EPA: Facility vote still important

Many know I’ve been outspoken about my attitude and opinions toward the EPA and their forced unfunded mandates. What a crazy turn of events with the new treatment facility going to a vote. Because I’ve been watching this mandate transpire for the last two years, there is a sense of excitement I feel about the current situation. Regardless of who’s right or wrong on the Coeur d’Alene City Council, I’m glad that this is happening for a few reasons.

The most important reason this episode is healthy, is because we deserve the right to vote on this mandate. We deserve the chance to say yes or no, especially on an issue with such serious consequences. The reality is your vote doesn’t matter, which is exactly why it does matter.

The majority on the city council is trying to do the fiscally responsible thing by getting a court order for the lower interest rate loan on the sewage treatment plant. The Clean Water Act gives the EPA the ability to force us into this new facility regardless of its benefits or consequences. If we vote no, the city will still have to get the court order.

This vote, to me, is still important. It isn’t about our ability to approve or disapprove. It’s about us as a community, saying to the EPA and the federal government that we are a democratic republic, and this process and this unfunded mandate is wrong.

There’s no better way than a vote to start a community-wide discussion. Our community does at least deserve that discussion. We deserve to understand that the EPA is too powerful. We deserve to understand and discuss the decisions that impact our lives in such a serious way.

Steve Adams, I know this is a tough thing for you. I for one don’t know how you must feel, but thank you for standing up as an example and giving my community to chance to vote, discuss and be involved. The vote won’t have the weight we’d like in regard to stopping a ridiculous mandate. Perhaps it will be a wake-up call that a change needs to happen. I’m hoping that maybe that change will start with us and this vote.

I guess I don’t really know what the right thing is for the city council, but Mr. Adams, Thank you anyway.

CRAIG WILCOX

Coeur d’Alene