The draft 2024 303(d) list just came out and the number of impaired waterways was reduced from 751 in 2022 to 721 this year. I had a long talk with the DNR water monitoring supervisor, and a factor in this decrease is due to the drought - there just isn't water to test in some areas.
Yet I can just see the defenders of this broken system spewing nonsensical PR that progress is being made in cleaning up our waterways.
I appreciate this column, Chris. It exposes a whole new level of complicity in our water crisis that I wasn't fully aware of.
Upper Pine Lake (Hardin county) is no longer listed on the impaired waters list, the 303(d). The DNR's 2022 final assessment of Upper Pine Lake indicates algae and turbidity is in violation, consistent with the 2014 TMDL. The final assessment indicates the TMDL is no longer required, since it was taken off the 303(d) list. According to the DNR, once they create a TMDL, the segment does not need to be included on future 303(d) lists.
Talk about a dog chasing it's tail. Following this logic, all TMDLs and impaired waters list entries will vanish into thin air. See references below:
Assessment Summary
The Class A1 use was assessed (monitored) as “not supported” (IR 4a) due to elevated levels of chlorophyll a (algae) that cause aesthetically objectionable conditions. The level of inorganic suspended solids was relatively low and does not suggest water quality problems due to non-algal turbidity. The Class BWW1 use was assessed as “fully supported.” Nutrient loading to the water column and siltation also remain water quality concerns at this lake. All other designated uses were “not assessed.” Note: A TMDL for siltation at Upper Pine Lake was prepared in 2002 by DNR and approved by EPA. Additionally, TMDL for the algae impairment at this lake was prepared and approved by EPA in November 2014. Because all impairments at this lake are addressed by the two TMDL's (i.e., the algae impairment), this waterbody was moved from IR Category 5a to Category 4a (impaired; TMDL not required).
Once the DNR creates a water quality improvement plan for the segment (called Total Maximum Daily Loads, or TMDLs), the segment does not need to be included on future 303(d) lists.
This is the beginning of the end. Change will happen when the collapse occurs. Disease and ecosystem collapse are here and people seem to be more concerned whether they have the newest dune buggy, ATV, or pontoon, cruise to nowhere, the fanciest truck, or whether their stocks are doing well so they can retire and partake in the aforementioned list of "We are just having fun". I forgot PICKLEBALL! How could I forget pickleball? When you ask folks whether they grow a garden, they claim it is too much work, but they are involved in 3 pickleball leagues. Reckoning Day is coming soon to a theater near you and the premier will be "We didn't see it coming, how could this happen". I want to have hope but the mindset in this country scares me. Nature will be the savior but humans are killing it at alarming rates. Once the threshold is achieved, the human race will cease to exist or be diminished severely and the great healing of the Earth will begin. I now know what the Native tribes felt like when the European invasion occurred. Watching something you love so dearly being destroyed right in front of your eyes and feeling the rage and disgust that this is happening in your lifetime. Life is a journey, and we are embarked on a difficult journey currently. May we see the light and realize that money is an infection that is killing us all and NO ONE is immune to the consequences.
Stellar column once again,but saddens me no end. I naively thought of Iowa as an honest, thoughtful state for most of my 68 years, but Chris and others have cleared that boyish notion up: we have a Legislature and Governor that is little more than a lobbying organization for a Corn/Cafo Mafia. I have 35 acres of prairie in CRP upstream of the Cedar and we are putting another 28 acres in this year that was rented out previously. And the contract payment is VERY competitive, like $290 an acre, So if one has land available that qualifies suggest looking into CRP. Our CRP will ALMOST make up for the neighbors tilling within 6 feet of creeks !
Good question, I don't know,but yes probably. Inputs are about 5k. But the wildlife is a reward. If they stopped payment, I definitely wouldn't take the prairie out.
I'm glad you could financially afford to do it without govt. paymt and subsidy. For most full time farmers like me we cannot make family living, farm payments, machinery pymts by not having income. whether CRP or farming it. I like wild life but they don't even pay the taxes. Again good for you.
