News on August 25 reported Sheriff Mike Naig unholstering his squirt gun yet again to apply a gentle mist onto the raging inferno that is Iowa’s water quality and overall environmental condition.
There was Charles Wilson in this episode, but there was also a Charlie Wilson who was a Democrat from the state of Texas. He became known in Charlie Wilson’s War. It resulted in successful funding and support of the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet Afghan war leading to the withdrawal of the Soviet union from Afghanistan. We now have Chris Jones‘s war. Chris Jones is doing everything within his word power to reset the Iowa water landscape. I believe his work will ultimately contribute to the quality water which was meant to be here.
As usual, this is an insightful, biting and accurate account that everyone needs to read and understand.
Regarding stream buffers: excellent for stabilizing riparian zones, banks...and also refuges for wildlife. Maybe even some room for a prairie species or two. But what impact do stream buffers have on water quality (i. e., nitrates) in a largely tile drained system in which a significant proportion of water moves through soil and is then routed underneath the buffers?,
Buffers in Minnesota, although not financed in the same way, were sold as the way to reduce nitrates from row crops aka #2 corn. But since pattern tiling is at least as rampant in Western and Southern MN as it is in Iowa, almost none of the water from fields is intercepted by this practice. Riparian buffers were great, however, at preventing or at least reducing massive stream bank erosion from raging torrents of tile drainage unleashed by the 4-6" deluges received in one evening at the end of July. Corn fields, meanwhile, sat high and dry.
You took the words right out of my mouth. The buffers are compatible with the installation of saturated buffers, though, too, which on my farm take the nitrate content down to a low level, if properly maintained.
I'm confused. How did 'cornfields, meanwhile, sat high and dry' after a 4-6" rain? No way, some one is feeding u a line.
Also, since I've spent my entire life hands-on here in the trenches farm field drainage tile has nothing to do with stream bank erosion from 4-6" of rain in one evening which had to come awfully fast at one point or another that night, In fact if hadn't rained for several days the tile would having dried some of the soil so some of the rain could be absorbed a little before exploding off. WET soil absorbs NO more water and even contributes to soil erosion with loss of nutrients as well.
One problem in Iowa is topsoil that has been so pulverized by tillage that it behaves more like a brick than a sponge. Healthier topsoil can absorb and hold more rain. When good original prairies have been studied, they can absorb several inches of rain. I've seen slake tests that are mind-blowing.
For my thought I say a lot of people do recreational tillage. Yes healthier soils can absorb more precipitation BUT for areas with any natural surface drainage it can't be standing wet or next heavy rain takes soil and nutrients. Dry soil absorbs more water before erosion runoff than wet. The internal drainage by field tile can be a big factor in limiting soil loss.
I don't want to argue about the effects of tile drainage because that's a very deep rabbit hole. I think you are quite right that there is a lot of recreational tillage in Iowa. And I recently saw an ag-media story that said some people do tillage partly because it's a family tradition, which doesn't seem like the ideal way to make soil management decisions.
It comes down to soil types how flat a field is. The heavy black gummy soils of N Central Ia fall into that category. Also being farther N and cooler later and if covered with residue soils are a lot slower to warm up maybe tillage is a necessity for better germination and very important uniform emergence.
Since no-till is used by some farmers in Minnesota, I'm not sure "necessity" is the right word. In any case, a new post is up, and this will be my last comment on this thread.
Wisdom. Thanks, Chris. I grew up a mile from the Boone River in Hancock County. Unfortunately, much of it north of Corwith has long been straightened and therefore operates as a huge grass lined ditch. Hence, buffers up in that part of river would have minimal impact on water quality, especially since that is really tile rich country. Not to say that buffers wouldn't provide benefits, particularly for greatly needed wildlife habitat in that ag desert part of the state. I know a few years ago there was a young woman doing her PhD (perhaps in river ecology?) and had come up with a great plan to put the natural meanders back in some of Iowa's heavily impacted rivers, the Boone being one of them. It was a great proposal but I don't know whatever happened to it.
Here's a link to information about oxbow restoration in the Boone River watershed. The map shows that there are many potential oxbow-restoration sites in Hancock County. But at the time of the last update of this website, at least, it seems that none of the sites had been restored.
There are now some river oxbow restorations being done in Iowa, and restored oxbows have many conservation benefits. Iowa does have some good conservation work going on. It's just so small, scattered, and limited compared to the large needs.
