With your help, our Health Department could advance a new rule to protect our drinking water!
Protect Our Water JH and the Wyoming Outdoor Council proposed a new rule that will act as an early warning system to keep our drinking water safe. The rule requires that water systems report safety data to the Health Department and that officials investigate when nitrates rise to unsafe levels. The rule also requires plans to protect drinking water from being contaminated to begin with; those plans are required in every state but Wyoming (FAQ here).
Simply put, the rule is designed to “prevent future Hobacks” – where nitrates rose for years, agencies didn’t intervene until the water was unfit to drink, and Hoback RV Park residents were abruptly ousted from their homes and confronted with a dual health crisis of insufficient water services and homelessness in a pandemic. It’s hard to solve these problems after they occur: in Hoback, piping in new water (which has still not been done) would cost more than $13M. So let’s prevent more problems like this!
Our Health Department protects us. We’ve relied on them more than ever with the coronavirus. And now, even as we battle the pandemic, we need to support our Health Department in protecting our clean water.
We need you to support the new rule and get it out of committee into a 45-day official comment period, where it can be improved and then adopted.
Take action:
- Email Jodie Pond, the Director of Health, and the Board of Health at jodie.pond@wyo.gov with your support for the rule and appreciation for their leadership during the pandemic
- Comment live at their meeting on January 26 (login information in the agenda)
