Iowa's Water Growing Steadily More Toxic; Since 1999, Nitrogen Content In Rivers Up Nearly 50%

[hatrack]

"Health trumps politics,” said Iowa State Senator David Johnson before taking the stage at a raucous rally in Des Moines last winter to support strengthening the state’s water quality. In the marble rotunda of the state capitol, he rose to denounce the nitrogen and phosphates that have been flowing in ever-increasing quantities into Iowa’s public water supplies — and was cheered by the small crowd of family farmers, concerned mothers, and his new political allies, the legislature’s drastically outnumbered Democrats. Johnson had been one of the longest-serving Republicans in Iowa until he left the party to become an independent in 2016 after defying it repeatedly on one of the most divisive issues in Iowa — the integrity of the state’s water.

Iowa’s nitrogen load has been accelerating despite more than $100 million spent by the federal and state governments to rein it in. Starting in 1999, the concentration of nitrogen in the state’s major waterways has increased almost 50 percent, according to a study from the University of Iowa, published last spring in PLOS One. The battle over Iowa’s water had long been posed as one between rural and urban interests, until Johnson, whose district is one of the most thinly populated and heavily farmed in the state, came along. In 2002, Senator Johnson co-authored one of the state’s key water statutes, the “Master Matrix,” which was supposed to establish health and safety guidelines for CAFOs and industrial farms in Iowa. By 2012 he was seeing how the relatively lax controls he had authored were being exploited, leaving his constituents vulnerable to the health consequences of escalating pollution from agricultural runoff. Nitrate pollution increased from about 200 million pounds in 2002 to more than a billion pounds in 2016. “I helped write this law in 2002,” he says, “and it’s terribly outdated with the current conditions that we’re seeing right now.”

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A sequence of studies of women in Iowa over the age of 55 found that sustained exposure to nitrogen levels of just 5 milligrams per liters — half the federally determined “safe rate” — may contribute to increased risks of bladder, ovarian, and thyroid cancer. According to Peter Weyer, former director of CHEEC and one of the nation’s foremost experts on nitrates in drinking water, more than half of the 42,000 Iowa women monitored by the center over a 30-year period had relied on the same water source for more than 20 years, giving extra credence to the researchers’ conclusion that it was nitrogen in the water, and not other potential sources, that was the main contributor to the elevated cancer rates. Another study on birth defects that centered on 10 locales around the country, including Iowa, found evidence suggesting newborn children face increased risk of conditions such as spina bifida and cleft palate if their mothers have sustained exposure to drinking water with half the federal limit for nitrogen.

Across rural Iowa, tens of thousands of residents get their drinking water from private wells, sources that are specifically exempted from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and therefore unregulated for nitrogen or other contaminants, according to Craig Cox, director of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group’s Midwest office in Ames, Iowa. “It’s one thing to spread nitrate removal costs over half a million people [in Des Moines],” he said, “but it’s totally different if it’s a couple of thousand people.”

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https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-the-heart-of-the-corn-belt-an-uphill-battle-for-clean-water-iowa

[SWBTATTReg]

1. This article needs to point out more, that fixes need to be regional and not by state ...

(although on a state by state basis, this is a good start). Perhaps more can be accomplished by suing the state of Iowa and its farmers by downstream states that are being polluted by the rivers flowing through Iowa (and of course Iowa has pollutants from upstream too). There probably are such lawsuit(s) around. Water rights is a pretty touchy subject it seems.

Missouri farmers too, share a burden too, in making sure that pollutants / fertilizers aren't being injected into watersheds inappropriately, and if anything, should move away from using fertilizers so much. Unfortunately, the cost/benefit ratios are not favorable, and the continued use of fertilizers/pollutants are simply flushed away, and the farmer(s) in question aren't left holding the bag, so to speak, when in fact, they should be held accountable.

As we all know, through the use of poorly applied fertilizers (past and present), pollutants are moving downstream from MN and Iowa, into MO and beyond, and are polluting downstream communities too. Cities are bearing these costs, whereas they shouldn't, when solutions are available upstream, e.g., have more and better sediment ponds, don't use as much fertilizer, or administer the fertilizers in a better manner.

Some farmers have taken steps to eliminate the use of fertilizers and seem to realize pretty close to the same output of crops (a little less), using different techniques. I have heard that they are starting to in Iowa, use these techniques.

Perhaps it's just taking time to start being effective, or enough farmers aren't switching over (flush the crap downstream, don't give a hoot, etc. mentality).

I don't drink the water (even though I know is safe) from the tap, and never will (in STLMO). Perhaps in the Ozarks where my family is from, where I know the water is safe for the most part, I will (and it does taste very good, I bottle the water and bring home to STLMO).

Watersheds are pretty protected in the Ozarks and the MO. dept. of conservation has a very aggressive program to eliminate septic ponds, tanks, etc. that don't meet standards. Funding of these efforts too, are supported not by the republican controlled legislature, but by a .025 % sales tax, so funding is secure (and it was reapproved recently by the voters of the state of MO). We're lucky here, in that this process isn't political (and it shouldn't be, dirty water is dirty water, and we don't want another Flint either).