This is in response to a story in the Sun Journal on Sept. 19 in which the Paris Utility Board requested an exemption from state regulations to allow doubling the amount of copper discharged into the Little Androscoggin River.

That exemption should be denied.

That out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality of using rivers and streams as open sewers is history and should remain so. The people of the state of Maine have worked long and hard to clean up the rivers and cracking that door open puts the state on a slippery slope backward.

There should be one guideline: You make the mess, you clean it up. Period.

Robert Hearn, Auburn