Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.
People living in central Iowa received a wake-up call last week that should drag water quality back in front of the state’s 3.2 million residents.
Iowa’s largest water supplier, which serves a fifth of the state’s homes and businesses, ordered its 600,000 customers to immediately reduce water demand by ending lawn-watering and cutting use in other ways.
Such orders typically come during persistent drought when water supplies are short. This time, water is plentiful. But Central Iowa Water Works is struggling to remove enough nitrates to make its water safe for human consumption.
This is not just a Des Moines area problem. This is an all-of-Iowa problem.
While fertilizing lawns and golf courses in urban areas contributes to the nitrate problem, excess application of commercial nitrogen fertilizer and manure on farm ground is by far the primary reason for elevated levels of nitrates.
This focus on nitrates in drinking water is not some arcane concern motivated by fans of lush lawns. The heart of the issue is public health.
Nitrates are of special concern for infants under 6 months of age and pregnant women. Studies also suggest even nitrate levels below the federal safe-drinking-water standard could contribute to an increase in colon and rectal cancers, thyroid disease and some birth defects.
Statistics from Central Iowa Water Works illustrate the scope of the current problem: Federal regulations limit nitrates in public water supplies to no more than 10 milligrams per liter (mg/l). Nitrates in the “finished water” last week were at 9.8 mg/l after passing through the utility’s treatment plant.
Nitrates in the Raccoon River’s untreated water edged over 20 mg/l, the highest since a record of 24.39 milligrams was set in 2013, utility officials said. Nitrates in the Des Moines River last week stood at 17.15 mg/l.
Des Moines has operated a sophisticated nitrate-removal system, one of the world’s largest, since 1992. The Water Works uses the system when nitrate levels jeopardize the utility’s ability to comply with federal water standards.
The system has run at capacity this spring more for than 50 consecutive days. The utility cannot keep up with customer demand because of the high nitrate levels in water entering the treatment plant.
There is no mystery what needs to be done. The “how” is contentious.
The mandatory water conservation steps announced last week put the spotlight on the chief cause of those high nitrate levels: agricultural runoff carrying nitrates from farm fields into Iowa’s streams, rivers and lakes.
Therein is the nub of the issue.
Scientists and politicians developed Iowa government’s plan for dealing with elevated levels of nitrates and phosphorus—called the nutrient reduction strategy—a dozen years ago. The plan is strictly voluntary, and improvement has been negligible.
Ted Corrigan, general manager of the Des Moines Water Works, told Iowa Capital Dispatch in 2022 after a progress report came out: “The real solution is upstream. The landowners there are the solution-holders. They have the ability to make changes to the way they use their land in order to keep nutrients on the land and in the soil, where they belong.”
There is more to this issue than lawn esthetics, the hours city “splash pads” operate, and the ability to wash cars whenever drivers want.
High nitrate levels affect every Iowan, regardless of where they live. They pay more for tap water, and evidence suggests they may pay with their health, too. The latest report by the Iowa Cancer Registry shows Iowa is one of two states nationally with rising rates of new cancers cases.
Sarah Green, executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council, a nonprofit group, said recently, “We know that our environment and our health are inextricably linked. With so many Iowans’ lives touched by cancer, it’s important that we explore every link and find ways we can work together to mitigate all potential sources of risk and save lives.”
Environmental groups criticize the nutrient reduction strategy as a solution that relies on “magical thinking.”
An Environmental Working Group study in 2021 found that three-fourths of the data showing high nitrate and phosphorus levels in rivers and lakes were in counties where at least 70 percent of cropland is fertilized.
That year, Iowa Capital Dispatch looked at the environmental group’s data for Hardin County in north central Iowa. Seventy-eight percent of the county’s farm acres were treated with commercial fertilizers, and 23 percent were fertilized with animal manure. Nitrate readings for river samples were as high as 34.8 mg/l, far above the federal standard, the group said.
Chris Jones, a retired University of Iowa research scientist, said Iowa’s water quality problems are not going away.