Oh sure, I have the luxury of a good engineering job so it's not a huge financial burden if I don't get paid.Its nice as the CRP payment covers taxes et. And prairie, even established, takes work, spray, mowing, burning etc
I just finished a novel by Ann Patchett, "Commonwealth", and while this book has nothing to do with farming, there's a scene in there that takes place in Iowa City. A character is complaining about how bad ice cubes taste at a local bar because of agricultural runoff contaminating our water. Patchett captured the situation here pretty well.
You know we've got it bad when commentary about Iowa's disgusting water winds up a common talking point in modern fiction.
"When Berke Breathed, author of (the cartoon strip) Bloom County, said goodbye to the town in 1985, he drew a special cartoon that appeared on the front page of the Iowa City
Press-Citizen. It depicted Opus and Milo hanging out in the fountain on the pedestrian mall, talking about everything they would miss, from the sandwiches at Bushnell's Turtle to the Hare Krishnas on the Pentacrest. "Except the water," Milo adds. "The water tastes like
Spic 'n' Span.""
From "In the Water" by Laura Sayre, University of Iowa Review
Keep at it Chris. This is a huge undertaking when you challenge the special interests degrading our water and soil. But, you are exposing this scenario to people who are fed up too. And, we may be a small band of like minded warriors....but I for one am in this fight for as long as it takes.
Several years ago, the state of Iowa was working on a plan to down grade some of the streams in Iowa because it would be a way to improve them? The deciding factor was a window survey of many streams to see if that stream had humans interacting with the stream in some way. This was determiined by driving around on mostly paved roads and looking at the banks from the bridge. No "Y" sticks, no foot prints, no camp fires meant humans were not interacting with that stream, and of course could be down graded. Well, I took exception to all this monkey business simply because if you pave a road over a stream you raise the height of the bridge in most cases, so the bridge won't get flooded. When you do that the approaches become steep and usually are covered with big rock making it difficult to get down to the stream. My example was they surveyed the Buffalo on X-20 south of Prairieburg on a black top road, built exactly as I discribed. Had they gone to the very next bridge down stream on a gravel road they would have found all the tell tale signs of human activity including a place to park! As I understand it, this was to eliminate streams from the list of first class streams so we could concentrate our efforts on those being utilized by the public, otherwise we would have to use the available funding for the entire list of streams. It quite possibly had merit, but doing it this way would certainly have a negative effect on many meandering streams with no paved roads but a ton of access on the gravel ones. What it got me was a half hour of exlaining myself to some nameless official over the phone who asked no questions, took my statement and that was that! Everything about the DNR and Water Quality simply is how can we screw it up worse than it already is! If that is their intent, they are doing a fine job! The fact the COOP reported this massive spill, almost automatically says the maximun DNR fine of $10,000 will be cut in half. Why? Because the DNR has so few inspectors they probably wouldn't have caught the spill in the first place! Most farmers know this, and they aren't about wasting money paying fines they can simply ignore with no after effect! I can tell you in Jones County where I grew up and was raised, you can't look over the side of any small stream and expect to see minnows or any kind of fish in the water anymore. They simply are not there unless you are closer to a larger river and even then, there isn't much activity. The same streams 60 years ago I used to go chub fishing in, have no fish; the same streams we used to seine for minnows and crawfish, have neither. The same streams I used to catch rock bass and stone rollers in have no fish. And the amount of water monitoring the state is doing has now gone to zero! Great job, you moron's!
What you speak of is a Use Attainability Analysis and yes, when streams are used more intensely they get a higher ranking and it's more likely they will be need official impaired status as a result of this. And DNR and the AG sector does not like impairing streams.
Downgrading natural waters is just a “cost of doing business” for everyone in the supply chain including the end users, most producers- the people formerly known as a farmers. The Koch empire et.al. Will crumble without the ability to sell or apply as much “crop nutrition” products as they can pump into and onto the soil. The Nutrient Reduction Strategy and other publicity campaigns that give lip service to and generate public money for make sure we “all have clean water” have failed, and will fail as long as there are no teeth in regulation, mitigation, and consequences for the pollution the supply chain blasts upon the land, air, and water. They’ve proven Voluntary regulation has and will not work. Regulation from the state and Feds is unlikely but the only real option for dealing with this plague.
