Alexandria, Indiana American heartland Alex shook his head slowly as he stared into space. The town he lived in, tiny Alexandria, Indiana, the center of one of the most startling municipal cancers ever to hit the America of this century. A crisis caused not by the act of nature, but by a failure of leadership, not by a call to reality and clean water. The individuality trusted in its elected leaders. Their reward was contamination, corruption and cover-ups. At the center of it all stands Mayor Todd Naselroad—a name now forever linked to deception, denial, and decay.
The Dirty Secret, a Sick Child
The process started as an infant. One small child barely old enough to walk was in the hospital and had confirmed E coli poisoning. The culprit? Tap water at Alexandria. People were frightened and the authorities of the city reacted as though nothing dramatic had happened. Mayor Naselroad held a press statement assuring people that everything is fine and the water is totally safe.
However, very soon papers started telling otherwise. The laboratory results within the plant indicated that the levels of chlorine had lowered to a dangerous 0.029 mg/L; very low compared to the minimum of 0.2 mg/L required by the state. There was even one leaked video in which an IDEM official declared that reading of 0.09 mg/L chlorine valve was good. It wasn’t. The initial wave of sickness had started spreading by that time.
10 Million Road to Nowhere
As citizens in the city of Alexandria boiled the water and worried about their faucets, behind the scenes another crisis was taking place in the budget books of Alexandria. A road building project, initially priced at 1.05 million had taken off unexpectedly and thus costing 10 million. Public records, fought over and then provided under duress showed over 2.3 million dollars had drained into planning and administration fees.
Even worse, it pulled money out of departments overseeing water, sewer and storm water infrastructure–stealing the very systems which are already being stretched to the limit. During the period of health-related crisis, the town resources were being allocated to asphalt rather than clean water. The figures did not match. And the questions came more and more.
Gagged at City Hall
As people made attempts to figure out what happened, people sought answers through official channels. The Access to Public Records Act of Indiana was used in issuing requests. Citizens demanded water logs and internal communications and testing data. They heard silence in response.
Mayor Todd Naselroad, Clerk-Treasurer Darcy VanErman, and Water Superintendent Mark Caldwell all failed to comply with transparency laws. Emails remained unresponded. There was a strong control of public meetings. Whistleblowers got silenced. A wall of silence was established by the government–and the people were outside, the sick and the ignorant.
Numbers Do Not Always Speak Human Toll: Human Toll.
It is not only politics. It’s personal. One of the women was too frail to walk and her grown son was brought to her in Kentucky. A male patient passed some blood in the urine, and it took him more than a week to seek medical assistance. More than dozens have now been diagnosed with E. coli and H. pylori- bacteria that is related to contaminated or untreated water.
The suffering is not symbolical. It is day-to-day life of Alexandrian citizens. And their leaders whom they trusted in have provided no recourse- just well-crafted statements and meaningless promises.
The Revenge and Snake Oil of Truth
Peters, who owns SCROOGE LLC was one of the whistleblowers who even made his stand by publishing damaging evidence. The revenge was prompt. His payment processor (Checkout.com) shut down his merchant account and blocked his funds. One phone conversation was intercepted: the motive was dark: Checkout had been damaged, in terms of reputation. That exposure is too expensive to them.
Peters has since sued the school board on a charge of whistleblower retaliation since, in his opinion, he found himself penalized financially because of coming forward with the truth.
People Stand Up
That the city hall stonewalling and the refusal of officials to resign, the Concerned Citizens of Alexandria have issued five demands:
- The resignation of Mayor Todd Naselroad
- Disclosure of all water testing records in full to the public
- Forensic audit of the 10-million road project
- Restructuring of the water department immediately
- Involvement by Governor Brauns and an investigation on the state level
- And so far silence has been the answer.
A Town That Became a victim, a Heritage Stained
The Mayor Todd Naselroad scandal is more than a local story—it’s a national warning. It shows how flawed trust can be discarded with haste, how political self-preservation poses a threat to the well-being of the population, and that silence can be turned into a weapon of accountability.
Alexandria was literally poisoned–poisoned, indeed, by its waters, but poisoned, worse still, by its leaders. And today, it is the people who have to mop up what the mayor put out of sight.