We’re officially halfway through Tap Talk’s fifth season! This week, we welcome some guests from our state’s neighbor to the West: Mindy Uhle, Bureau Chief of Environmental Health at the Iowa Department of Health & Human Services, and Erik Day, a Senior Environmental Specialist at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Mindy and Erik work on Iowa’s Private Well Grants Program, a cross-agency effort to provide Iowans with free or discounted well services. (See more from HHS and DNR). The program was established through the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act, and bolsters relationship between all areas of Iowa’s private well community in addition to saving well owners money.
Topics Discussed
- Meet Mindy Uhle
- Mindy’s Water Hero: John Snow; pioneer of modern epidemiology and germ theory who identified the source of London’s 1854 cholera outbreak
- Meet Erik Day | LinkedIn
- Erik’s Water Hero: Henry Darcy; pioneer of hydrogeology and inventor of Darcy’s Law, the equation that describes the flow of fluid through porous media
- Overview of Iowa’s Private Well Grants Program (PWG)
- Services covered by the program
- The network of those involved with the program
- Attitudes of well owners, county health workers, and well professionals towards the program
- The benefits of the program to all stakeholders in Iowa’s private well community
- How other states could implement a similar program
- Connect with the Iowa Department of Health & Human Services
- Connect with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources
“It is accessible to every Iowan. We have this program in all 99 counties. It does not discriminate. No matter where you live you should be able to access these funds.”
Mindy Uhle
Go Further
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About the Guests
Mindy Uhle is the Bureau Chief of Environmental Health at the Iowa Department of Health & Human Services. You can reach her at mindy.uhle@hhs.iowa.gov.
Erik Day is a Senior Environmental Specialist in the Water Supply Engineering Section of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. In this role, he is the DNR’s main operative for the Private Well Grants Program. In a previous professional life, he was a radiology technician. After choosing to follow his longtime passion for environmental and water quality issues, he earned both a BS and MS in Geology and Environmental Science at Iowa State University and joined the Iowa DNR in 2021.