Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and a DNR that advocates for polluters
In November 2022 I posted Wishin’ Accomplished in NDM on my university blog. The piece contrasted the City of Cedar Rapids’ (NDM-Not Des Moines) approach to water quality, especially as it related to their municipal drinking water, with that of Des Moines and their water utility, Des Moines Water Works (DMWW). Water treatment and distribution is managed by city staff in CR; water utility staff in DM technically are not city staff and that distinction may or may not be important going forward here. I doubt that it is.
What inspired my 2022 essay was Iowa DNR action to de-list the Cedar River as impaired for nitrate (1). The Clean Water Act defines an impaired water body as one that is not meeting a designated use because of degraded water quality. In this circumstance, the state (in our case, Iowa DNR) is required to complete a restoration plan that includes a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) document. The TMDL determines the load (amount) of pollutant entering the waterway and where it is coming from, and how much that load needs to be reduced for the water body to meet the water quality standard associated with the impaired designated use.
Because Iowa DNR has refused to support rulemaking to establish nutrient standards, Iowa does not have many streams that are impaired for two of the worst pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorus, although almost all our streams have been degraded by these contaminants. Until 2022, the Cedar River was an exception--it was impaired because of its role as a drinking water source. While no community uses Cedar River water directly, the City of Cedar Rapids draws water from wells that are hydrologically connected to the river, and thus when nitrate is high in the river, nitrate levels in the wells can also be expected to be elevated. As I understand it, the City of CR also uses wells that are less affected by Cedar River nitrate, and as a result city staff have been able to blend volumes from various sources to keep treated water nitrate below the drinking water standard (10 mg/L as N), although there has been reason for concern from time to time that this someday might not be the case. This past spring (2024), water supplied to Cedar Rapids residents approached the upper limit for nitrate, something that was not reported on until recently (2).
Back in 2022 DNR stated the original TMDL was unworkable, and that recent monitoring data showed the river to be no longer impaired. Curiously, monitoring data showed the river well above the 10 mg/L drinking water standard only a few months prior to the DNR delisting. Also, curiously, the City of Cedar Rapids lodged no public comments objecting to the 2022 de-listing. I got publicly chastised by CR staff for mentioning that last thing, the implication being that I didn’t know what was going on behind closed doors between CR and DNR.
Since then, Iowa DNR also removed Des Moines’ municipal source waters, the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, from the impaired list.
This past November, USEPA intervened by overruling DNR and once again declared the three rivers impaired for nitrate, along with the Iowa and South Skunk Rivers. Iowa DNR Director Kayla Lyon, apparently having just received her Certificate of Completion from the Bird-Reynolds School of Government Relations, declared the move ‘illegal’ and contested the decision. Then last week EPA effectively said they’re gonna leave the lyon to Kayla, and that they’re sticking with their decision to keep the rivers’ impaired designation (3).
EPA received 82 public comments on its decision, the vast majority in support. Two not in support: Shawn Richmond of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and Reagan Giesenchlag of the Fertilizer Institute. Richmond previously worked for the Iowa Nutrient Research and Education Council (INREC), an organization supported by Iowa’s fertilizer retailers and wholesalers. INREC has been officially designated by the Iowa legislature to track progress (in collaboration with Iowa State University) on Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Here are some of INREC’s supporters:
According to The Fertilizer Institute’s website, they are “the voice of the fertilizer industry as a whole.” I once knew a guy that worked there and my sense was that he thought he was the voice of half of humanity. Or maybe all of it, I don’t know. Anyway, he thought pretty highly of himself and I never met anybody more in love with a plant’s response to nitrogen than that guy. But that’s a whole nother story.
By now I know you’re probably shocked that Iowa DNR would side with ungovernable multi-national agribusiness corporations and agvocates like Farm Bureau and the Iowa Pork Producers, against you, the folks that have to suffer the consequences of the pollution. Ok, you’re not shocked. Me neither.