Why does Agribusiness hate clean water? Because it pays better than the alternative. And as the old saying goes, money talks and that stuff in the overflowing CAFO pit walks. Until Iowans elect legislators that aren't in the bag for big ag, it won't change. There is simply no hope while virtually unlimited corporate campaign donations are the norm. You would think that closed beaches, putrid green lakes & streams and toxic well water would qualify as a sufficient crisis to shake our "unwoke" state government into action. But nary a chance they will risk offending their corporate benefactors and the voters don't seem to care.
Chris, I really enjoy reading your principled, science based, outspoken repartee on this subject but until enough Iowa voters care enough to throw the bastards out, we are all just sobbing on each other's shoulder here in The Swine Republic.
Also, I appreciate your sacrifice on taking what I assume was an earlier than desired retirement instead of allowing the bastards to hold your department at the U of I hostage. You are free now to say what's on your mind and hopefully can increase your followers to a critical mass.
The previous inhabitants of Iowa had respect for this land, but they were deemed primitive and unknowing. We however are "The New Improved Product" and yet ...
Thanks, Chris, for continuing to point out our folly and thus, by doing so, forgoing any future mention of your name in our public school social studies/history curriculum which will be reserved only for those who laud our wonderful American virtues. Keep on saying what so many of us wish we could articulate as well.
Thanks for this post. Ag chemicals get dumped onto fields in amounts that are excessive AND uneconomic! The corporate "agronomists" that push this dope are making big bucks at the expense of the producer and the environment.
Good article. Sy were having trouble finding someone in Iowa who can speak to the issue of wetlands and the interpretation by SCOTUS of the Clean Water Act after the Sackett decision for a panel discussion. Do you know any retired people who might be willing to talk? Maybe we have to go out of state.
I'd be happy to participate if you wish, I'm wondering if Jim Larew here in IC might have some insight from the legal perspective. You might consider John Downing who was at ISU but retired to MN I believe.
The draft 2024 303(d) list just came out and the number of impaired waterways was reduced from 751 in 2022 to 721 this year. I had a long talk with the DNR water monitoring supervisor, and a factor in this decrease is due to the drought - there just isn't water to test in some areas.
Yet I can just see the defenders of this broken system spewing nonsensical PR that progress is being made in cleaning up our waterways.
I appreciate this column, Chris. It exposes a whole new level of complicity in our water crisis that I wasn't fully aware of.
Upper Pine Lake (Hardin county) is no longer listed on the impaired waters list, the 303(d). The DNR's 2022 final assessment of Upper Pine Lake indicates algae and turbidity is in violation, consistent with the 2014 TMDL. The final assessment indicates the TMDL is no longer required, since it was taken off the 303(d) list. According to the DNR, once they create a TMDL, the segment does not need to be included on future 303(d) lists.
Talk about a dog chasing it's tail. Following this logic, all TMDLs and impaired waters list entries will vanish into thin air. See references below:
Assessment Summary
The Class A1 use was assessed (monitored) as “not supported” (IR 4a) due to elevated levels of chlorophyll a (algae) that cause aesthetically objectionable conditions. The level of inorganic suspended solids was relatively low and does not suggest water quality problems due to non-algal turbidity. The Class BWW1 use was assessed as “fully supported.” Nutrient loading to the water column and siltation also remain water quality concerns at this lake. All other designated uses were “not assessed.” Note: A TMDL for siltation at Upper Pine Lake was prepared in 2002 by DNR and approved by EPA. Additionally, TMDL for the algae impairment at this lake was prepared and approved by EPA in November 2014. Because all impairments at this lake are addressed by the two TMDL's (i.e., the algae impairment), this waterbody was moved from IR Category 5a to Category 4a (impaired; TMDL not required).
Once the DNR creates a water quality improvement plan for the segment (called Total Maximum Daily Loads, or TMDLs), the segment does not need to be included on future 303(d) lists.