The particularly maddening aspect of this situation is we are fouling our nest to produce a commodity that is not even needed. The world supply of corn far exceeds the demand. This fact is easily demonstrated by how often the market price is less than the cost of production. What other business can survive with this model? This does not even factor in the artificial inflation of the market due to ethanol. Your tax dollars, in the form of heavily subsidized crop "insurance" is what keeps corn producers solvent most years. This also has the added detriment of making it profitable to farm the most environmentally fragile acres. If a fraction of the crop insurance dollars were diverted to increasing conservation programs as a supply moderator, we might make some progress.
Obviously this would require a major political shift. Chris, I know you are not a Rob Sand fan but it's going to be him or Feenstra. Sand is persuadable if he can get elected. You need to declare a run for Sec Ag and beat the shit out of Sec Monsanto on the campaign trail over the environmental destruction he has presided over. It looks to me like the mid-terms may provide an opportunity for a return to sanity in Des Moines. Throw your hat in the ring and take your fact based, witty style on the road. Nobody is better suited to make this argument to Iowa voters than you!
well, a "good businessman" knows that a loss in one area of his business empire can be used at tax time to offset profits in other areas...
IMHO the "get big or get out" from the Earl Butz days (Butz was a putz) has always been about destroying the family farms so the "gentleman farmer), ie the pirate, can steal the profits while starving the people...
I know this because I used to teach at a yoga studio that ran at a loss for years while the owner/teacher built up the clientele and he told me he could offset his profits from his other businesses (he owned shopping centers). The studio now is a profitable one, one that actually thrived during the pandemic shut down because they had built up that clientele AND they had a business model, unlike most yoga studios, that split revenues 50/50 with the teachers. It began with one small room and expanded over the years to three rooms for classes and a small retail operation to sell yoga merch...
Great piece, informed and with numbers. Thank you!
IMHO, leaving Iowa because of uncomfortable politics is virtue signaling, if for no other reason than a left swing is inevitable. But leaving Iowa because it is bathed in chemicals and nitrates contributing to the second highest and only rising rate of cancer in the country is a rational decision.
Do you, any of you, including those involved in agriculture, want your children and grandchildren exposed to this toxic environment? I've a cancer medicine partner whose 10 y/o Iowa-born daughter has never had water from an Iowa tap--an admirable action stemming from a truly-informed opinion and work experience.
I greatly appreciate your consistent message on Iowa’s industrial mess. Unfortunately there is no part of Iowa that can claim to be free from a neighborhood of pollution-generation for profit. I grew up in Wisconsin where almost all extractive industries (mining, timber, paper, and even dairy) were in the minimally populated north or politically non powerful rural areas. Consequently it was politically relatively easy to eliminate (Wisconsin essentially eliminated mining except on Native American land), severely restrict (lakes and forests attract more tourist wealth than timbering and paper pollution ), or regulate (very large corporate dairies are better targets than family-size farms with pretty Holsteins dotting the hillsides).
I have long hoped that the rapid change to corporate scale monoculture production in Iowa would bring about a philosophy, among the majority of Iowan’s, that ag is an industry run by ‘others’. Somehow, we need to make that philosophical shift happen before politicians will act. I have hopes that recent water-quality crises in DesMoines and rising costs in Cedar Rapids will be the start of more grass roots attention to the literal crap passing through all our cities.
Your writing, that of Art Cullen, and occasionally the Gazette keeps the drum beat going. Certainly more voters and investors will start to understand that Iowa is behind our neighbors because of the environment in which we are forced to live.
Thank you Chris! We appreciate you and really appreciate straight talk. Mandatory regulation and enforcement, track every pound of chemical sold from these companies. Also, support those folks who nurture life for future generations on the lands they steward.
This Substack is an invaluable resource, making water quality a genuine community discussion. It's crucial for us to keep stating the simple truth: Iowa's government has the power to solve this problem but isn't.
We need to push candidates and elected officials beyond empty platitudes by demanding specific legislative plans. At town halls and meetings, let's challenge them to name three specific policies they will propose. A candidate's ability to articulate concrete plans is a far more reliable indicator of their commitment than a public promise. Effective legislative strategy requires year-round effort, not just last-minute campaign rhetoric.
Over the last several decades progress has been made on curtailing water pollution from point sources (those delivered via discrete pipes/outfalls) due to mandatory regulation (at least for now). Non-point source pollution (diffuse runoff from fields, etc) has only gotten much worse, because mandatory control is essentially non-existent.