Two of the comments in support of EPA came from my old boss Ted Corrigan and Melissa Walker of Des Moines Water Works (DMWW), and Tami Madsen of Central Iowa Water Works, the regional water authority working with DMWW and the DM suburbs to deliver safe water to residents. Unlike Iowa DNR, and thankfully for you, they see themselves as public servants and not agribusiness hacks. Can the distinction be any more defined: DNR, on the side of Big Agribusiness; people responsible for safe drinking water in Central Iowa, on the side of THE PEOPLE.
You might have noticed I didn’t mention City of Cedar Rapids staff commenting on the latest EPA action. Not surprisingly to me—they’ve been publicly silent on all these latest developments, just like in 2022. That tongue lashing I got a couple of years ago from CR staff, well, I don’t know what to say. People tell me I name names too often in these pieces, so I guess I’ll let sleeping dogs lie. If it serves them, anyway.
Circling back, this Impaired/Not Impaired saga is especially curious to me for two big reasons:
1) Why does DNR care whether these streams are impaired or not? The TMDLs have already been written, at least for the big three (Raccoon, Des Moines, Cedar), so this can’t be a manpower issue for DNR. There are hundreds of other impairments of Iowa streams and lakes, so why does DNR and the Big Ag establishment care so much about these three? Sure, they supply 1/3 of Iowa’s population with their drinking water, but saying they’re now ok when they all had sky high nitrate during 2024 just seems stupid and really, really risky, should the worst happen in the next few years. If you’re running with the idea that DNR and the Ag Establishment are stupid, ok, I can respect that, but I just don’t think that dog hunts here.
2) Why does the City of Cedar Rapids seemingly NOT CARE that the river supplying water to their shallow wells is polluted with nitrate? If you’re a responsible elected city leader or employee and the municipal water supply source for upwards of 200,000 people is polluted RIGHT NOW, you should want every attention diverted toward what should be an urgent situation for the community. If your water violates the EPA nitrate standard (and CR has no capacity to remove nitrate in their water treatment plants) there are dire consequences for hospitals, schools, restaurants, and everything else that makes life and commerce happen in a large city. Why on earth is the city playing along with DNR shenanigans when the agency is openly on the side of the polluters and the municipal water supply is threatened by their pollution???
Something tells me the answer to question 1 and 2 is the same.
It’s true enough that the City of Cedar Rapids has been a willing collaborator on a number of watershed projects over the past 10-15 years. This includes not only the bogus Batch and Build fiasco recently reported on by National Public Radio and the Cedar Rapids Gazette (4,5), but also a number of other projects associated with Tom Vilsack’s USDA (6). Many Iowa organizations and private contractors have been part of these projects and the desire to show water quality ‘progress’ is intense when it comes to this sort of thing. Voluntary conservation is Iowa DNR and Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) agency dogma and the City of CR is clearly aligned with this approach. The truth is that the agencies will crow about its success given the tiniest opportunity and couldn’t give two shits if Cedar Rapids has to eat crow someday while telling residents not to drink their poisonous water. But, I still don’t think this explains the most recent chain of events.
It’s especially bewildering why DNR cares about eliminating these impairments considering the fact THEY REGULATE MUNICIPAL WATER SUPPLY in Iowa. In a sane world, Iowa DNR supports the drinking water utilities they are charged with regulating. But not here in Iowa. DNR supports the polluters over the municipal water suppliers and the Iowans drinking the water supplied by them, and this predates Kayla Lyon by a long ways. Reports are legion that DNR loathes an adversarial relationship with farmers. Municipal water supplies—meh. One of those groups has pull in the legislature, one doesn’t.