This is the beginning of the end. Change will happen when the collapse occurs. Disease and ecosystem collapse are here and people seem to be more concerned whether they have the newest dune buggy, ATV, or pontoon, cruise to nowhere, the fanciest truck, or whether their stocks are doing well so they can retire and partake in the aforementioned list of "We are just having fun". I forgot PICKLEBALL! How could I forget pickleball? When you ask folks whether they grow a garden, they claim it is too much work, but they are involved in 3 pickleball leagues. Reckoning Day is coming soon to a theater near you and the premier will be "We didn't see it coming, how could this happen". I want to have hope but the mindset in this country scares me. Nature will be the savior but humans are killing it at alarming rates. Once the threshold is achieved, the human race will cease to exist or be diminished severely and the great healing of the Earth will begin. I now know what the Native tribes felt like when the European invasion occurred. Watching something you love so dearly being destroyed right in front of your eyes and feeling the rage and disgust that this is happening in your lifetime. Life is a journey, and we are embarked on a difficult journey currently. May we see the light and realize that money is an infection that is killing us all and NO ONE is immune to the consequences.
Exactly. We are committing slow motion suicide on our "pale blue dot", as Carl Sagan called it.
Stellar column once again,but saddens me no end. I naively thought of Iowa as an honest, thoughtful state for most of my 68 years, but Chris and others have cleared that boyish notion up: we have a Legislature and Governor that is little more than a lobbying organization for a Corn/Cafo Mafia. I have 35 acres of prairie in CRP upstream of the Cedar and we are putting another 28 acres in this year that was rented out previously. And the contract payment is VERY competitive, like $290 an acre, So if one has land available that qualifies suggest looking into CRP. Our CRP will ALMOST make up for the neighbors tilling within 6 feet of creeks !
This may be partial repeat, my previous reply disappeared.
Congratulations for seeding more down in the CRP program!!
Question: If there was no annual payment $290/A,, cost sharing for seed and machinery installation costs, would you do it at your own expense?
Good question, I don't know,but yes probably. Inputs are about 5k. But the wildlife is a reward. If they stopped payment, I definitely wouldn't take the prairie out.
I'm glad you could financially afford to do it without govt. paymt and subsidy. For most full time farmers like me we cannot make family living, farm payments, machinery pymts by not having income. whether CRP or farming it. I like wild life but they don't even pay the taxes. Again good for you.
Oh sure, I have the luxury of a good engineering job so it's not a huge financial burden if I don't get paid.Its nice as the CRP payment covers taxes et. And prairie, even established, takes work, spray, mowing, burning etc
Keeps me out of the tavern!
Oh yes CRP takes work.
I just finished a novel by Ann Patchett, "Commonwealth", and while this book has nothing to do with farming, there's a scene in there that takes place in Iowa City. A character is complaining about how bad ice cubes taste at a local bar because of agricultural runoff contaminating our water. Patchett captured the situation here pretty well.
You know we've got it bad when commentary about Iowa's disgusting water winds up a common talking point in modern fiction.
"When Berke Breathed, author of (the cartoon strip) Bloom County, said goodbye to the town in 1985, he drew a special cartoon that appeared on the front page of the Iowa City
Press-Citizen. It depicted Opus and Milo hanging out in the fountain on the pedestrian mall, talking about everything they would miss, from the sandwiches at Bushnell's Turtle to the Hare Krishnas on the Pentacrest. "Except the water," Milo adds. "The water tastes like
Spic 'n' Span.""
From "In the Water" by Laura Sayre, University of Iowa Review
I wonder if she is the daughter of Robert Sayre, who wrote this fantastic piece: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20154884
Keep at it Chris. This is a huge undertaking when you challenge the special interests degrading our water and soil. But, you are exposing this scenario to people who are fed up too. And, we may be a small band of like minded warriors....but I for one am in this fight for as long as it takes.
Salute Chris!