I beg to differ with u, runoff from fields has not gotten worse where no-till has been implemented, I know from experience I started no-tilling 35 yrs ago. Now I realize NOT all of IA has the same lay of the land. AND I realize so many look at the big flat areas of N Central Ia where tillage continues. BUT no-till takes more crop protection products and leads to larger farms, with no-till make one pass with planter and head on to next farm.
Please pardon a story. I was at a conservation conference back in the early Eighties that included a forum for landowners and farmers about the Farm Bill. Some complained loudly and eloquently that the conservation programs in the Farm Bill were largely paying the landowners and farmers who had done the wrong things. If you had responsibly kept your sloping pasture as a pasture, you were not eligible. But if you had bulldozed and tilled your sloping pasture into an eroding soybean field, you could enroll it in the CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) and get paid every year.
I later heard in private from certain Iowa officials (who were in a position to know) that some Iowa landowners and farmers, especially in southern Iowa, had turned pastures and even woodlands into eroding rowcrop fields specifically so they'd be eligible. I met one such landowner myself. He was happy that he had been able to bulldoze his (not good) woodland so he could enroll it in CRP.
That was a long preface to wondering about the landowners and farmers in the newly-eligible riparian buffer watersheds who already have been leaving riparian buffers of their own (responsible) accord. I'll bet there are at least a few of them, and as far as I can tell, they are not eligible for this new fart in the hurricane.
Chris, I wish every reporter, columnist, and influencer who writes about Iowa water issues would read every post in your blog. Your combination of solid information and astute observation are unique, and your humor is therapeutic. Laughing feels better than cussing. Thank you.
Another song-and-dance dance act by Mike Naig. All conservation measures enacted by this Republican administration are political showboating that should be performed in blackface with banjo accompaniment. Industrial at has made Iowa a cesspool; that is why we moved to Minnesota.
This is so true: “We have a system where the careers, reputations, and stature of both individuals and institutions are dependent upon maintenance of the problem in such a way that water quality stays at a level just good enough to prevent public outrage”
There was Charles Wilson in this episode, but there was also a Charlie Wilson who was a Democrat from the state of Texas. He became known in Charlie Wilson’s War. It resulted in successful funding and support of the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet Afghan war leading to the withdrawal of the Soviet union from Afghanistan. We now have Chris Jones‘s war. Chris Jones is doing everything within his word power to reset the Iowa water landscape. I believe his work will ultimately contribute to the quality water which was meant to be here.
thanks John!
My one quibble: I believe you have won > zero friends by pointing this out. Thanks for the insightful analysis!
Agree 100%!
Keep pounding away at this issue. You are so right. You have a mission in life that will leave a legacy for environmental preservation.
As usual, this is an insightful, biting and accurate account that everyone needs to read and understand.
Regarding stream buffers: excellent for stabilizing riparian zones, banks...and also refuges for wildlife. Maybe even some room for a prairie species or two. But what impact do stream buffers have on water quality (i. e., nitrates) in a largely tile drained system in which a significant proportion of water moves through soil and is then routed underneath the buffers?,
Buffers in Minnesota, although not financed in the same way, were sold as the way to reduce nitrates from row crops aka #2 corn. But since pattern tiling is at least as rampant in Western and Southern MN as it is in Iowa, almost none of the water from fields is intercepted by this practice. Riparian buffers were great, however, at preventing or at least reducing massive stream bank erosion from raging torrents of tile drainage unleashed by the 4-6" deluges received in one evening at the end of July. Corn fields, meanwhile, sat high and dry.
You took the words right out of my mouth. The buffers are compatible with the installation of saturated buffers, though, too, which on my farm take the nitrate content down to a low level, if properly maintained.
Saturated buffers/constructed wetlands are definitely an effective management practice-- thank you for your much needed stewardship efforts!
I'm confused. How did 'cornfields, meanwhile, sat high and dry' after a 4-6" rain? No way, some one is feeding u a line.
Also, since I've spent my entire life hands-on here in the trenches farm field drainage tile has nothing to do with stream bank erosion from 4-6" of rain in one evening which had to come awfully fast at one point or another that night, In fact if hadn't rained for several days the tile would having dried some of the soil so some of the rain could be absorbed a little before exploding off. WET soil absorbs NO more water and even contributes to soil erosion with loss of nutrients as well.
One problem in Iowa is topsoil that has been so pulverized by tillage that it behaves more like a brick than a sponge. Healthier topsoil can absorb and hold more rain. When good original prairies have been studied, they can absorb several inches of rain. I've seen slake tests that are mind-blowing.
