Letter to the Editor: Calling attention to hog confienments

To the Editor:
I would like to call attention to the public on hog confinements. Wake up and take notice. Maybe now you don’t have one next to your place, but I promise you, you will if these are not strictly regulated. Your governor and Iowa congress make the laws for the DNR who will pass the matrix for anywhere and anything goes. They will pollute our streams and rivers with bacteria and nitrogen-laden run-off. The air will be toxified due to ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions and the DNR told me twice there are no regulations for that. All factories have regulations, why don’t these? The buildings increase asthma in our children and other respiratory illnesses from breathing the air. The confinements have become breeding grounds for lethal MRSA and people living near these have a higher incidence of MRSA contamination in their bodies.
The State of Iowa, your governor and congress have refused to effectively regulate pollutants and denied local governments the authority to do so. This needs to be an issue for the next election of governor and representatives.
West of Ridgeway two 7499 animal unit buildings are being built this summer. Already there are five plus in the area. In time what will happen to the groundwater? Pollute or deplete? Governor Branstad is for economic growth of Iowa at a cost of our health and environment. He and your elected reps in Des Moines have had a chance to change the laws governing the DNR who approves these buildings and have voted it down. This governor does not care if your child has asthma or your property depreciated 40% or you can’t mow your yard because the smell waters your eyes.
You may think it doesn’t concern you but it’s all the same air and water.
As far as tourism... who wants to come home to Iowa when all you see is confinements and smell hog manure?
Change does not come from the top down but from the bottom up. Please write Branstad and your reps in Des Moines. Branstad is for big money/business and not the future of our children. He’s turning Iowa’s motto into “Iowa, the hog septic hole of the United States.”

Connie Hanson
Cresco