Several years ago, the state of Iowa was working on a plan to down grade some of the streams in Iowa because it would be a way to improve them? The deciding factor was a window survey of many streams to see if that stream had humans interacting with the stream in some way. This was determiined by driving around on mostly paved roads and looking at the banks from the bridge. No "Y" sticks, no foot prints, no camp fires meant humans were not interacting with that stream, and of course could be down graded. Well, I took exception to all this monkey business simply because if you pave a road over a stream you raise the height of the bridge in most cases, so the bridge won't get flooded. When you do that the approaches become steep and usually are covered with big rock making it difficult to get down to the stream. My example was they surveyed the Buffalo on X-20 south of Prairieburg on a black top road, built exactly as I discribed. Had they gone to the very next bridge down stream on a gravel road they would have found all the tell tale signs of human activity including a place to park! As I understand it, this was to eliminate streams from the list of first class streams so we could concentrate our efforts on those being utilized by the public, otherwise we would have to use the available funding for the entire list of streams. It quite possibly had merit, but doing it this way would certainly have a negative effect on many meandering streams with no paved roads but a ton of access on the gravel ones. What it got me was a half hour of exlaining myself to some nameless official over the phone who asked no questions, took my statement and that was that! Everything about the DNR and Water Quality simply is how can we screw it up worse than it already is! If that is their intent, they are doing a fine job! The fact the COOP reported this massive spill, almost automatically says the maximun DNR fine of $10,000 will be cut in half. Why? Because the DNR has so few inspectors they probably wouldn't have caught the spill in the first place! Most farmers know this, and they aren't about wasting money paying fines they can simply ignore with no after effect! I can tell you in Jones County where I grew up and was raised, you can't look over the side of any small stream and expect to see minnows or any kind of fish in the water anymore. They simply are not there unless you are closer to a larger river and even then, there isn't much activity. The same streams 60 years ago I used to go chub fishing in, have no fish; the same streams we used to seine for minnows and crawfish, have neither. The same streams I used to catch rock bass and stone rollers in have no fish. And the amount of water monitoring the state is doing has now gone to zero! Great job, you moron's!
What you speak of is a Use Attainability Analysis and yes, when streams are used more intensely they get a higher ranking and it's more likely they will be need official impaired status as a result of this. And DNR and the AG sector does not like impairing streams.
Downgrading natural waters is just a “cost of doing business” for everyone in the supply chain including the end users, most producers- the people formerly known as a farmers. The Koch empire et.al. Will crumble without the ability to sell or apply as much “crop nutrition” products as they can pump into and onto the soil. The Nutrient Reduction Strategy and other publicity campaigns that give lip service to and generate public money for make sure we “all have clean water” have failed, and will fail as long as there are no teeth in regulation, mitigation, and consequences for the pollution the supply chain blasts upon the land, air, and water. They’ve proven Voluntary regulation has and will not work. Regulation from the state and Feds is unlikely but the only real option for dealing with this plague.
Why does Agribusiness hate clean water? Because it pays better than the alternative. And as the old saying goes, money talks and that stuff in the overflowing CAFO pit walks. Until Iowans elect legislators that aren't in the bag for big ag, it won't change. There is simply no hope while virtually unlimited corporate campaign donations are the norm. You would think that closed beaches, putrid green lakes & streams and toxic well water would qualify as a sufficient crisis to shake our "unwoke" state government into action. But nary a chance they will risk offending their corporate benefactors and the voters don't seem to care.
Chris, I really enjoy reading your principled, science based, outspoken repartee on this subject but until enough Iowa voters care enough to throw the bastards out, we are all just sobbing on each other's shoulder here in The Swine Republic.
Also, I appreciate your sacrifice on taking what I assume was an earlier than desired retirement instead of allowing the bastards to hold your department at the U of I hostage. You are free now to say what's on your mind and hopefully can increase your followers to a critical mass.
The second sentence should read:
Because the alternative pays better. MB
The previous inhabitants of Iowa had respect for this land, but they were deemed primitive and unknowing. We however are "The New Improved Product" and yet ...
Thanks, Chris, for continuing to point out our folly and thus, by doing so, forgoing any future mention of your name in our public school social studies/history curriculum which will be reserved only for those who laud our wonderful American virtues. Keep on saying what so many of us wish we could articulate as well.
Chris— We are blessed to have you in Iowa, thank you for your continued contributions. History is watching : )
Thanks for this post. Ag chemicals get dumped onto fields in amounts that are excessive AND uneconomic! The corporate "agronomists" that push this dope are making big bucks at the expense of the producer and the environment.
Thanks again, Chris. I just wish more Iowans would read these posts.
Thanks for this piece, Chris!
Mind boggling on top of mind boggling on top of …
Good article. Sy were having trouble finding someone in Iowa who can speak to the issue of wetlands and the interpretation by SCOTUS of the Clean Water Act after the Sackett decision for a panel discussion. Do you know any retired people who might be willing to talk? Maybe we have to go out of state.
I'd be happy to participate if you wish, I'm wondering if Jim Larew here in IC might have some insight from the legal perspective. You might consider John Downing who was at ISU but retired to MN I believe.