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Letter: Rely on science to address water quality

Nate Van Der Weide

Jan. 11, 2018 12:00 am

I am in shock as I read the interview with Annette Sweeney in the Jan. 7 Gazette ‘'Shoved aside,' rural Iowa shoves back.”

Sweeney, a former lawmaker, dismisses regulation on water quality as if it should be voluntary. In her opinion, the water quality problem is overblown. She sites her experience with environmental pollution from viewing snow when she was growing up decades ago, by saying, 'the snow banks sometimes turned gray because of pollution. It's far better now.”

Water quality for Iowa (and the entire downstream nation) cannot be taken for granted, nor can it be a voluntary measure of compliance. Here's hoping our lawmakers rely on science and not observations of snow.

Nate Van Der Weide

Iowa City

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