I Stopped Writing For This Because No One Cares

No politician--liberal or conservative, no farmer, no urban dweller; some talk about the problem but no meaningful action in sight

Groups sue Iowa, claim farm fertilizer runoff hurting Raccoon River, Des Moines drinking water

Donnelle Eller, Groups sue Iowa, claim farm fertilizer runoff hurting Raccoon River, Des Moines drinking water, Des Moines Register. 3/27/2019:

Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday, asking a court to force farmers to cut fertilizer runoff they say is hurting the Raccoon River watershed and water Des Moines residents drink.

Iowa Citizens  for Community Improvement and Food & Water Watch also want to stop producers from building or expanding pig, cattle and other livestock operations in the Raccoon River watershed until a mandatory nutrient reduction plan is in place.

They've sued the state natural resources and agriculture departments, their leaders, and two state environmental boards and their members.

“Iowans are tired of being told that our interests — our water, our health, our enjoyment of public waters, our drinking water, our pocketbooks — must be compromised or balanced with those of corporate ag and other industries willing to destroy our lives for profit,” said Adam Mason, Iowa CCI's state policy director.

“Our lawsuit is holding the state to a higher standard — for us, for our kids and our grandkids,” he said.

Kirk Leeds, CEO of the Iowa Soybean Association, said his group is disappointed "another potentially divisive lawsuit is being filed by those opposed to agriculture in Iowa."

"Lawsuits do absolutely nothing to improve water quality in this state," Leeds said Wednesday. "All it does is divide rural and urban and causes everyone to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyer fees."

"It's a diversion from the work we have in front of us" to improve water quality, he said.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, who is named in the suit, said he, too, is disappointed with the lawsuit but will encourage farmers to remain focused on the state's efforts to cut nutrient loss.

The environmental groups said Wednesday the state has failed to protect the public's use of the Raccoon River, as required under the Public Trust Doctrine, and abdicated "control to private interests."

The group says the state's voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy doesn't protect the Raccoon River for the "use and benefit of all Iowans."

The strategy seeks to cut urban and rural nitrogen and phosphorus levels by 45 percent the nutrients that contribute to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone each summer.

They're also blamed for contributing to toxic blue-green algae blooms in Iowa's lakes.

“There is a well-known, statewide water crisis in Iowa, and the Raccoon River in Polk County has been particularly harmed by pollution from factory farms," said Emma Schmit of Food & Water Watch.

"The Raccoon River runs through one of the most intensely farmed areas of the United States, where runoff from animal manure and fertilizer poses a threat to tap water and recreational use of the river," Schmit said in a statement.

The groups said Des Moines Water Works has run into significant costs to remove nitrates so its water is safe to drink. 

The utility filed a lawsuit in 2015 against drainage districts in three north Iowa counties, alleging underground drainage tiles funnel high levels of nitrogen into the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for 500,000 central Iowa residents.

The utility sought to force drainage districts, and indirectly farmers, to meet federal clean-water standards, similar to those governing factories, cities and other "point-source" polluters.

The lawsuit was dismissed in 2017.

The environmental groups said Wednesday the Iowa Legislature has "failed to take any action on water quality, so the citizens of Iowa have stood up to say enough is enough.”

The groups also are being represented by California-based Public Justice and Des Moines firms Roxanne Conlin & Associates and Lawyer, Lawyer, Dutton & Drake.

Iowa Number One In Nation In Fecal Production

University of Iowa engineering researcher Christopher Jones reports that Iowa’s 3.2 mission people and it’s 110 million chickens, pigs, turkeys and cattle annually produce the fecal content equivalent to 168 million people.

[See Donnelle Eller, 50 Shades of Brown: Iowa Ranks No. 1 in, Ahem, No. 2, UI Researcher Calculates, Des Moines Register, 6/10/2019]

This is primarily due to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), which the agricultural industry feels the state could benefit from more CAFOs.

