Letter to the Editor by, Travis and Lisa Stringer

The South Suburban Sanitary District’s (SSSD) motto states that they are “Protecting Tomorrow’s Environment!”; however, currently, they are proposing to store and use Class D sewage to irrigate farm lands around residents living off of Reeder Road, Short Road, Highway 39, and Highway 140. Thus, negatively impacting the quality of our wells, soil, health, daily life, and property values.

Imagine investing in your dream home in a beautiful neighborhood where young children are plentiful only to find out that 500 feet away human wastewater will be sprayed on ag lands and stored in a 100-acre reservoir? How would you feel as a parent and homeowner?

No one wants to expose their children to this.

This is what they are trying to force upon us. How does the SSSD think that building a wastewater storage facility adjacent to well-established neighborhoods protects our environment?

As part of their argument to build these facilities, they claim to use the recycled water to irrigate the farms in our neighborhood, but this recycled water can’t even be used to irrigate all crops. It can only be used on fodder.

Although their plan might sound solid to them in theory, the contaminated water they will use isn’t even acceptable enough to release into the Klamath River. If it’s not good enough for the river, how do they think they can justify it as good enough for our farms to use for irrigation? How can they say this won’t affect human health? It’s going to contaminate our wells with E. coli, phosphorous, nitrates, and many other toxins. It's going to poison our soil, make it unusable for future farming, and negatively affect our quality of life.

How do they possibly see this as protecting our environment?

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