For my thought I say a lot of people do recreational tillage. Yes healthier soils can absorb more precipitation BUT for areas with any natural surface drainage it can't be standing wet or next heavy rain takes soil and nutrients. Dry soil absorbs more water before erosion runoff than wet. The internal drainage by field tile can be a big factor in limiting soil loss.
I don't want to argue about the effects of tile drainage because that's a very deep rabbit hole. I think you are quite right that there is a lot of recreational tillage in Iowa. And I recently saw an ag-media story that said some people do tillage partly because it's a family tradition, which doesn't seem like the ideal way to make soil management decisions.
It comes down to soil types how flat a field is. The heavy black gummy soils of N Central Ia fall into that category. Also being farther N and cooler later and if covered with residue soils are a lot slower to warm up maybe tillage is a necessity for better germination and very important uniform emergence.
Since no-till is used by some farmers in Minnesota, I'm not sure "necessity" is the right word. In any case, a new post is up, and this will be my last comment on this thread.
Wisdom. Thanks, Chris. I grew up a mile from the Boone River in Hancock County. Unfortunately, much of it north of Corwith has long been straightened and therefore operates as a huge grass lined ditch. Hence, buffers up in that part of river would have minimal impact on water quality, especially since that is really tile rich country. Not to say that buffers wouldn't provide benefits, particularly for greatly needed wildlife habitat in that ag desert part of the state. I know a few years ago there was a young woman doing her PhD (perhaps in river ecology?) and had come up with a great plan to put the natural meanders back in some of Iowa's heavily impacted rivers, the Boone being one of them. It was a great proposal but I don't know whatever happened to it.
Here's a link to information about oxbow restoration in the Boone River watershed. The map shows that there are many potential oxbow-restoration sites in Hancock County. But at the time of the last update of this website, at least, it seems that none of the sites had been restored.
https://booneriver.org/project-area/oxbow-restoration/
There are now some river oxbow restorations being done in Iowa, and restored oxbows have many conservation benefits. Iowa does have some good conservation work going on. It's just so small, scattered, and limited compared to the large needs.
Iowa Agriculture is working towards clean water in the same way the Taliban is working towards women's rights.
pretty much
The particularly maddening aspect of this situation is we are fouling our nest to produce a commodity that is not even needed. The world supply of corn far exceeds the demand. This fact is easily demonstrated by how often the market price is less than the cost of production. What other business can survive with this model? This does not even factor in the artificial inflation of the market due to ethanol. Your tax dollars, in the form of heavily subsidized crop "insurance" is what keeps corn producers solvent most years. This also has the added detriment of making it profitable to farm the most environmentally fragile acres. If a fraction of the crop insurance dollars were diverted to increasing conservation programs as a supply moderator, we might make some progress.
Obviously this would require a major political shift. Chris, I know you are not a Rob Sand fan but it's going to be him or Feenstra. Sand is persuadable if he can get elected. You need to declare a run for Sec Ag and beat the shit out of Sec Monsanto on the campaign trail over the environmental destruction he has presided over. It looks to me like the mid-terms may provide an opportunity for a return to sanity in Des Moines. Throw your hat in the ring and take your fact based, witty style on the road. Nobody is better suited to make this argument to Iowa voters than you!
well, a "good businessman" knows that a loss in one area of his business empire can be used at tax time to offset profits in other areas...
IMHO the "get big or get out" from the Earl Butz days (Butz was a putz) has always been about destroying the family farms so the "gentleman farmer), ie the pirate, can steal the profits while starving the people...
I know this because I used to teach at a yoga studio that ran at a loss for years while the owner/teacher built up the clientele and he told me he could offset his profits from his other businesses (he owned shopping centers). The studio now is a profitable one, one that actually thrived during the pandemic shut down because they had built up that clientele AND they had a business model, unlike most yoga studios, that split revenues 50/50 with the teachers. It began with one small room and expanded over the years to three rooms for classes and a small retail operation to sell yoga merch...
Great piece, informed and with numbers. Thank you!
IMHO, leaving Iowa because of uncomfortable politics is virtue signaling, if for no other reason than a left swing is inevitable. But leaving Iowa because it is bathed in chemicals and nitrates contributing to the second highest and only rising rate of cancer in the country is a rational decision.
Do you, any of you, including those involved in agriculture, want your children and grandchildren exposed to this toxic environment? I've a cancer medicine partner whose 10 y/o Iowa-born daughter has never had water from an Iowa tap--an admirable action stemming from a truly-informed opinion and work experience.
