The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Maybe our leaders under the Golden Dome of Wisdom, now redder than a Louisiana crawfish boil, don’t want to address Iowa’s dirty water because it’s a real problem.
There is loads of research, data and evidence that nitrate pollution from farming operations is fouling our waterways. After 13 years of promoting voluntary measures, the problem is not getting solved in any meaningful way.
Just ask the good people of Des Moines, who still can’t water their yards to cut demand so the city’s nitrate removal system can keep up with nigh nitrate levels in its water sources — the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. The Des Moines Water Works is struggling to produce safe water for 600,000 Iowans, and agricultural pollution is the main culprit.
So, this is a real, big problem in need of legislative action and leadership. And yet, our GOP governor, Legislature and secretary of agriculture offer us little more than a dismissive shrug.
Regulations? Unthinkable.
That’s not how Iowa Republicans roll. They’ve been too busy over the last 10 years dealing with problems we didn’t even know existed.
Did you know Iowa’s public schools are so lousy that we’re now spending $350 million each year to pay for publicly funded private school scholarships?
I mean, did you even realize we had to ban books from school libraries that describe any “sex acts” to save the children? You probably had no idea elementary teachers should not be allowed to even mention that LGBTQ Iowans exist.
How could we have known Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts at our state universities are so dangerous we must erase all traces of their existence?
We had to make absentee voting more difficult to address voter fraud because they just had a “feeling” the 2020 election was rigged.
Did you know we needed to loosen child labor laws?
Did you not understand the need to privatize Medicaid, ban almost all abortions and approve a constitutional amendment on firearms rights that makes the good old 2nd Amendment look like a pop gun?
Perhaps you were you unaware collective bargaining rights for government employees had to be gutted. Area Education Agencies also needed to be kicked around.
We just had to impose new restrictions on food assistance, Medicaid and unemployment benefits to get low-income Iowans out of their hammocks.
And we simply had to demonize transgender Iowans and take away their civil rights.
So, while these “problems” were being “solved,” lawmakers had no time to consider a real-world problem like awful water quality and its consequences — closed beaches, fish kills, manure spills and nitrate laden water linked to serious health risks.
It makes us look bad. So, let’s stop funding water quality sensors.
Surely, after the failure of voluntary conservation, we need laws to protect our water from the agricultural nitrate load contaminating lakes, rivers and streams, also known as non-point sources of pollution. Point sources, such as water treatment plants, are a much smaller source of nitrates.
“The blame game is unproductive,” Iowa Agriculture Sec. Mike Naig wrote recently in a social media post. “There is work to be done on both sides of the point/non-point source equation. These investments are expensive, take time and require collaboration.
“Every Iowan has a role to play in improving water quality,” Naig wrote.
When everyone is to blame, nobody takes responsibility.
Gov. Kim Reynolds,
who was asked once again
about the Des Moines water saga, said “regulation is hardly ever the answer,” and it “is a killer in most instances, it takes out innovation.”
“They can’t control Mother Nature … but mark my word, they are working every single day to implement conservation practices because they know it benefits everybody,” Reynolds said.
So, regulations we’ve never had won’t work. It was the weather’s fault that farmers are applying more nitrate fertilizer every year. And if everybody is working on the problem, why is the water still so dirty?
Who benefits? Well, there are the owners of large hog confinements and cattle feed lots, massive row crop farming operations, fertilizer makers, the ethanol industry and politicians who do their bidding, to name just a few.
These are Friends of Kim, or FOK. We can’t make laws for FOK’s sake.
Just keep peddling platitudes and comforting lies until the current crisis fades and the issue goes away. Then we can go back to allowing nitrates to flow into our waters, our favorite places to recreate, our fishing holes, our drinking water taps and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
But the issue is having a moment. Iowans can refuse to let it die. We know Republicans don’t care about water, and most Democrats haven’t been brave enough to speak truth to agriculture. Water pollution is a monument to bipartisanship.
We’re not powerless. Candidates in both parties should be grilled, or maybe boiled, on the issue before voting begins in 2026. Don’t let them evade the question. Turn up the heat and pass the hot sauce.
(319) 398-8262; [email protected]
