Dear Sydney Jordan, Kari Dziedzic, and Ilhan Omar,

First of all, I would like to congratulate each of you ladies on a successful re-election! Now that you have had several weeks to reflect on your achievements, I want to be one of the first to call you all into action. While the Northeast is facing many issues, like social justice, high rent and an ever-changing business landscape, it’s easy to forget about environmental issues as they tend to fall on the back burner.

Your district has one of the newest Superfund sites in America, having only been declared this past March: Southeast Hennepin Groundwater and Vapor. I’ve gotten to know some of the people at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and it’s clear they are working hard on environmental mediation. They need your support! Not only that, they need your active participation as well. These operations tend to take years to have appreciable benefits, which would be greatly aided by your momentum. Volatile organic compounds like Trichloroethylene are no joke!

Now that your term is secure for a couple of years, it is the perfect time to focus on something that is vitally important and doesn’t improve fast enough to make for a good campaign platform. I’m relatively new to the Twin Cities, so forgive me if I am being overly direct, but this issue should not wait and needs all the attention it can get.

Dr. Dominik Dabrowski is an Occupational and Environmental Medicine Physician at HealthPartners, and a current student at the UMN School of Public Health.