Following mounting scrutiny over its decision to stop adding fluoride to drinking water, leadership at Central Alabama Water is offering a new explanation: fluoridation had already lapsed years earlier under the previous Birmingham Water Works Board.
Rather than just a recent policy shift, CAW officials now describe the situation as a gradual breakdown caused by neglected infrastructure.
According to utility spokesman John Matson, three of the system’s four treatment plants stopped fluoridating water between 2023 and 2024 due to maintenance failures under prior leadership, before the state Legislature almost a year ago restructured the utility and its leadership and shifted representation away from the city and toward the suburbs…