Patricia Prijatel, Des Moines

Letter to the Editor

Des Moines water is polluted, requiring millions of dollars of treatment before it is drinkable. That’s an indisputable truth. And hog confinement lots and cattle operations upriver are major causes of our unhealthy water, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

It was a brilliant political move by a hog farmer in Keota to draw our attention away from the real problem through his heavy-handed legislation dissolving the Des Moines Water Works. Mean-spirited and short-sighted and not in the overall interest of Des Moines or the state of Iowa, but darn clever. And it punishes the one agency that is actually serving citizens by cleaning up our water.

So can we regain our focus and remember that one fact: Our water is polluted. And dirty water is a health hazard, period. It’s linked to, among other things, cancer, infant deaths, miscarriages and nervous system problems.

Stop the diversions and the finger pointing and the rhetoric and the bogus legislation and the ineffective Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. It’s past time to take measurable and meaningful action upstream to clean up our water. Somebody show some spine and leadership here and make those who are causing the problem accountable for their destruction.

— Patricia Prijatel, Des Moines