Thanks, MPCA, for hearing us! To the Editor, - Fillmore County Journal

I’d like to thank MPCA Commissioner John Linc Stine for listening to the hundreds of us in Newburg Township, Fillmore County, and the entire southeastern Minnesota. He listened as we expressed in hundreds of letters and many impassioned speeches our concerns about the environmental risks posed by an enormous hog farrowing operation proposed by the Catalpa project in a region with especially vulnerable surface and groundwater by virtue of the underlying karst geology. I am impressed that science, and the health of natural systems and families in the community were given their due importance — and that he denied the permit request. I applaud his leadership in expressing the need to further study the causes for the already compromised groundwater in the area and, hopefully, possibilities for remediation. I invite others to thank him, too, using any of the following: Commissioner Stine, MPCA, 520 Lafayette Road N, St. Paul, Minn. 55155-4194, John.Stine@state.mn.us, or (651) 757-2014.

Sue Wiegrefe

Mabel, Minn.

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