significant contamination.

The incident, though, is shining a new spotlight on the city's new but long delayed $573 million water treatment facility.

City officials recently signed a certificate of occupancy for the new facility.

Yet the plant will not be fully operational until at least late spring or early summer of next year.

Here to discuss this and some of the week's other local and state news is Wichita City Council member Michael Hazel.

Republican State Representative Susan Humphreys, former fourth district Democratic congressional candidate Esau Freeman.

And Deb Lucia, the former chair of the Sedgwick County Republican Party.

Welcome, all of you.

Thanks for coming this afternoon.

Council member, I've got to start with you here on this.

Tell us a little bit, number one, about how this happened.

Oh, there's been a lot of accusations, and we'll talk about some of that a little bit.

But how did we get here?

Well, how lucky am I to be on for this week?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was, I don't know if anybody got to see it.

There was a pretty severe storm, including a, pretty severe electrical storm with it.

And from what I understand, there were temporary pauses in the electrical grid.

So it was kind of stuttering there for a bit, and they switched over to the backup grid.

Now, there was, I guess, up around 5:00 in the morning.

Some of the generator start failing.

Just like you indicated.

And we we had 45 minutes, and we had had it.

Just a lack of pressure.

So first off, I just want to say to the public Works employees, thank you for all the work that you did to get this done in a somewhat timely manner.

We have to wait 24 hours for the testing to come in with Cdbg.

And when that happened, it immediately we, we lifted the restrictions.

It's just whenever it slows down like that, there's a potential for bacterial contamination within those lines.

So, out of an abundance of caution, working with, the state county Department of Health environment, we were able to get through this.

But there's definitely questions and lessons to be learned.

And we got to make sure that moving forward, especially with the new water treatment plant, that we make sure that there are redundancies built in so that way we don't face this again.

And one of the biggest questions on the public works director, Gary Janssen, has said that the facility is and always has been, staffed 24 over seven.

How did we not notice that there was a complete shutdown for 45 minutes?

Lots of people are asking that question.

Well, the facility staff 24 over seven.

How did we not know something was wrong?

I believe we knew that it was wrong.

Is just we immediately went in to try and fix the problem before anything else.

So, there was communication after that.

Again, that's something we got to look at is how do we, get the word out?

Everybody knows it's pretty difficult in today's climate to communicate with everybody.

So we got to take a look at that and make sure that we have our warning systems in charge as well.

Looking at just ways that we can do things better moving forward.

Deb, Lucia, this is definitely affected our community in a negative way.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses have been severely affected.

They've had to shut down.

Tell me your thoughts.

Well, it's just strange to me that it happened.

I mean, we have you disposed to have a backup system, so how could the backup system not work?

I mean, that's the big thing we have to figure out is why did it happen and stop it from happening again?

You know, I mean, you go to the grocery store and there's like, a mad run on, on water, but just you feel really bad for the businesses.

You know, I had a couple of things going on that day.

One of the businesses was shut down because they didn't have water.

And so we need to make sure that that doesn't happen again.

The city needs to make sure that doesn't happen.

Figure out what happened.

Do some failsafe measures and don't let it happen again.

Under representative.

From a state standpoint, you're a state lawmaker.

But when things like this happen, there are laws in place to govern the response.

And what happens?

Sure.

And I do think the city I appreciate the work that they've all done.

And of course, we're all asking why.

But I think the for me, the issue is we knew that facility was aging.

We're building a new one.

And so a state, you know, we need to make sure we have that transparency, building all those things.

If government is spending the taxpayers dollars, which that's what we're doing a lot in the state, we have to do a better job with making sure that how we spend it is actually going to help the people and not have a problem like this is I. I'm sure you have a lot to say.

You've been very you've been very outspoken.

I mean, a lot of the inside baseball on this because the agreements had to be made with us for the workers.

And I can tell you that, you know, some of the talking points here are great, and some of them are kind of what create the problem.

And talking about being fiscally responsible.

And all this has added in to this anti-tax anti invest in ourselves type of a climate in our society.

This water plant should have been replaced 20 years ago.

But people did not replace it because we slumlord ourself through until something breaks.

We should have had a backup for the backup.

And this wouldn't happen.

You know, the other problem is, is the backup.

Once we transfer to the other plant, the backup is still this rusty old car.

