Historic Marietta has always been a community with wonderful gifts and untapped potential.

As we forge into the third year of COVID-19, 2022 offers a number of opportunities to improve everyone’s quality of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Marietta is blessed by Mother Nature with a high-quality fresh water aquifer near the Muskingum River in Indian Acres Park.

Unfortunately, we are failing to protect it even though most are aware of what happens to communities–such as Flint, Michigan, Jackson, Mississippi and Washington DC when we fail to protect these critical resources.

Marietta has spent more than $2 million since the 1980’s because a chemical pollution most likely from a dry cleaning operation threatening our drinking water supply.

Besides building diversion wells at great expense to keep the cancer causing contamination out of the city’s FIVE drinking water wells, we spent a small fortune on the electricity pumping nearly 2 million gallons a day as waste into the Muskingum River.

Knowing this city history and seeing water crises across the country and oversees, it is mind boggling to know we aren’t taking basic steps to protect our critical drinking water for future generations.

Marietta continues permitting motor vehicle drivers to park illegally both around our fresh water wells and atop the aquifer.

Although Indian Acres has abundant paved parking spaces available all the time, parking by chemical dripping and leaking vehicles is allowed in grassy park area around wells and over the aquifer because some people can’t be expected to walk a short distance to ball fields.

Instead, they park one to a hundred vehicles atop the aquifer threatening chemical poisoning, that once done, cannot be undone at any financial cost.

Common sense and responsibility to future generations requires simply a new sign directing ball field parking to existing, massive parking lots and police enforcement of criminally negligent parking in protected well and aquifer zones.

Those with disabilities also could be accommodated with simple common sense drop off areas or ADA spaces close to ball fields, but not dangerously situated over our water supply.

If we take a few simple steps, Marietta can be a major water supplier for generations. Or we can be lazy, complain about me, me, me and allow contamination to decimate Marietta’s and the surrounding area’s communities’ drinking water.

Roger G. Kalter

Marietta