Clarifying RUSS issues

June 27, 2012

Richmond, Iowa

To the Editor:

Thank you for your June 26, 2012, news article ?Residents group drops lawsuits.? The article does, however, leave room for a few misunderstandings which I hope your readers would like to see cleared up.

The headline would have been more accurate had it read, ?Residents groups suspends lawsuits.? The situation has changed dramatically, and we are now much more likely to protect our community from RUSS and its unnecessary lagoon project by political means. When new county supervisors take office in January these lawsuits would still be ongoing. We have suspended them because they now seem unnecessary and would waste a lot of taxpayer money and our own resources.

We disagree with County Attorney Brock?s statement that the lawsuits have no merit.

Citizens clearly have a legal right to challenge the seizure of their property by a government agency, and if you can be fined for exercising a basic right it simply means that right has been taken away from you. Any reasonable person should be able to see that. If necessary, this lawsuit can be re-filed at any time.

Similarly, the injustice of allowing the government to take away people?s property for an unjustified project should also be clear to everyone. RBR remains ready to challenge and resist the condemnation of any of its members? property, but a long and expensive lawsuit now seems unnecessary.

In RBR?s press release some principal objections to RUSS and the Richmond lagoon project were briefly outlined. Understandably, these were omitted from your news article. However, this may lead some readers to mistakenly think that RBR has slackened its resolve in opposing this lagoon project.

As we see county after county wanting to get out of RUSS, and hear about the disasters befalling community after community with RUSS projects, we remain determined to protect ourselves from any entanglement with this organization. We would like to see RUSS out of Washington County, and Washington County out of RUSS!

Finally, I would like to object to the undue emphasis on the possibility of fines by DNR. In my long conversation with Mr. Dennis Ostwinkle and Terry Jones of the DNR, it was repeatedly made clear that they are not dictating any particular method for addressing whatever sanitary problems Richmond has, but simply want them addressed. Fines would only be imposed for doing nothing and not addressing them. Nobody is in favor of doing this.

All along, we have objected to the way the DNR and its threat of fines are falsely used as a ?bogyman.?

RBR and, if I understand them correctly, all of the Republican and Democratic candidates for county supervisor have expressed interest in re-evaluating the Richmond project. They all want to determine what problems actually exist in Richmond, evaluate all possible alternatives, and choose the fairest and least burdensome ways of dealing with them.

That is what RBR has been asking for all along.

Sincerely,

David Rosen