Crazy Theory: When a water body doesn’t meet its designated uses (in this case, municipal water supply), then the required TMDL potentially limits new and expanded discharges into the impaired water. That means point (end of pipe) sources, since agricultural runoff is exempted by the Clean Water Act in this scenario. I can only think that there are new point source discharges, such as meat packing plants, that will need Clean Water Act discharge (NPDES) permits and that will want to locate in these watersheds. The five river basins of concern (Des Moines, Raccoon, Cedar, Iowa and Skunk) must comprise nearly half of Iowa’s area and population. If you want to open a new discharging entity in one of those river basins, you may need Iowa DNR to ‘make room’ for another discharge if your effluent is going to contain a lot of nitrogen, as most packing plant discharges do. Another question in my mind is the proposed Summit carbon pipeline. The operation will need water, that much is certain. Most entities that use water also discharge water. Will they need NPDES permits? Perhaps all their water will be recycled or vaporized during their processes. If not, however, they will need to discharge water someplace. This goes for virtually any facility or entity wanting to discharge into Iowa (or US) water. An existing impairment and TMDL might leave you holding a spatula without a piece of the pollution pie, if you’re effluent is going to contain a lot of nitrogen and the receiving stream is already impaired for nitrate.
DNR’s behavior here is almost bizarre for a regulatory agency, in my opinion. For whatever reason, they want these impairments gone in the worst way. Cedar Rapids is complicit. Des Moines is not. I’m pretty convinced these things are not coincidences. Whether I’m right or not on the TMDL thing, something larger is at work here. Of that, I am convinced.
I’ll finish up by saying that I’ve criticized Des Moines from time to time on these water quality issues, but the contrast between them and Cedar Rapids could not be more distinct. Des Moines Water Works has diligently stood up for the best interests of the people drinking water from taps in their metropolitan service area. That cannot be disputed. Has the City of Cedar Rapids done the same for their customers? That is an open question in my mind. The City of CR invites us to think they’ve prioritized playing footsie with corporate agribusiness, along with Mike Naig and Kayla Lyon and the agencies they lead, over the best interests of the tap-water-drinking citizenry.
That is a perilous place for a municipal water utility to go.
Resources
2) https://www.thegazette.com/environment-nature/nitrate-spiked-in-cedar-rapids-water-this-year/
3) https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/01/13/epa-confirms-additions-to-iowa-impaired-waters-list/
Iowans make a big mistake by looking the other way while waterways are silently polluted. The health consequences are devastating. Thanks for the details, Chris...
https://www.iowadnr.gov/About-DNR/DNR-News-Releases/ArticleID/4736/Water-Summary-Update-2023-Water-Year-end-shows-third-dry-year-in-a-row
I don't want to throw gas on the fire, but at least it might gas off some of the Nitrogen. An Iowa DNR report for that year showed that 2022 was the 3rd Water year in a row of 9.0" below average precipitation. The adage they rely on; "the solution to pollution is dilution" fails by a bit more than half. The concentrations of Nitrogen and Phosphorous go up when the water goes down, someone on there side will argue "mass balance", acreage, or evaporation rates and all that too could be applied as fertilizer.
If there are indeed better tools to efficiently apply the materials they need to feed the dirt then why not use them? Too expensive? It was reported by the National Cancer Institute that Iowa had the highest Cancer growth rates from 2015 to 2019.
https://www.kmaland.com/news/advocates-call-on-iowa-lawmakers-to-defeat-cancer-gag-act/article_67a5ac46-d45d-11ef-a257-3bf44b4f1a87.html
And had they not run out of time rounding up the Iowa National Guard to send to the Border the Legislature had a bill in the last session that would have removed liability from the producers for any ill effects. Senate File 2412, aka "the cancer gag".
I'm not a farmer, I've lived in Iowa for all but 4 months of my 66 years. We were taught about terracing and no-till practices and 100 other agricultural applications by the 6th grade.
I knew that the soil here was special, so special that Universities around the World have studied it for its fertile properties. I guess what I didn't realize was that there were an equal number of institutions trying to figure out how to get every last ounce of growth from a seed that was possible, then double it.
And did the Governor actually propose that we stop calling it "climate change" and instead call it "climate trends?" Get the Iowa Pork Producers on the phone, gonna need to put a lot of lipstick on a lot of pigs!
It's raining less, the average daytime temps are higher and the wind is blowin....Thank you for your points Chris, we need more voices in the chorus.