iowa water crisis

Sunday, February 7, 2021

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

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.