Lion of the Senate? More like a Tomcat that Needs Neutered.

My thoughts on the Ken Rozenboom email to Bob Leonard

Since I was mentioned prominently in the recent email from Iowa Senator Ken Rozenboom to journalist Robert Leonard, discussed at length in Leonard’s substack piece of a few days ago, I thought I would take a few minutes to give you my thoughts on that. An image of the email is posted at the end of this essay.

Rozenboom is one of four Iowa legislators (that I know of), all Republicans, who have criticized my writing. All four have apparently been so agitated by my words that they felt motivated to act against me from their official positions as legislators. The others were Dan Zumbach, Tom Shipley, and Chad Ingels. A couple of years ago, Shipley also conspicuously walked out of a crowded room of a couple hundred people at Drake University during a presentation I was conducting. I was told on two occasions by multiple people that Shipley said after the program that “he would get me.” Brian Campbell, former director of the Iowa Environmental Council, was one of these people. Prior to that time, I had met three of these fellows multiple times on friendly terms: Rozenboom, Shipley, and Ingels. I’ve never met Zumbach. All four farm, or have farmed.

As to Rozenboom’s accusation that I’m an activist and not a scientist, well, ok. I’ve always admitted that my scholarly contributions as a scientist have been modest.  Modest as though they might be, they are, however, real. I published two papers as part of my PhD thesis (Analytical Chemistry) in the 1980s and have published around 50 since then, about 35 of those in the last eight years. I spent most of my career working in jobs where scholarship was either not an option or not encouraged. Thirty-five papers in eight years is an output that most in academia would find productive. In fact, one of my bosses at the University of Iowa actually (and mysteriously) told me to stop writing scientific papers, that I had enough. He did later retract the statement.

One paper that I coauthored was selected by the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation as the best in that journal over a five-year period (2009-2014).

In my position as a research scientist, yes, I did advocate for the truth as it relates to the role of water quality science in policy making. Does this make me an activist, as Rozenboom says? I don’t know, but I wish others would follow my example. Maybe your water wouldn’t be so polluted. Is a researcher studying and promoting corn, soybean and livestock production an activist? I’m sure Ken Rozenboom and the others would not think so, because that’s how they earn their livelihoods.

It's curious that Rozenboom used quotation marks around “scientist” when trying to discredit my credentials; Chad Ingels did the same thing a few years ago. It’s almost like they are following somebody’s playbook. You’re free to speculate on the playbook’s creator.

While employed at the University of Iowa, I, like many Ag researchers at Iowa State University, wrote a blog. Mine was written with pizazz and was openly critical of decisions farmers, agribusiness, and politicians make that degrade water quality. Thousands of people read my blog every month. Guess which one of these blogs the goons in the legislature squashed.

In regard to Ken Rozenboom’s geese/E. coli comment in his email to Leonard, I’m not sure what piece of writing or statement of mine he might be referring to, but I have publicly stated many times that geese do excrete waste on beaches and that E. coli is present in their waste. Yes, I do indeed mock the idea that Iowa’s 220,000 geese are a driver of degraded water in a state with a similar number of dairy cattle, along with 25 million hogs, 80 million chickens, 5 million turkeys, 4 million beef cattle and 3 million human beings. The way agriculture flocks to the ‘geese cause pollution’ idea shows you how pathetically desperate the industry and people like Ken Rozenboom are that they hang their seed corn hat on literally anything, no matter how absurd, that might somehow absolve their plunder of Iowa. The fact that E. coli, no matter the animal of origin, can survive in Iowa waters for any length of time is a symptom of how degraded our water is. This is the science people like Rozenboom don’t care to understand.

Here’s Rozenboom on the floor of the Iowa Senate telling us how great our water is, without saying anything about 7000 rural private wells in Iowa contaminated with nitrate, Iowa being the leading contributor to the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, or that 25% of Iowans drink municipal drinking water that has been treated for nitrate removal: link.

It’s curious to me that at this late date, months after my retirement, my words still linger under the skin of the goons like a splinter that won’t surface. Wrap some data around a few jokes and metaphors and these tough guy bullies transform into dirt-encrusted snowflakes like those accumulating in Iowa ditches every winter.

My advice to Rozenboom and company: grow up, shut up, and quit polluting our water.

Rozenboom email is shown below.