So they put together something with duct tape and paper clips, and they called it a hybrid.

Instead of saying, look, this is really important.

For the next hundred years, we need a water system that works well.

We went on the cheap.

We argued about who was going to build it.

We had to give the employees who were so poorly underpaid 46 to 64% pay increases.

2 or 3 years ago in order to even get enough people to run this plant.

People in our society do not know how fragile these systems are.

And one of the things that really makes us bad is because when staff at City Hall wants to get something, well, they put out a survey, but they put out a survey that only gives you the opportunity to answer for what they want you to answer questions.

We've heard that complaint before.

I mean, did the police robot dogs help in this situation?

No, but we spent $250,000 on it.

And that's the problem is, we don't value one of the things that has been the most effective for the growth of our culture.

Look it up.

In our society, fresh drinking water is one of the only reasons that society has evolved to the point that it has.

So is is raising taxes the answer to start solving some of these problems then?

Is that what you're saying?

Republicans are right when they say that things aren't free.

If you want to, if you want nice things, you have to invest in yourself.

If you want to let the grass grow tall and the streets have cracks in them and stuff, great.

Have low taxes.

But if you want to give every company that comes in the state a tax break to come do business, they're just using our money on us.

We need to start getting what we're worth.

We need to start making sure that we're taxing people like Boeing and all these other people that get abatements because their tax breaks make our schools underfunded.

They make our city halls underfunded.

Yeah.

Council member, let me go to council member.

Hazel first.

Let him respond.

You you've actually been a little bit of outspoken about how taxes are too low in our community.

Brandon Johnson, who just came off the council, was also very outspoken, I believe.

I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you have said some of those things in the past.

Correct?

Yeah, yeah.

No, when you get into the positions that we get into, you see the gaps, you see the places that we do need to invest, and you see a lack of resources with a lot of it.

And to his last point, we went with the current water plant, the businesses that we went to with that, almost a decade ago because they did the cheaper bid.

Now staff had, had suggested 11 to nothing that we could actually go with the other company, the ones who are more, educated and they actually build water plants for a living.

But instead we went for the cheaper option, which was a lot of, local businesses.

And there's been some blame placed on the community.

On the former mayor, Jeff Longwell, with, you know, certain decisions that he made and people he was playing golf with and going out to dinner with as well.

There have been a lot of accusations about that.

Do you think that's why we're in the position that we're in today?

I think if, we had a better I think if we would have went with another company that the water treatment facility would be open and running right now, and we would not have ran into the issues that we have.

Any response?

Susan?

I just I tend to agree with some of what my and so what you saw said fiscal responsibility.

I mean, you mentioned the robot dogs.

Like, I don't disagree with you that we have to have better fiscal responsibility.

I don't really think we need to raise taxes.

I think we need to be better at how we're spending the people's money.

And and that's been the Republican toe line for quite a while, is that, you know, that the the city's budget in 2021 was $670 million.

This year's budget is $880 million in 4 or 5 years.

It's it's gone up 260 some million dollars.

And I was on the committee that looked at the spending within the city.

And I my opinion there are plenty of places that we could get rid of a lot of waste, but people don't want to do it.

They don't want to get rid of the cushions that they have right now.

We have to look at where we're spending money and make sure that it's being spent effectively.

And wherever there's waste, we need to be getting the waste out of the system.

And there is plenty of waste within the city system right now.

Plenty of it.

I left the last word.

I love the paradox we get into here.

We can get more, but we have to save money.

You guys fry that baloney.

There is.

There is no way to come up with more money by spending less because you lower the services.

That's what we have.

Billy Bob and his cousins mowing our parks.

So water treatment.

Just saying that's not true makes it an opinion.

I mean, I guess you could get into the property tax argument in the first place.

And and should we be you know, the property tax system is broken to begin with.

And possibly a lot of people think that we should go to a consumption tax instead.

Or Andover has 13%.

They have a lot of enemies because they are paying into their city.

Every one of these white flight communities that people leave Wichita public schools for, they have higher tax rates than we do.

So we're not funding our community.

And that is the reason people are moving to the suburbs because they have nicer things.

I mean, that's why you can't have nice things without going Butler County.

Their taxes, their property taxes are higher because the Butler County Community College, it's not because of, you know, you were saying and they have other amenities.

