People in northwest Illinois have been mislead with rumors and half-truths about how a new business, Traditions Dairy, is going to affect our water resources.

Karst. How many people even knew what the word meant a year ago? I happen to know, I have done extensive drilling in known karst areas. There has been an opinion expressed by a supposed "expert" that we live in a Karst area. After a lifetime of drilling around here, I can tell you that is not so.

True karst has a very specific contamination plume that is not found around here. If we truly had karst formations, contaminated groundwater would not radiate out from a source but would go along a very definitive route in one direction and move very fast.

In my 40 years of drilling around here, I have never found this to be true. The only route that has manifested itself able to carry contamination down to our drinking water is abandoned, very old or improperly constructed wells.

How many communities have clay-lined wastewater ponds? Almost every one has at least one; some have three or more. Some have been there since the 1960s. The older ones were not built to today's standards. There has not been one recorded instance of anyone's well ever being contaminated from one of these ponds in Jo Daviess County.

Our drinking water is under attack every day from old wells that do not meet today's standards, but it is not threatened by one more dairy.