Grassroots group aims to protect water resources

A new group is kicking-off a grassroots campaign Thursday night in an effort to protect your drinking water and make it so folks can sell homemade food.

The Portneuf Resource Council will show the public how it aims to tackle these issues in a public meeting, where not only water protection will be a topic of discussion, but the Cottage Foods Initiative as well.

Joanna Anderson is a volunteer member of the Portneuf Resource Council and said she hopes this grassroots effort improves the quality of life for Idahoans.

She said allowing folks to sell and trade homemade goods will lead to a self-sustaining community.

“We want people to be as prosperous and as self-sustaining as possible,” Anderson said. “Right now our main thing is to pass the Cottage Foods Law to make it legal for people to prepare and sell food in their own kitchen so they don’t have to go to a commercial kitchen.”

Anderson said right now, Idaho is only one out of seven states left where it is illegal to sell or trade food prepared in your own home.

So yes, this means folks who decorate and sell wedding cakes out of their home, or even that eight year old kid down the street who sells lemonade every summer to save-up for that new bike.

Surprisingly, that’s all illegal.

Now, it’s not as if you’ll start seeing local government or businesses throwing the book at that little kid for getting a head-start in his entrepreneurial endeavors, but the group still wants to protect that right.

“If someone could make an extra 50 dollars, that could really help them out. And it could even move on from there,” Anderson added.

However, selling these goods for charity or for church-related functions does not fall under the law.

Another issue the group wants to address is protecting water resources.

“It definitely doesn’t take much for something to leak into our water and we just want to make sure everybody is on the same page so that our water will be protected and other wells in town will not be shut off.”

She said out of the seven water wells in Pocatello, one was shut-off permanently years ago after test results showed garbage from the landfill was seeping into the water.

But, she said now the landfill has since been well-updated so that shouldn’t be a worry for the local community at this point.

However, Anderson said the group is looking at current ordinances and compiling data from other states to draft legislation to make sure new construction projects and whatnot are bound by stricter codes so that pluming is up-to-date.

For more information, you can attend tonight’s meeting at Portneuf Valley Brewing at 6:30.

The PRC is formed under the umbrella non-profit group called the Idaho Organization of Resource Councils.