To the editor:

Last month I submitted a written request to Diking District No. 1 that the public and I be allowed to attend a meeting that Commissioners Steve Arnold and Ray Gabelein had secretly arranged between the diking district and the Army Corps of Engineers. They refused to tell me the date or time of the meeting and did not respond to my request that the meeting be opened to the public.

As an elected commissioner of Diking District 1, I had to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Corps of Engineers to find out what was happening in my district.

When I received a copy of the minutes of the July 21 joint meeting, I was shocked to find out that the Farmer Bureau was “considering if they would financially support the diking district in a lawsuit against the Corps.” The minutes further revealed that the pump project was designed to benefit the diking district’s “farmers” and that “Getting water off the fields in March or April for planting purposes is important to the farmers.”

So who are Diking District 1’s farmers? To my knowledge the only person with any significant “farming” activity in the district is Ray Gabelein who grazes cows and cuts hay. Is anyone actually planting a crop? If so, please contact me, and indicate if you want the water level lowered during the spring at the expense of destroying wetlands?

The (benefited) owners of the farmland pay about 2 percent of the taxes for the pump project. The owners of the non-farm properties, who pay 98 percent of the taxes, will be forced to pay thousands of additional dollars in attorney fees for Diking Commissioners Gabelein’s and Arnold’s plan to sue the Corps of Engineers.

If you are a taxpayer in Diking District 1 and want to pay additional taxes to sue the Corps, please contact me.

John Shepard

Clinton