Jennifer Breon is a Senior Iowa Organizer with Food & Water Action, the political and lobbying sibling organization of the national environmental group Food & Water Watch. She is based in Iowa City.
Matt Hildreth is the Executive Director of Rural Organizing, a national organization working to rebuild a rural America that’s empowered, thriving, and equitable. Originally from eastern South Dakota, Matt is based in rural Washington State.
Industrial agriculture’s public health crisis is on full display in Iowa.
As residents of the state with the nation’s fastest-rising cancer rates, the most factory farms and highest waterway toxic nitrate concentrations, Iowans are desperate for change. If Iowa Democrats want to regain power this fall, they need to prove to voters that they are serious about solutions.
If they can get it right, new polling from Rural Organizing outlines the opportunity this issue offers Democratic candidates: Iowans are so fed up with high and rising cancer rates that fully 11 percent of Trump’s rural Iowa voters would consider voting for a different party over this issue. Indeed, recent Food & Water Action polling found that few issues are as concerning to Iowa voters as cancer rates and clean water.
Politics is so often a game played in the margins, with opportunities for flipping voters between parties few and far between. Democrats would be wise to seize this rare opening.
It’s not hard to see why this issue is so motivating to voters. The Iowa Cancer Registry estimates that nearly 22,000 Iowans will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and 6,400 will die from the disease. Iowa is at the top of the list of states when it comes to cancer rates, but is at the bottom when it comes to cancer care, especially in rural areas. Far too many Iowans share the experience of driving sick family members hours out of state or to urban hubs to receive adequate care.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of central Iowans faced a second straight season of water restrictions earlier this summer, and families are forced to wonder whether the water they drink will sicken them. Central Iowa Water Works’ nitrate removal system has been running for a record high number of days, even as new evidence suggests the nitrate levels it maintains may still not be safe. Statewide, cancer-linked nitrate violations in Iowa drinking water have doubled in the past year.
A majority (57 percent) of rural Iowans believe cancer is caused by pollution. They are right. While cancer causation is complex and multifactorial, the science is clear that environmental factors play a significant role. A recent study published just last month in the journal Environmental Research finds that cancer rates are 4-8 percent higher in areas with more factory farms. Factory farms produce waste laden with several toxins including nitrates, and without regulation to ensure otherwise, many of those cancer-linked toxins end up in drinking water.
Iowa’s cancerous water didn’t happen by mistake. Over decades, leaders of both political parties enabled factory farms’ takeover of rural Iowa by stripping nearly every regulation imaginable from the industry. Today, nearly 4,000 factory farms operate without any water pollution controls at all, and the state has no idea where these facilities’ 100+ billion pounds of waste goes each year. No one does–until it shows up in the water we drink.
Iowans are thirsty for change—and ready to elect candidates that will crack down on industry’s free pass to pollute. According to recent Food & Water Action polling, a vast majority of Iowans (79 percent) support mandatory requirements for industrial agriculture to reduce pollution. All that stands between Iowans, clean water, and healthy communities is the political will to take on Big Ag.
Strong bills, like the Clean Water for Iowa Act that would regulate factory farm pollution at the source have been introduced repeatedly by Democratic State Senator Art Staed and multiple co-sponsors, only to be denied hearings by the Republican majority. Voters will no longer accept this inaction.
Iowa’s clean water and cancer crises are obvious. So too is the political opportunity this fall: To regain power in Des Moines, Iowa Democrats need to get serious about clean water, cancer, and factory farm regulation now.
Top image is by Photo Spirit, available via Shutterstock.