This past week, a contingent of Carroll city, county and business leaders traveled to Washington, D.C. for their annual Access Washington trip to meet with area legislators, House Representative Steve King and Senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst. Carroll City Manager, Mike Pogge-Weaver, says he did not have any preconceived expectations for this, his first trip and his first time at federal-level lobbying for a community. Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio
The city presented two topics, copper discharge at the sanitary sewer system and infrastructure. The copper issue was the priority project for this trip.
Pogge-Weaver says they told their congressional delegation this wasn’t a request for money, this is an attempt to change the current regulation and forestall the chance they would have to spend millions of dollars in the future to reduce the discharge copper levels when the amount allowed in drinking water is 75 times higher than what can be discharged into the Middle Raccoon River. They are also working with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to try to isolate where the copper is entering the system, but Pogge-Weaver says they do believe it is coming from the copper pipes used in the water distribution system. Infrastructure was the second topic of interest. No bill has yet come out so there is a lot of speculation that they will push public/private partnerships, but Pogge-Weaver says that these partnerships are not a viable alternative for our area.
One of the items talked about, for instance, was natural gas distribution. There is not a shortage of natural gas in the United States, but there is a distribution problem in getting it efficiently to our rural areas, such as Manning, Coon Rapids, Templeton, etc. Carroll Broadcasting will bring you more from other delegation members in upcoming broadcasts.