Letter: With HLWD, it seems some have short memories

Talk about it

This letter is in response to the person who wrote to say that one of the speakers at the meeting of the HLWD was a Jackson County commissioner who did not live within the boundaries of the watershed district and that the proposed WMD would not affect him.

Apparently, this person cannot remember that a commissioner has a duty to represent the people in his district regardless of where he lives or if something affects him personally or not. I suppose this is understandable when one considers the performance of the man who served this group of people prior to the present one. All he ever did was hang around the HLWD, negotiating its help to get his bio-energy business started. Indeed, in partnership with MPCA, they did do their best to do just that.

I can remember going to a big meeting at the Ramada Inn in Worthington hosted by the MPCA and HLWD where a sumptuous lunch was served free to anyone attending, ostensibly to acquaint people with the TMDL testing. The folder of materials handed out to all attendees included a lot of promotional material for Heron Lake Bio-Energy. All this happened at a time when the Heron Lake outlet had already been designated as impaired and some implementing of a cure for the problem was in order. Instead, what was done was that Heron Lake Bio-Energy was permitted to discharge the effluent from the plant into the Heron Lake outlet.

As for the person who “had a lot to say” but lived north of Heron Lake, didn’t live in the watershed and wasn’t affected at all, I believe that this person, living in Cottonwood County, has quite a bit of knowledge about the original TMDL process. He knew that it all started with the MPCA with a mandate and funds from the Clean Water Act, and that Cottonwood County was to lead the process until it got hijacked by the HLWD, which used the funds to put on more staff, never expected to do anything but testing and is now trying to generate the funds to implement a cure for the impairments found by the testing.

As to the question “Has the HLWD done everything right?” I think a better question is “Have they ever done anything right?” I agree that the Jackson County commissioners have not always followed the will of the people, as they continue to appoint to the HLWD board a man who has become practically permanent chairman of the board and, along with the administrator, controls almost everything done by that board.

Sorry to have to bring up these things, but it is apparent that memories are short where this issue is concerned.

Tags: heron lake, jackson county, opinion, letters, hlwd