Editor:

When it comes to Iowa’s water quality problems, the elephant in the room is the multinational pork industry. Iowa’s roughly 24 million hogs produce 260 million gallons of feces and urine every day.

Is it any wonder that most of our water is polluted with animal “waste?”

By not holding the pork industry accountable, the Republican leadership in Iowa has passed the cost of cleaning up our water onto taxpayers.

Exist polls from the November election (commissioned Nov. 6 and 7 by Public Policy Polling) are telling. The Iowa GOP needs to be listening:

• Iowans believe in being part of their community, ie: local control.

• Polling shows a whopping 73 percent of Iowans want the governor and legislature to act on reducing farm pollution runoff.

• Sixty-six percent of voters indicated they would prefer funding education, infrastructure and clean water rather than getting a decrease in their taxes.

It’s clear that Iowans want clean water, but the polluters should pay to clean it up.

Now that you’ve all voted, it is not the time to sit back and relax. Now is the time to contact your elected officials to tell them to act on cleaning up our state. There is no downtime in democracy.

Pat Bowen

Iowa City