So okay, I know, I know, I don't agree okay.

I do need to move on.

Just one okay.

Go ahead.

Councilmember a dollar and 2020 is worth $0.59 now.

Yeah.

The cost of doing business has gone forever.

If we're going to continue to offer the services that we have now, we've had to do a lot of pay adjustments just to make sure that we have a fully staffed water plant, police force fire for.

So, that that's also something else that needs to be taken into consideration when we're talking about ballooning budgets is we're just trying to tread water with what we had currently been doing.

Yeah, I didn't know.

There's the same time there is waste.

I'm going to agree with you and I tell you about it.

After moving on our next one, I will talk.

The race for Kansas governor also took center stage at the state fair in Hutchinson last weekend, and that quickly turned into a bare knuckle brawl.

Republican Ty Masterson and Democrat Cindy Hole sure faced off in a debate that was constantly punctuated by the chants and jeers of an enthusiastic crowd inside the packed Heartland Credit Union Pavilion.

It was a divided house, dueling supporters waving campaign signs and trading chants across the aisle.

At times, the shouts and boos almost drowned out the candidates on stage.

When the topic turned to affordability, the debate got just as loud as the audience.

The truth be why your taxes are so high?

Because people like Cindy have not met one of your tax dollars.

She didn't want to spend two of holes.

You're fired back, blaming Masterson and the Republican supermajority for handing out tax relief to the wealthy instead of working families.

You know, if you keep doing these big giveaways to corporations and billionaires, you're going to end up in a precarious situation.

We take in revenue every year, but we can do better.

When moderators pressed the candidates on water policy and agriculture, neither offered specific solutions.

Instead, the conversation devolved right back into Partizan jabs, stoking up the already rowdy crowd.

You want to destroy agriculture?

Elect the most liberal Democrat socialist you've ever had in Kansas.

Well, there he goes again.

With labels and accusations.

Because he doesn't have a record to stand on, Masterson at times had to shout down a chorus of boos from the crowd, while candidates continued to spar over education and reproductive rights.

The 90 minute spectacle proved that as Election day approaches, the political divide in Kansas is as loud as ever.

Oh my goodness.

Deb Lucia, as the former chair of the Sedgwick County Republican Party, tell me your thoughts on on the governors candidate debate.

Well, I think that there was a lot of people in the crowd that were really disruptive.

You know, we as people should be able to hear our candidates.

That's the first thing.

We should have some decorum when we go into these debates, you know.

But from my perspective, I'm I base everything on factual data, not what people say.

They're going to debate what they actually did.

And when I look at these two particular candidates, Ty Masterson voted and he got past reducing our property taxes.

He got past reducing the sales tax on food.

They tried for years to do that.

He got that done finally.

So he has done everything that he can to get property taxes and other taxes reduced.

And he's met that we have no state income tax on Social Security.

Those were all led by Republicans and done right by Republicans.

I look at Cindy Hauser.

She never supported any of that.

She's running right now on property tax reduction.

She has never supported prop, never supported it.

When you're voting, you have to look at their records and what they've actually done, not what they say they're going to do.

These are just talking points.

Oh yeah, I'm going to reduce property tax and then look at what she says she wants to do.

Otherwise all of the other things sound great.

All of these little fluffy things I'm going to reduce the prices of goods and help families.

But you can't do that and reduce property tax.

It just doesn't happen.

So it's good stuff to say.

Council member Hazel, it's it seems like in Kansas, we seem to flip back and forth between Democrat and Republican governors.

And or is this the time to go back to Republican or what do you see happening here?

Well, I'm on a different side of things from a few of our colleagues up here.

So I obviously go, to the left, on the left side there.

But I do just want to talk about what the people deserve.

And it's to be able to have these open debates and actually hear each other and discuss the issues in a civilized way.

Lincoln and Douglas, when they had debates back in the 1850s, they were out in front of the farmers at town or at county fairs and they talk for 4 or 5 hours.

So you had these uneducated farmers who actually knew the ins and outs of the policies they were talking about.

And today, I mean, this shows it's a great show and I appreciate coming on here, but we have a small amount of time to discuss some of these really important issues.

And it's, and it's important that we actually dig into them a little more than I think we do in today's media representative Ropers, I would love to just mention I was at the debate on Saturday.

