The City of Two Rivers will be taking a chemical out of its drinking water.
The city council voted 7-2 to remove fluoride, saving the city $12,000 a year.
The crowd gathered at the meeting gave a vigorous applause of the crowd after the vote.
Before that, they had time to voice their opinions to the city council about fluoride.
One resident who opposed the chemical, Eva, said it wasn’t about science but personal choice.
Please listen to the residents who emailed you concerns,” she stated. “Please review the scientific evidence of risks, and please consider whether to continuing to force fluoride on every resident is the right policy for our community. Clean water should mean clean water and health decisions should belong to individuals and their family.”
Other residents spoke about Fluorosilicic acid, the chemical that’s used to put fluoride into drinking water.
But they too were more concerned that Two Rivers was “forcing it on them.”
Only one person spoke in favor of keeping fluoride in the drinking water.
Janice Van Driessen says that when she lived in the country, they had well water that didn’t contain fluoride.
After her children got cavities, a dentist prescribed fluoride tablets.
Their number of cavities went down to zero, and there was no harm to them,” she told the audience. “They are A, B, students. It did not affect their ability to learn. It did not affect their activity level. All of this is people trying to get their opinion across. So, I know that fluoride works. I hope that the city continues to put it in our water because it is beneficial.”
After public comments, most city council members, including Adam Wachowski and Katherine Dahlke, spoke out against keeping fluoride in the water.
Wachowski said again there are other ways to get fluoride without having it in the city’s drinking water.
He remarked, “We can provide toothpaste and tablets that we can use as an alternative; we can do that at no cost for those people who don’t have access to fluoride who want fluoride. People who don’t want fluoride: you can’t take it out of the water unless you spend a lot of money to get reverse osmosis, which we already know there are a lot of poor people in the City of Two Rivers. And even if you are not poor, why should you have to pay for it?”
The only Two Rivers council member who spoke out against removing the fluoride was Council Vice President Shannon Derby.
She was concerned about low-income families who can’t get the quality foods needed for their dental health and those who might not be able to afford a dentist.
“Private dentists do not have to take public insurance such as Badgercare,” she mentioned. “So, if we remove the fluoride from our water, then we will also be taxed with more dollars going into Badgercare and funding community dentists, which is also a hard thing to get to, since we don’t have a community dentist in Two Rivers.”
City Manager Kyle Kordell said he wanted the city council to vote on the issue since fluoride has been added to the city’s drinking water since 1952 and hasn’t been reviewed since then.
Full removal of fluoride in the city’s water won’t happen until October 31st, according to the city’s resolution.
Previously, the city held two meetings to discuss the topic before voting on it.
