Fight for Your Life
Because politicians won't fight for it
The ongoing nitrate pollution contaminating the Des Moines area drinking water supply is probably the biggest environmental story in Iowa since the 2013 nitrate episode, which led to the Des Moines Water Works lawsuit seeking relief from three upstream counties in the Raccoon River watershed. Then governor Terry Branstad said Des Moines was declaring war on rural Iowa, agribusiness giants rushed to fund the defense of the three counties, Art Cullen won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on it, Republicans in the legislature threatened to take over the water works, the Des Moines mayor hung then-DMWW general manager Bill Stowe out to dry, the lawsuit was dismissed, and Stowe died. And to the surprise of literally no one and over the objections of almost nobody in Iowa’s political establishment, agriculture went right on its merry way polluting Des Moines’ drinking water.
The 2013 event was the logical consequence of severe drought beginning in the second half of 2011 and lasting until March of 2013, after which the heavens opened their floodgates and the next two months’ deluge resulted in some of the wettest weather in Iowa history, and the worst loss of nitrate from farm fields ever recorded. Instead of bleeding off continuously into the stream network as happens during normal rainfall regimes, surplus nitrate unused by crops builds up in the soil profile during drought and when the rains return a massive slug of constipated nitrate is blown out of the colon of Iowa’s farmed landscape—agricultural drainage tile (pipes) that lower the water table in cropped fields.
People are wondering ‘what’s up’ this year, since weather has been, well, sorta normal, without the ricocheting between wet and dry. This year’s stream nitrate pattern, in fact, is not an anomaly. But from the perspective of municipal drinking water, normal=bad. How so?
Water gets to Iowa streams through three pathways: surface runoff, field tiles, and groundwater. Field tile water has the highest nitrate concentration of the three (as high as 100 mg/L as N is not unheard of, 10 times the drinking water maximum; 20-30 mg/L is the norm). This year it has rained enough to keep field tiles running but not enough to generate surface runoff, which is the lowest nitrate water and dilutes the high nitrate from tiles.
Groundwater can be expected to have mid-range nitrate levels. During drought, groundwater dominates stream flow. Since streams tend to be low and warm in this circumstance, the incoming groundwater nitrate gets gobbled up quickly by bacteria and algae in the stream and this is one reason why rivers tend to have diminishing nitrate from the headwaters down to their mouth (end), i.e. there is abundant time for uptake by these organisms.
When Mother Nature threw the dice this spring, it came up snake eyes for Des Moines Water Works and the hydrologic algorithm generator dialed up a high concentration of nitrate in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers.
DMWW has three treatment plants—Fleur (main), Saylorville and McMullen. Nitrate can be removed during treatment at the first two; it can only be ‘blended down’ at McMullen using low nitrate lake water. As I wrote last time, DMWW’s treatment capacity for nitrate removal is only a fraction of its total water production capacity. As a result, Central Iowa Water Works has banned lawn watering for all members (Des Moines and most suburbs) to keep nitrate in all water delivered to the service area below 10 mg/L.
Fortunately for the polluters (i.e. agriculture) the leaders of the various metro communities have allowed this to be framed as an aesthetic issue and not the public health crisis that it is. As my former colleague Greg LeFevre at the University of Iowa pointed out, this is a pollution induced scarcity of a vital natural resource. Unexpected water demand, such as that used to fight a large fire in Des Moines for example, could conceivably cause the utility to violate the EPA nitrate standard. Or perhaps a water main break resulting in a large loss of water could require the plant(s) to increase production such that the standard is exceeded.
In a press conference, Central Iowa Water Works Executive Director Tami Madsen stated water below 10 mg/L nitrate, the current standard, ‘is safe to drink.’ This is a dubious claim at best, as research dating back 25 years shows nitrate above 3 mg/L associated with a variety of negative health consequences including cancer and birth defects. If you live in Polk County, you only rarely drink water below 3 mg/L nitrate.
I’m sure we’re going to hear a lot in the coming days and weeks from Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig on how we need to stay the course on Iowa’s voluntary nutrient reduction strategy (now 13 years old), how most farmers aren’t overapplying nitrogen (wrong), and even if they did align their fertilizer inputs with recommendations, it wouldn’t solve the problem. VIPs in establishment agriculture say if farmers reduced fertilizer amounts to economically optimal rates (for them), it would only reduce stream nitrate 10%. This is poppycock and based on fertilization levels far lower than what farmers actually apply, if we consider both commercial and manure nitrogen. But for the sake of argument, let’s say 10% is correct.
Guess what—a 10% reduction would be a massive improvement for the Des Moines water situation right now, one that would likely make prescriptive water use unnecessary. Furthermore, the state’s nutrient reduction strategy was intended to address Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia, NOT municipal drinking water issues.
