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Dear editor,

I wish I didn’t have to write this. I wish that I lived in a world where it was truly just, the truth meant more than anything, and people’s lives were put over profits. But alas I do not live in that world. I live in the world of casual violence, where indeed company profits do trump peoples health in many cases. The last 15 years I have tried through every channel I can, to alert you to the amount of pollution in this area that is more than likely making you sick in more ways than one. And that entire time I have been ignored, shunned, ridiculed and slandered. I have had to live like a refuge as I have been stalked and harassed, and then dealt with the judgement of people who truly don’t know, and if they were truly wise, would know that. I used to take it personally, some days I still do, but truth is you all are doing what I had always heard called the conspiracy of normalcy.

Roughly defined, when people encounter a reality so unexpected, so terrifying, so unbelievable, they revert to almost this state of denial. One of the best examples of this theory, is what happened in Chernobyl, in 1986. I highly recommend you watch the HBO documentary on the subject, but understand that in the minutes after the reactor exploded, management at the nuclear power plant simply did not believe that the reactor core had indeed blown wide open, and was spewing the equivalent of 40 atomic bombs an hour of deadly gamma radiation into the air. Soviet government denied it was anything more than a common fire until the overwhelming death and illness immediately forced them to acknowledge otherwise, and in the end, Chernobyl happened because the Soviet government suppressed the findings of its own scientists that the graphite tips on the boron control rods could in fact act as a detonator if the reactor got far enough out of control. Simply put, the cost of lies was to the tunes of tens of thousands of people, and thousands of square kilometers of land. If they had listened to their own scientists, instead of gagging them, silencing them and shunning them, suppressing their research, none of it would have happened.

So, good people of Wausau, I am telling you now, there is serious pollution in this area that is more than likely making you sick. Its more than just Wauleco. In my last two council blog posts I showed updated number for lead and mercury in this area, and whereas the mercury has been stopped, there is still lead that from what I can tell from the permits, is being injected into the ground north of Wausau. From what I know of hydrology and groundwater flow because I have a natural resource degree from UWSP and a bachelors of science, is that more than likely that lead is going into the groundwater and it is flowing south with the current of the river. I know it is illegal to have a private well in the city of Wausau and Id be willing to guess this is why, the groundwater is so contaminated it’ll ,make you sick. You want a true solution to PFA’s, to Mercury, to Pentachoraphenol/Dioxin and Lead, we need to stop making the pollution in the first place. By my calculations, if an average of 15,000lbs of lead is going into deep injection wells in the area for the last 15 years that I know of, that’s 375,000 lbs of lead that has been injected into the aquifer. I pray Im wrong, but there is entirely too much evidence that says Im right and this warrants further investigation.

I have the tests the city does for the water that comes out of the tap, in the past Ive seen the permits for the effluent that is pumped into the Wisconsin River from the wastewater plant, but what I have never seen is the raw data for the water coming into the filtration system from the municipal wells which if I am correct are right in the path of this contaminated hydrologic flow. If im right folks, lead pipes are the least of our problems and how much more are we just going to turn a blind eye to the truth and think that we can buy infinite filters and never suffer the ill effects of what we are doing. Like the management and Soviet Government, our decisions will effect tens of thousands of people. Mikall Gorbachev was once quoted as saying that Chernobyl may well have been what brought down the Soviet Union 5 years later. I belief that. Like those brave scientists who gave their lives in almost all cases due to radiation, I am risking my own life to tell you that you too are in danger, and have been for a long time. Truly, what is the cost of lies?

Debra Weiss, candidate for Wausau City Council Dist. 4

Learn more at WeissforCouncil.wordpress.com

Weiss is one of two candidates for the seat. Former alderman Tom Neal is also running in Dist. 4.