This fecal production impacts Iowa watersheds.  (Other studies of efforts to mitigate the presence of fecal runoff with millions-dollars projects on select small streams--certainly few projects--has demonstrated ongoing presence of fecal material downstream from mitigation projects, e.g., Brushy Creek Lake).  In areas where CAFOs are concentrated in Iowa counties, nitrogen in water may be doubled over already problematic agricultural runoff into to watersheds.

See illustration of Iowa watersheds with Christopher Jones overlay of equivalent fecal runoff in highly populated global sites that illustrates just how massively concentrated fecal production in ALL small watershed sections in Iowa.

Listening To The Voice Of Place

Eco-cide

see new blog: https://eco-cide.blogspot.com

The People of Iowa’s Persistent Disgust With Iowa Agriculture

THIS 61st IOWA WATER blog is the 13th post involving anonymous Des Moines Register public (“2 Cents Worth”) rants regarding the degradation of Iowa’s environmental quality by Iowa Agriculture.  

While the actions of all Iowans negatively impact the Iowa landscape to some degree, the greatest pollution source by far is Iowa agriculture in the form of grain and meat production.  And it is not only landscape pollution “out there,” but also an issue of public health on farms and in towns and cities. 

With perhaps 25 million acres in cropland and 45-50 million pigs annually brought to market in Iowa [ 3.1 million Iowa residents in 2016], efforts for decades to decrease the impact of agricultural pollution have largely failed.  And environmental degradation can be anticipated to increase, even with effort to add a statewide tax to be applied to mitigate ag pollution that is a consequence of massive chemical application on cropland [fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides] and animal waste [manure an ammonia].  The agricultural infrastructure is not your Centennial farmer-model.  It is an industrial model of drainage tiles that have eradicated natural wetlands and factory animal plants and massive chemical application on rather monolithic crops.  Against this industrial model that is also geographically massive, dollars spent on mitigation efforts are minute window-dressings.  Further complicating efforts to improve land and water quality, efforts to diversify crop rotation or use cover crops and address drainage tiles rapid release of chemical and animal waste and create enough wetlands that would take land out of production are met with resistance.  Efforts to monitor and regulate and tax pollution practices are legislatively resisted at a state level to protect agricultural interests as well as even limit the rights of local communities to regulate activities.  And yet, water treatment is heavily regulated and, therefore, costly to communities with no shared cost responsibility for Iowa ag polluters.  

Why such support for Iowa Ag over public interest?  Industrial Iowa ag is unsustainable without government $$$ and legislative protection.  It must be bolstered up and not monitored so that it can be changed and not expected to pay for its pollution. 

The bottom line: effort to have even “slightly clean water” will have to be opposed if Iowa ag as it currently is practiced is to exist.

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Iowa’s new state symbol should be a sick oak tree with serious leaf damage next to a farm chemical CEO saying “No one has proven our herbicide caused this” and an ISU researcher nodding very nervously.

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Hooray, modst new restrictions on Dicamba herbicide at last.  Maybe the foliage on my box elders and oaks won’t be blasted by chemical drift next year.

--Not to mention my lungs

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A visiting East Coast friend was interested in cover crops, so as we drove to an Iowa town, we looked for cornfields that had them so she could see them.  We drove fifty-two miles before finally passing a cover-crop field.  Wow.

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Iowa is not doing well in respect to mental health, water quality , child and elder welfare, and some other things.  And our once-top-rated K-12 system is lower ranked now.  But cheer up Iowans!  We are No. 1 for numbers of pigs and egg-laying hens in factory farms.

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I’ll care about helping Iowa farmers when they care enough about water pollution to plant half their rowcrop acres with cover crops.  I’ll be dead before that happens.

--Taxpayers already pay more than half of their crop insurance

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And so it goes....on and on and on.

And what about the impact of Iowa Ag beyond Iowa--the Gulf Dead Zone, concentrated chemical production and pre-production of chemical components?

And then there is the population loss and rather rapid dissolution of small town Iowa in the transition from family farms (nationally producing 1% of food in 2007 and earning more money from government payments than from crop sales) to corporate-style and corporate farming (with 5% of these larger farms producing 74% of food) and turning to urbanization to survive where business/industry now dominate the Iowa economy.