The heavy rains and flooding that hit a week ago may have come and gone — but their effects linger. One big reminder of this is the yucky, polluted brown water that’s lingered on our shores, from sewage overflows and spills.

Statewide, brown water advisories remained up at week’s end. On Oahu, more than 322,000 gallons of wastewater were discharged at sites from Halawa to Aina Haina, with the public warned to stay out of waters at many locations, such as Keehi Lagoon, Kapalama Canal, Maunalua Bay, plus Wailupe, Heeia and Manoa streams.

Getting a better handle against such massive overflows will need to be a key component of post-storm assessments.

Back up those Handi-Van reservations

The safe assumption after Thursday’s cyberattack crippling city Department of Transportation Services computer servers was that there were lots of seniors and other clients of the Handi-Van service who were upset about the disruption. That’s because, while city buses simply kept to their ordinary route schedules, the van scheduling relies on the computers.

Let’s hope that DTS creates daily backups of server data, especially Handi-Van reservations, if they haven’t done so already. Sometimes it’s old tech — printouts? — that saves the day.