State neglects public health obligation

If Iowa refuses to require nitrate depositors to crack down, then it should help city water plants pay the treatment cost

The state of Iowa in 2013 approved its “Nutrient Reduction Strategy” for reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into the state’s streams and rivers, and eventually downstream into the Gulf of Mexico. The voluntary Strategy was officially adopted in 2018, with a goal of reducing the pollutants’ runoff by 45 percent.

While some farmers have been diligent in their efforts to comply with the Strategy, and they deserve Iowans’ gratitude, not enough of them do enough to adequately reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff. There are several reasons for the lag, including cost, inertia, failure to learn and/or appreciate the best practices proposed by the Strategy, and individual resistance to change.

Iowa State University, responding to a state government directive, served as the leading author of the Strategy’s development. The state was responding to a federal requirement for all states in the Mississippi River watershed to reduce contaminated runoff from farms and cities alike.

Minnesota and Illinois enacted legislation requiring farmers to take concrete steps to improve runoff quality. Their requirements made for significantly better stream and river water quality in those states. Iowa’s voluntary approach, in place for the past 12 years, has not kept up.

Application of more commercial fertilizer and manure to the state’s farm fields, increased numbers of livestock, and more miles of farm tiles continue to outstrip efforts to keep contaminated runoff at a safe level for water drawn from rivers for drinking and other purposes.

As a result, urban centers like the Des Moines metro area that draw their water from rivers have been forced to install very expensive nitrogen removal equipment at their water utility plants. Some years that equipment, costly to run, operates frequently, depending on weather, water usage, and other causes.

Des Moines draws its water from the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, which are among the most nitrogen and phosphorus contaminated waterways in the nation, draining the rich soils of north central and west central Iowa which are intensively farmed for corn production. Corn requires nitrogen to thrive, and farmers in those watersheds are generally not reluctant to spread it generously.

Federal and state laws require municipalities, as “point sources” of water pollution from their sanitary sewer systems, to perform major treatment to their sewer effluent. The city of Jefferson, for instance, just completed a renovation of its wastewater plant that cost city residents some $18 million. The city is raising its residential and commercial sewer rates significantly over a multi-year period, to both pay the cost of the new plant and to escrow some funds for future plant improvement.

Under law, “point-source” pollution must be mitigated by those who do the contaminating, like municipality residents. But there’s no fee for “non-point-source” pollution, like what drains into streams and rivers from farm fields.

Research studies by Iowa State University and other organizations and institutions agree that at least three-fourths of the nitrogen and phosphorus in Iowa’s rivers and streams comes from farms, whether from commercial fertilizer or from livestock manure. Iowa’s millions of livestock numbers produce much more solid waste than do residents of the state’s towns and cities.

What all this means is that residents of cities like Des Moines, because of unimpressive farmer compliance with the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, have to pay on their own to mitigate farm nitrogen runoff with no financial assistance from those who cause it. That’s not right. There appears to be little chance of any real reduction to nitrogen and phosphorus runoff in Iowa. The system is voluntary, so there are no regulations to require compliance. It’s been the case for 12 years, and the Legislature and Governor show no interest in changing that.

Fifteen years ago, in 2010, about 60 percent of Iowa voters approved a constitutional amendment that directs the first three-eighths of a cent of any new statewide sales tax to go to an outdoor and recreation fund for conservation, trails, and related uses. But the legislature has not funded the initiative.

So what we’ve had in Iowa for years is akin to World War One trench warfare, with everyone dug into their own positions indefinitely, and no movement toward a solution.

Given that scenario, the state of Iowa needs to exercise its responsibilities for fairness and public health, and provide state funding for at least a big chunk of the cost of nitrogen removal in municipal systems. Unless and until protection of water quality goes beyond voluntary suggestions, the current situation is manifestly unfair: urban folks are paying the cost of treating pollution caused by farm folks.

And it isn’t as though the state can’t find the money. The state’s reserves approach two billion dollars, and state government believes it can afford to cut taxes. Some of those funds should go instead to help pay the cost of cleaning the water in towns and cities that draw it from Iowa’s rivers.

State funding assistance for nitrogen removal facilities in urban centers, of course, will have very little effect on the contaminated water that Iowa sends down the Mississippi to the “dead zone” beyond the delta in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a completely separate issue, one that should have a much higher priority in the Legislature than it has for the last decade.

But in the meantime, the state needs to play fair with river-water users like Des Moines residents.