To the editor:
This weekend in Boone County, we will be celebrating our river and railroad history with Pufferbilly Days, but some of us will be down by the Des Moines River protecting our drinking water.
This river drains one-fourth of Iowa and provides Boone, Des Moines and many other Iowa towns with their drinking water and recreation.
The crude oil pipeline being installed at the river is the first kind of this type and magnitude in Iowa. It has the potential to pump more than 1 million gallons of toxic crude per hour and will be monitored for leaks electronically from Sugarland, Texas.
The best guess is it will take well over one hour to be able to turn it off in the event of a spill. All pipelines leak. The question is when and how much?
Who assumed the risk of this pipeline for us? It needed approval by only three people on the Iowa Utilities Board. They were hand-picked and politically appointed by our governor.
They gave this private Limited Liability Corporation the right to confiscate land through eminent domain and risk our drinking water and recreational greenbelt’s future.
Come pay your respects this Saturday on the first bridge north of Boone by driving through the beautiful river valley. Witness the biggest gamble Iowa can make as our “prisons, pigs and poker” governor now bets for all of us on a private pipeline to further endanger our already polluted water.
Mark Edwards
Boone
The author speaks the truth. El Duce Branstad has been in office too long and must go. This pipeline is just the head of the pustule, the latter’s roots running deep and oozing corruption into virtually all aspects of public life here in Iowa.