I was at both the morning and the afternoon.

I loved the debate in the morning because I think it was closer to what you were talking about with the Lincoln-Douglas.

There were both sides there.

Both candidates spoke.

They were passionate.

People were passionate, yes.

Did they cheer?

Did they sometimes do?

Did they clap?

Yes.

But both sides were heard and I loved it in the afternoon.

It was despicable what happened.

And I will and I I've got to just mention that I think Adam Hamilton should publicly apologize for the way his supporters acted on Saturday afternoon at the governor's debate.

I know at the at the senators today.

Are we getting to that or we'll talk about okay, I, I like to talk about that because I it was really but the governor's debate, I thought it was very much what my colleague here said.

It was a true debate and both sides were heard.

It's all last comments and debates don't win elections.

Those are always a ruckus event and the candidate is not responsible for what the crowd does.

The people that bother to show up and go to those debates and yell and share their opinion are citizens, and they're the people you guys ought to be listening to, rather than telling them how they ought to behave.

When we're talking about the difference between Cindy Holzer and Ty Masterson, I've heard about two truthful words come out of Masterson's life and his whole life, he has literally, to my face, told me that we just need to get the camel's nose under the tent on marijuana.

He's been lying to people on both sides for a long time, and I'll make that accusation publicly, because that's the reason we don't have things, is because politicians come out and they don't tell people the truth, and they push backdoor agendas.

So and the marijuana debate, of course, is another whole different topic.

But that same afternoon, the two candidates for U.S.

Senate squared off in an equally contentious war of words, with a lively crowd packing the stands.

Incumbent Senator Roger Marshall went on the offensive early, calling Adam Hamilton woke and questioning whether Hamilton offered real answers or empty talk.

The Democrats are a one horse pony.

We'll see if he has any solution.

He's just going to sit here and talk about platitudes.

We'll see if he has any solution except raise your taxes.

Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor making his first run for Senate, pushed back.

He's arguing that addressing the country's toughest issues requires reaching across the aisle.

We have to solve some serious problems, but we've got to solve that with Republicans and Democrats working together in front of a vocal fairgrounds audience that frequently reacted with boos and cheers, Hamilton doubled down on his criticism of rigid party loyalty on Capitol Hill.

This is what's wrong in Washington, D.C.

right now.

We got a lot of people up there.

We got a lot of people up there.

Have lost their minds.

They're no longer using critical thinking skills to solve problems.

They're not thinking for themselves.

They're doing whatever their president or their party tells them to do.

Marshall rebuffed the attack, telling the unruly audience that Kansans deserve a lawmaker who stands firm on core principles.

You may not agree with me on everything, but you gotta know exactly where I stand that I'm going to fight to protect you, your family and these traditional Kansas failed Kansas values.

The candidates also clashed over trade tariffs and support for Kansas agriculture during the 90 minute forum, giving voters a sharp contrast heading into November.

Yeah.

Representative Humphries, we thought that we thought the governor's debate was was a little bit rowdy.

This was even worse.

It was you.

And the governor's debate was rowdy.

But to me, in a more equal way, the afternoon debate was as you could even see on this clip, Roger Marshall was disrespected.

He was not even able to talk.

And I do think it is the other candidates responsibility to say, hey folks, let's listen to both sides.

Because if you think our ideas are better, then listen to his and then listen to mine and decide.

I saw people walk in to the arena and say what's going on?

And when they saw how it was, these are the regular farmer kind of people.

They turned around and walked out because it was it was disrespectful.

And I just I feel like it was the responsibility of of the candidate to control the crowd because it was it was not okay.

But he saw.

Do you think Senator Marshall has maybe made his own bed here?

And he's, you know, the last the the medical debt issue, the fact that he or I shouldn't say fact, but he claims to live in Kansas.

But a lot of people say he doesn't.

He lives in Florida.

I don't know where he lives.

And, you know, this is one of the reasons that I. That I left the Democratic Party and won't join the Republican Party is because there is just a lot of talking points on both sides, and nobody's telling the total truth here.

Everybody's talking about what they want to say.

But when it comes to to Roger and when it comes to, you know, decorum and stuff, it seems really rich to hear you guys talk about, free speech and, pass a Charlie Kirk day, and then you tell voters that they should be nice to a senator who hasn't been doing his job like that.

