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I would like to see the EPA defend itself in the public forum on this matter. Their voice was distinctly absent from today's show, but they are not above public discourse in this matter, especially with the good citizens of Portland. Surely there are EPA administrators who can evaluate the science, understand the cost-benefit analysis, and listen to the perspectives of our city's people and local government who represents us. I suspect the EPA would prefer to just interact with the city officials and the water utility and use their recent court victory to their advantage, but honestly, they need to hear directly from us the people.

Portland has a unique and highly effective mechanism to deliver water that is superior in quality to any other municipal water source, yet we are being forced to adopt an energy intensive mechanism of water purification. The Bull Run watershed should be held as a model of how the rest of the country could manage its water resources. By minimizing human and agricultural runoff there are tremendous benefits to the quality of the watershed - the EPA, of all entities, needs to realize that and encourage similar approaches where possible. I would rather see an EPA approach to minimize contamination in watersheds to near zero, rather than accepting and allowing the contamination and cleaning it up as we want to use the water. They need to be told that this is a valuable national model on how to correctly manage a water resource and its importance should not be diminished by the blind application of agency rules.

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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