Democrat Gazette

Letter to Editor

The next battleground

Is clean water our next battleground? Without oil, we may have to walk, but without water, no one and nothing can survive.

These days the news is full of water woes. Flint, Mich., may be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cities with poisoned drinking water. Algal blooms are making reservoirs unusable in some parts of the country, while mining waste, abandoned chemicals, and tons of excess nutrients imperil our country's water systems everywhere you look.

At the same time, there are powerful special-interest groups in our state and elsewhere ranting, along with their hand-picked politicians, that efforts to protect this most precious of all our shared resources is "government overreach." All the while, they are busy exploiting both ground and surface water resources for their own private profit.

Now that's "overreach." Nobody wants the government to interfere--until they need a bailout!

Next time one of these folks tries to tell you that the government is trying to steal your property rights away by seeking to protect the quality of rivers and the tributaries that create those vital waterways, ask yourself what anyone's property will be worth when our planet's finite supply of clean water has been squandered. We can stand together now to preserve the environment that sustains us all, or we will bequeath a broken world to our children and their children.

LIN WELLFORD

Green Forest