To the Editor:

Upgrading our water treatment plant will cost local residents at least 300 million dollars because federal funds for such work have been slashed over the years.

Legislation is needed to mandate rural conservation measures and keep nutrients from overloading Lake Erie.  Planting filter strips along drainage ditches is costly and takes land out of production.  Waste treatment systems need to be installed.  Farmers must be compensated for taking these and other vital measures.  This will cost many millions more.

And yet taxpayers just in Lucas County have sent 1.6 billion dollars to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We send even more money to the ongoing military budget.

Years ago, Procter and Gamble Corp., headquartered in Cincinnati, made sure Ohio was the last Great Lake state to ban phosphates in laundry detergent. 

Lobbyists for corporate agribusiness have kept clean water mandates from applying to farming.

Does this sound like a democracy to you?

Mike Ferner

2975 113th St.
Toledo, Ohio
419-729-7273
August 9, 2014
 

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