What we don’t know can hurt us

When you’re a professional thief pilfering jewels, art or rare artifacts, one of the first things you do is cut the alarm and disable the security cameras.

At least that’s what they do in movies.

Republicans who control the Iowa Legislature did roughly the same thing so they could steal our waterways and replace them with sewers.

Unfortunately, it’s not fiction. In 2023, Republicans eliminated funding for a network of river and stream sensors that detect pollution levels, such as a heavy nitrate load flowing from cropland. Those sensors are the water quality equivalent of security cameras, providing real-time data on how much nitrate is infiltrating our waterways.

There’s an effort this session to convince the Legislature, still controlled by Republicans, to reinstate funding. The fiscal 2027 budget is taking shape now, so we’ll know soon.

But defunding the sensors makes it extra easy to tell we’re being conned by Republicans and their Big Ag allies, who insist our water is getting cleaner. That fairy tale is a lot easier to sell without so much pesky data around to prove it’s hokum.

The sensors feed data into the Iowa Water Quality Information System. The University of Iowa deployed them, and annual funding came from Iowa State’s Nutrient Reduction Center. But in 2023, lawmakers cut the center’s budget by $500,000 with the intent of shutting down the sensors. It’s peanuts within a $9 billion state budget, but a debilitating blow to the sensor network.

Chris Jones, then a UI water researcher, wrote stuff online explaining why Iowa’s water quality is getting worse while calling out “cropaganda” promoted by politicians and groups profiting from dirty water. GOP lawmakers didn’t like it, so they voted to eliminate the data gathering that informed his writing. Jones retired soon after.

Now, Jones is a Democrat running for Iowa secretary of agriculture. They sure shut him up.

Also, sensors monitor Bloody Run Creek in Clayton County, which just happened to be the site where Sen. Dan Zumbach’s son-in-law operated a big cattle feedlot. Zumbach led the charge to unplug the network. What a crazy coincidence.

TODD DORMAN

Bloody Run Creek is a clean water horror story. It is one of Iowa’s “Outstanding Waters” designated by the Department of Natural Resources for its water quality. Permitting Supreme Beef ’s feedlot was surprisingly unpopular among Northeast Iowans who care about the fate of the trout stream and don’t want to see it turn into a bovine poop flume. The state, it seems, couldn’t care less.

Iowans, including the Driftless Water Defenders, challenged the DNR’s decision to renew Supreme Beef ’s permit for massive water use and the department’s failure to investigate water pollution from the feedlot.

A DNR memo argued that renewing the water permit is “in the best interests of the people.”

No matter how bad it looks, always stick with the big lie.

Fortunately, the sensors did not go dark. Iowa State agreed to keep funding the sensors temporarily. A grant from the Walton Family Foundation provided money. Now, people who care about clean water are working to line up funding by June 30. The sensor network will be deactivated without adequate bucks.

It will take $600,000 to manage the network of 60 sensors. It used to be 75 sensors, but funding cuts scuttled any effort to replace or repair older sensors.

Polk County is contributing $200,000. That’s where residents faced water use restrictions last summer as the Des Moines Water Works struggled to handle a spike in nitrate levels from farmland draining into the Raccoon River.

Johnson and Linn counties have also been asked to chip in. GoFundMe fundraising by the Izaak Walton League has raised another $50,000.

But that funding is all temporary. It’s a statewide network that should receive dedicated annual state funding. Democratic lawmakers support funding the network, but the minority party doesn’t have the votes.

“What I can say is that there has been an incredible amount of outreach to legislators, again, both chambers, both parties, by the general public, by conservation groups, by various water-related, water resources groups, WMAs, community leaders,” said Larry Weber, director of IIHR — Hydroscience and Engineering at UI.

“And so, I know that there’s been a lot of outreach on our behalf. I think there’s a lot of pressure on the Legislature,” Weber said.

One possible source of funding is the state’s Groundwater Protection Fund, which contains fees paid on nitrogen-based fertilizer sales, license fees from pesticide dealers, and registration fees for the sale of pesticides, among other sources.

The fund ended fiscal 2025 with a carry forward balance of $23.5 million, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

But if the sensors are shut down, we’ll just know a lot less about water pollution. And what we don’t know can’t hurt us, right?

This past week the Harkin Institute at Drake University, along with the Iowa Environmental Council, released a report titled “Environmental Risk Factors and Iowa’s Cancer Crisis.” Iowa’s cancer rate is among the nation’s worst, and it’s growing like a broadleaf weed.

The report says we have more confined animal feeding operations than any other state. The Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, both sources of drinking water, rank in the top 1 percent of rivers nationwide for nitrate concentration. And 80 percent of this contamination originates from agricultural sources. We’ve destroyed our wetlands and replaced them with subsurface tile draining 13 million acres. It’s a pollution superhighway to rivers, streams and lakes.

“These factors combine to create a largely unregulated waste stream that drives Iowa’s high nitrate pollution and contaminates the waterways that supply the state’s drinking water,” according to the report.

At the same time, a series of studies cited by the report have shown connections between nitrate exposure and multiple cancers, even at levels below what’s considered safe for drinking water. Other risk factors play a role, with studies showing an increased cancer risk when nitrate is combined with other pollutants, including herbicides.

“While no single study provides definitive proof that nitrate in drinking water causes cancer, the consistency of associations across study designs, populations, and cancer types — especially at levels below current regulatory limits — suggests that nitrate likely contributes as an environmental risk factor,” the report says.

Our strictly voluntary pretty-please policy, asking agricultural landowners to stop polluting our waterways, clearly is a huge success. In 2019, the environmental council reported that at the current pace of restoring wetlands, it would take more than 900 years to reach the goal of building enough of them to control runoff from 7.7 million acres.

So, state policy is protecting polluters, fouling our environment and harming our health. Someone should sound the alarm. But the thieves are in control.

Comments: (319) 398-8262; todd. dorman@thegazette.com