Seems ridiculous to me that we want to stand up for free speech and then chastise people for exercising their voices that, like, I make that make sense.

Please let me let Deb respond to that.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting.

So he hasn't been doing his job.

You know, Hamilton said that it's broken because we don't, you know, work across the lines.

And here's Marshall working with another Democrat to get a bill passed that's going to come for a count.

It's going to put accountability on health care with pricing.

That's a bipartisan bill that is Roger Marshall and a Democrat.

He's working across the lines.

I look at the things that Marshall did.

He passed tax relief for all of us.

All of us are getting lower taxes because of what Marshall passed.

And, you know, this whole thing with, just saying that he didn't do anything.

That's just that's the rhetoric.

Don't look at if everybody goes, it looks okay.

Marshall has done something.

He works every day for us.

He's a veteran.

He knows Veterans Affairs.

He's a doctor.

He works on health care issues for us.

And he understands like he understands Medicare, Medicaid.

How many people understand that he's a business owner from a doctor's perspective?

But how does he react as a patient?

Well, that's for his patients.

He's done a great job.

Let me let Councilman Hodges in here first.

Real quick.

Before I, I would say, two points.

One, I worked a lot of events back in 2010 when there was a Tea Party revolution.

And I saw firsthand the nastiness that could come from, segment of society who was upset.

The second thing I would also point out is that's not all just liberal Democrats out there upset.

There are farmers up there upset with a lot of the policies that the Trump administration has pushed.

And Roger Marshall has been full on board with a lot of them.

There's a lot of workers here who are upset with President Trump, with his recent remarks regarding some of the businesses that are located here in Wichita.

There's there's a lot of angst out there and a lot of frustration with people that and that crosses party lines and a lot of it has to do with the policies that, Doctor Marshall has, supported over the past couple of years.

And Representative Humphries, I'll give I'll give you the last word here.

Hamilton seems to be trying to portray himself as middle of the road.

Yeah, that worked for Laura Kelly in the governor's race the last time she ran.

Do you think it'll work for Adam Hamilton in this race?

I don't, because I do think Roger Marshall is the one, and I agree, there's, you know, there's complaints about him.

But if you look at what he's done, that's what we need to look at.

Adam Hamilton, he is on the record is not being middle of the road.

He has there's a he's a professional speaker.

That's kind of what his job is.

He's a great speaker.

But when you look at what has he done I think that's where that's where the rubber meets the road.

All right.

Our last story today Wichita homeowners can now get paid to plant trees.

The city has launched a new tree rebate program with a $10,000 pool.

Residents can earn $50 per eligible tree up to $100 total per property.

The program targets drought tolerant species adapted for south central Kansas.

Trees must be purchased from a licensed nursery and planted on private residential property applications require an itemized receipt submitted within 30 days.

The pilot runs through the end of the year or until all the money runs out.

Councilman, tell us a little bit about this program here.

We had a NASA heat map that came out a couple of years ago, and what it showed is, extreme, extremely higher heat and certain segments of our community, mostly lower income.

So for example, a lot in South Wichita, a lot of that has to do with the tree canopy that we have.

There's a lot of aging trees out there.

People struggle with paying their bills or electric bills.

We have heat radiating off the street.

It's a good thing to plant more trees in our community.

It's something that we should have done.

They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second time the plant is the best time to plant a tree is today.

So, anything we can do to help offer relief, especially for poor people, people living in a lot of poverty conditions.

Well, that's definitely something we should about 30s left.

Who wants to respond?

Go ahead.

You saw.

That makes me feel really good.

But after reading the program, you have to get two trees to get the $100.

And the trees are anywhere from 150 to $300 apiece.

And I don't know any struggling families that are going to go out and spend $300 on a tree or the extra 450 to have it planted in their front yard.

There are there are some tree services, tree businesses that are working with us on this as well.

So there are some options out there as far as alleviating some of the cost.

Well, I would hope that I, I got to stop.

Okay.

So we're running out of time.

That's that's a wrap for this week.

Thank you so so much to Michael Hazel, Susan Humphreys, Esau Freeman and DeLucia for being here.

Thanks also to Kake News for sharing their video with us.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

Have a great weekend.