Dear Chris Quixote,
I greatly appreciate your consistent message on Iowa’s industrial mess. Unfortunately there is no part of Iowa that can claim to be free from a neighborhood of pollution-generation for profit. I grew up in Wisconsin where almost all extractive industries (mining, timber, paper, and even dairy) were in the minimally populated north or politically non powerful rural areas. Consequently it was politically relatively easy to eliminate (Wisconsin essentially eliminated mining except on Native American land), severely restrict (lakes and forests attract more tourist wealth than timbering and paper pollution ), or regulate (very large corporate dairies are better targets than family-size farms with pretty Holsteins dotting the hillsides).
I have long hoped that the rapid change to corporate scale monoculture production in Iowa would bring about a philosophy, among the majority of Iowan’s, that ag is an industry run by ‘others’. Somehow, we need to make that philosophical shift happen before politicians will act. I have hopes that recent water-quality crises in DesMoines and rising costs in Cedar Rapids will be the start of more grass roots attention to the literal crap passing through all our cities.
Your writing, that of Art Cullen, and occasionally the Gazette keeps the drum beat going. Certainly more voters and investors will start to understand that Iowa is behind our neighbors because of the environment in which we are forced to live.
Sorry about to wordy avalanche.
Mike Burkart
Thanks Mike and thanks for following the column. Hope you are well.
Thank you Chris! We appreciate you and really appreciate straight talk. Mandatory regulation and enforcement, track every pound of chemical sold from these companies. Also, support those folks who nurture life for future generations on the lands they steward.
This Substack is an invaluable resource, making water quality a genuine community discussion. It's crucial for us to keep stating the simple truth: Iowa's government has the power to solve this problem but isn't.
We need to push candidates and elected officials beyond empty platitudes by demanding specific legislative plans. At town halls and meetings, let's challenge them to name three specific policies they will propose. A candidate's ability to articulate concrete plans is a far more reliable indicator of their commitment than a public promise. Effective legislative strategy requires year-round effort, not just last-minute campaign rhetoric.
Over the last several decades progress has been made on curtailing water pollution from point sources (those delivered via discrete pipes/outfalls) due to mandatory regulation (at least for now). Non-point source pollution (diffuse runoff from fields, etc) has only gotten much worse, because mandatory control is essentially non-existent.
That simple.
I beg to differ with u, runoff from fields has not gotten worse where no-till has been implemented, I know from experience I started no-tilling 35 yrs ago. Now I realize NOT all of IA has the same lay of the land. AND I realize so many look at the big flat areas of N Central Ia where tillage continues. BUT no-till takes more crop protection products and leads to larger farms, with no-till make one pass with planter and head on to next farm.
Please pardon a story. I was at a conservation conference back in the early Eighties that included a forum for landowners and farmers about the Farm Bill. Some complained loudly and eloquently that the conservation programs in the Farm Bill were largely paying the landowners and farmers who had done the wrong things. If you had responsibly kept your sloping pasture as a pasture, you were not eligible. But if you had bulldozed and tilled your sloping pasture into an eroding soybean field, you could enroll it in the CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) and get paid every year.
I later heard in private from certain Iowa officials (who were in a position to know) that some Iowa landowners and farmers, especially in southern Iowa, had turned pastures and even woodlands into eroding rowcrop fields specifically so they'd be eligible. I met one such landowner myself. He was happy that he had been able to bulldoze his (not good) woodland so he could enroll it in CRP.
That was a long preface to wondering about the landowners and farmers in the newly-eligible riparian buffer watersheds who already have been leaving riparian buffers of their own (responsible) accord. I'll bet there are at least a few of them, and as far as I can tell, they are not eligible for this new fart in the hurricane.
It is true that existing buffers are not eligible
Thanks for the great story Cindy
Beg pardon, I gave that conference the wrong year. It was sometime between 1988 and 1992.
Chris, I wish every reporter, columnist, and influencer who writes about Iowa water issues would read every post in your blog. Your combination of solid information and astute observation are unique, and your humor is therapeutic. Laughing feels better than cussing. Thank you.
Another song-and-dance dance act by Mike Naig. All conservation measures enacted by this Republican administration are political showboating that should be performed in blackface with banjo accompaniment. Industrial at has made Iowa a cesspool; that is why we moved to Minnesota.
This is so true: “We have a system where the careers, reputations, and stature of both individuals and institutions are dependent upon maintenance of the problem in such a way that water quality stays at a level just good enough to prevent public outrage”