Although you may get nauseated listening to Naig, at least you can expect him to say something. You know who you won’t hear a damn thing from? Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand. He eagerly runs down to Exira (pop. 763) for a photo op because loss of pressure in a water main resulted in a boil order. But the largest bloc of Democratic voters in Polk County drinking fertilizer? Good luck with your tumor folks. It has Freedom to Flourish because neither political party cares much. Your water problem is too haaaaaard for spineless politicians. Oh, and by the way, Sand’s in-laws (the primary funders of his campaign) sell fertilizer, dontcha know. And a bunch of stuff for the livestock industry. Like the saying goes, blood is thicker than water, even when the latter is poisoning your own voters.
Fuel ethanol from corn has also been in the news lately, and it’s relevant to mention it here. Governor Kim Reynolds recently puckered up and planted a big kiss on the ass of the ethanol industry by vetoing the legislature’s eminent domain bill, which might’ve hamstrung R megadonor Bruce Rastetter’s Summit Carbon Solutions. Rastetter’s pipeline from Iowa ethanol plants to North Dakota for CO2 entombment in bedrock is widely seen as a lifeline for the climate change deniers in corn agriculture, threatened by the emergence of EVs.
Iowa farmers are currently producing too much corn—and you don’t need to take my word for it. Iowa Renewable Fuels Association Director Monte Shaw does the hard work for me (18:25). And for this we are polluting Des Moines’ drinking water. Since about 30% of Iowa’s cropped land is planted to corn grown for fuel ethanol, it's not a stretch to say that 30% of the nitrate entering Des Moines Water Works’ treatment plants can be sourced back to those acres.
And to top it off, Trump’s EPA is also poised to authorize record amounts of corn ethanol to be blended into gasoline.
So, what say we grow something other than corn, something that won’t pollute our water—oats, alfalfa, forage grasses, pasture. Immediately we reduce nitrate at Des Moines 30%, and if farmers were required to apply at recommended fertilization rates, we’d knock it down AT LEAST ANOTHER 10%. Voila, no pollution induced scarcity.
But of course, Democrats like U.S. Senate candidate Zach Wahls are for ethanol every bit as much, probably even more, than Iowa Republicans. Zach’s Johnson County legislative district (I live in it) also has a drinking water nitrate problem. The Iowa River flowing through Iowa City, which provides water to the city (through shallow wells in the river valley) and the University of Iowa (directly), has elevated nitrate, and the university’s water treatment plant has nitrate removal.
Like his skateboardin’, pizza eatin’, deer huntin’, church goin’, handgun packin’, bro’—Rob Sand—Zach apparently doesn’t like talking about agricultural pollution either.
Perverse is a word I use frequently about the relationships between politics, agriculture, and Iowa citizens, and the resulting cauldron of polluted water we have stewed in all our lives. After 50 years of nitrate struggles in Des Moines, how perverse is it that we continue to shovel cost-share conservation dollars to farmers when they won’t even align their fertilizer amounts with recommendations? And how perverse is it that the downstream users of the resource in Des Moines have the type and amount of water use prescribed to them because of the pollution induced scarcity, while the upstream polluters are required to follow literally NO PRESCRIPTIONS when it comes to the pollution?
It’s really perverse.
And why does the political party that would have you believe they are the party of the people, the party of the COMMON good, side with the polluters?
When I read your comments about nitrates, Chris, I immediately think about all of the other inputs that are coupled with that nitrogen -- a huge suite of pesticides and the adjuvants that make them "work better". Most of these things are not monitored at all. When you see the operator out driving the spray rig through the field (unless you have a great nose for chemicals) - you are guessing what they are probably applying, based on your knowledge of the GMO seeds planted in that field, current concerns about a fungus, or maybe some invertebrate issue that's expected to be a problem due to weather factors, or ????. The average person has no idea about any of this, and certainly not the rates of application. How do all of these inputs interact with each other? I don't think anyone is looking too hard or trying to find out. Spraying outside of the label's weather restrictions? Well . . . only so many sprayers to go around, and we sure need to get all this down before it rains, even if the wind IS gusting to 25 today.
The average person living in small town or a big city in rural America is quite purposefully kept in the dark about all of this. What is the probability that a university that is getting big funding and/or research support from industrial agriculture will be studying these concerns? Almost zero.
Thanks, Chris. Someone in communications studies once told me that a message has to be repeated seven times before it's heard. I don't know how many times it has to be delivered before it's acted upon. Let's hope you're rapidly approaching that magic number, Chris. For what it;s worth, your arguments have greatly helped me fashion my quesions to my legislators, so at least at that personal level you are having an impact. Please keep advocating, Chris.