“This vulnerability is going to increase, there’s no doubt about it,” Jones told the Des Moines Register. “Until the state’s leaders come to grips with that, we are going to continue to see these problems at a greater frequency.”
Jones said although the federal limit for nitrates is 10 mg/l, even as much as 3 mg/l may lead to certain cancers.
“If you live in Des Moines, you could go years without drinking water below 3 milligrams per liter,” he told the Register. “So, the fact that we are just meeting the standard at 10 and to do that we have to sacrifice lawn watering, well, that’s just a small part of the story.”
Top photo is by Daydreambelieverme, available via Shutterstock.
Editor’s note from Laura Belin: Chris Jones wrote in more depth about the “ongoing nitrate pollution contaminating the Des Moines area drinking water supply” on his Substack newsletter, The Swine Republic.
5 Comments
Let's be very clear. The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy is not a "plan."
There is good science in the Strategy. I don’t mean to mock the science or the researchers. The science is valid.
But the “strategy” part is just a list of ideas and suggestions. The Strategy has no standards, deadlines, schedules, benchmarks, or anything else that would make it an actual plan. It is a document for Big Ag (and the elected officials who serve Big Ag) to try to hide behind, and that is how it has been used since it first came out.
To be clear again, the research part deserves respect. But as a plan, the Strategy is really not so very different from someone writing on a piece of paper, “Gee, I sure would like to lose some weight someday. So maybe at some point in the future, I’ll decide not to eat so much. And possibly I’ll count some calories. And perhaps I will exercise a little more.”
As a strategy, it should be called the Nutrient Reduction Farce. And no wonder, because the way it was developed was a political farce of epic proportions. Some of us in the conservation community who spent a lot of time carefully following that development, and who naively tried to make a meaningful difference in the final document (hahaha), remember it all too well.
PrairieFan Tue 17 Jun 12:40 AM
our political leadership is incapable of grasping
these kinds of matters and so far no one running to replace them has offered any real/substantial alternatives. These failures don’t just apply to this one particular instance of corporate power/interests over citizens’ rights/lives and frankly without federal intervention (obviously not coming from the current regime) we are lost on many of these issues. Biden tried to pass his version of the Green New Deal and as we know got undercut by his own party and that might have been our best last shot at changing these dynamics but we should still do what we can to try again or at least slow the destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_zone
dirkiniowacity Tue 17 Jun 12:23 PM
Thank you, Randy Evans
Your post is more honest and comprehensive than a lot of the watering-ban news coverage I’ve seen.
Much more could be written about this latest demonstration of Iowa’s role as a mostly-meek and wholly-owned subsidiary of industrial agriculture. I’ll just recommend that anyone really interested in agricultural water pollution find and follow the Substack blog of Chris Jones. And consider subscribing to support his work.
Meanwhile, the well-funded spinmeisters at the Iowa Farm Bureau are undoubtedly hard at work coming up with the hot gaseous response messages that will be released over the next few weeks. I’ll keep a bucket handy.
PrairieFan Tue 17 Jun 7:37 PM
Its the lawyers, lobbyists and PR wordsmiths
The lawyers, lobbyists and public relations teams at Farm Bureau and other agribusiness groups that use every legal and political trick in the book to frustrate the voters. They manipulate Iowa’s laws and regulations, fund their hand-picked candidates and add more commercials to avoid any regulation. The title of the Iowa Environmental Council’s new book on the condition of Iowa’s environment sums it up “Sacrifice State”. We need a new Governor and a handful of new legislators to make real reforms.
Miketram01 Wed 18 Jun 9:59 AM
Miketram01
Thank you.
Meanwhile, news stories are reporting that the Central Iowa Water Works is going to be adding new nitrate treatment capacity and clean water storage. That means future still-completely-unregulated ginormous amounts of farm nitrate pollution will keep freely surging through Iowa and then heading down the Mississippi River to grow the Dead Zone, threatening the drinking water of many Iowans along the way before killing ocean life and seriously harming the Gulf fishing industry, but metro Des Moines will be better able to avoid lawn-watering bans.
What is wrong with this picture??
PrairieFan Wed 18 Jun 10:12 AM