You can't talk about water quality without talking about the soil. That's why Neil Hamilton, author of The Land Remains, was the right person to launch the discussion, Can Iowa's Water Be Saved? at Plymouth Congregational Church last Sunday.
Hamilton, former director of the Drake University Ag Law Center, was flanked by an impressive panel of experts, including:
· Matt Russell, Iowa Farm Service Agency executive director and co-owner of Coyote Run Farm;
· Ruth McCabe, conservation agronomist for Heartland Cooperative;
· John Norris, former Polk County Soil & Water Commissioner; and
· Chris Henning, Greene County landowner.
· Pat Boddy, water resources engineer and former conservation administrator, moderated.
If you broadly define ownership to include private and public lands, Hamilton stated, "We're all landowners." But he said any discussion of land-ownership and water quality must be grounded in the reality that over 50% of Iowa land is farmed by non-owner operators (renters). "This changes the nature of the relationship to the land, since most acres are rented on a one-year lease," he pointed out. "It also impacts decision-making, creating an economic inequality and environmental vulnerability."
Hamilton raised concern regarding the Iowa legislature's budget that cuts funding from the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research lab at the University of Iowa. The lab maintains 70 water quality-monitoring sensors on rivers and streams. The alternative would be to rely on a system of models. "Models project water quality, but can tell you anything you want," Hamilton said. "It would leave us with no real-time information."
John Norris agreed. "What you don't measure can't be managed," he said. "A total of 6.5 million acres drained from Iowa land goes right by the Des Moines ballpark. With nitrate loading rates going up, we need a world-class monitoring system."
How did we get into this situation? Water quality issues have been percolating for decades, long before the Des Moines Waterworks' lawsuit in 2015. The federal Clean Water Act of 1972 effectively addressed "point sources" of pollution, including discharges from factories and wastewater treatment facilities. Farms, however, were placed in the diffuse category of "non-point sources," along with storm water run-off, golf courses, and paved parking lots.
In 1984, Sen. Dave Durenberger, Minnesota introduced a "nonpoint source" water pollution bill that would have directed state agencies to tell farmers what chemicals were appropriate for soil and groundwater. It failed to gain traction.
However, building soil health also is critical to improving water quality. An estimated 5.5 tons per acre of soil are lost annually in Iowa. Soil loss contributes to degraded water, along with nitrates and phosphorus from fertilizer. The 1985 farm bill was the first to include a specific conservation title. But its initiatives, such as the Conservation Reserve Program, have been significantly underfunded. To receive farm bill commodity payments, farmers must pledge not to drain wetlands to grow crops, and have a plan in place to preserve highly erodible land.
"Unfortunately, the government has not aggressively enforced this cross compliance," Hamilton said.
No Iowa Clean Water Plan
Water quality issues continued to surface during the farm crisis years. In January 1986, I wrote a Successful Farming story titled, "Groundwater pollution emerges as a rural issue." I cited a U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report that singled out groundwater contamination "as the foremost environmental concern for the rest of this decade."
At the state level, growing concern about fertilizers, nitrates and pesticides resulted in the passage of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act in May 1987. By June 1988, as its rules still were being reviewed by a legislative committee, I reported a story titled, "New groundwater law under attack in Iowa." The Act was largely non-regulatory, but the six legislators who wrote the legislation were targeted for defeat by the Iowa Fertilizer and Chemical Association. Its primary concern was a tax on one fifth of 1% of sales of pesticides. The $3 million in fees collected in the first year were used to fund research on groundwater protection, test rural wells, plug abandoned wells, and study "low input" farming. This included the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, which the legislature defunded in 2018.
The goal of the Nutrient Management Regulation under the Water Protection Act adopted by Iowa in 2013 is to reduce nutrient run-off and shrink the dead zone at the Mississippi Gulf of Mexico by 2035. "It isn't a clean water plan for Iowa," Hamilton told the 220 participants last Sunday. Despite reported progress based on projected models, in 2018 a team of researchers including Dr. Chris Jones at the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research found that nitrogen run-off into the Gulf of Mexico had increased by almost 50% over the past two decades
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"The Des Moines Waterworks lawsuit vs. drainage districts changed the trajectory of the water quality debate in Iowa," Hamilton said. However, the court ruled that the drainage districts did not have the authority to control discharges from drainage lines, so the case was dismissed. "Liability is based on control," the Iowa Supreme Court ruled.
But the lawsuit muddied the waters of rural/urban relationships. "Farmers to some degree are prisoners of the economic system, including market forces and low commodity prices," Hamilton said "They're also vulnerable to weather and global forces. To stay ahead of higher input prices from agribusinesses, farmers need to increase yields. "They feel under attack by consumers because of their farm practices," he said. Regulations and permanent conservation efforts increase the cost of doing business.
Women landowners/Farmers/Ag Coops
Women landowners like panelist Chris Henning may play a pivotal role in improving water quality. After 27 years of working and living in Des Moines, she returned to her farm roots in Greene County in 1991. Her farm is located one mile from the Racoon River. "I wanted to keep my land out of your water," she said. One-half of her 320 acres has been in conservation, including cover crops, wetland, CRP, and stream buffers, for 15 years. "Women own one-half of the land in Iowa," she pointed out. "They have been unheard and underserved." Henning stated that as a smaller farmer/landowner, she may be in a different position to implement conservation strategies than other farmers.
"Farmers are the fastest and most effective point of change," Matt Russell agreed, suggesting that small farmers may be able to innovate faster than large ones. Panelist Ruth McCabe cautioned against turning the discussion into a small farm=good vs large farms=bad debate. She stated that she and her team have worked with over 380 farmers on conservation since August 2020. "Some larger producers are innovative, some aren't," she said. "During three years of working with organic farmers in another state, I saw some of the worst soil management. Small is not the only criteria."
Hamilton suggested one action step to saving Iowa's water is engaging ag retailers selling chemicals and fertilizers in cutting soil loss.
McCabe, who introduced herself as "one of the bad guys," agreed. Hired at the farmer-owned cooperative in 2020, she stated, "If we're part of the problem, we should be part of the solution." She pointed to progress being made by her team: almost 60,000 acres of cover crops, 2,300 acres of no-till conversion, 960 acres of improved nutrient management, 150 acres of CRP, about 60 tile outlets treated with saturated buffers or bioreactors, one small wetland, two ponds and two sediment basins. (Filter strips, saturated buffers and bioreactors are edge of field practices that don't require farmers to take land out of production.)
Action steps to take:
Moderator Pat Boddy asked panelists to add to Hamilton's action steps:
· "We need to reimagine better conservation outcomes from the farm program, " Russell said. He pointed to progress in increasing diversity, double cropping, and relay intercropping (planting winter wheat or rye in the fall and planting soybeans into it in the spring). "The result is three crops in 2 years," he said.
· Norris would like to open more oat processing mills in Iowa to increase the market for growing milling oats, which, in turn, helps conserve soil through crop rotation. He also suggested using property taxes to reward soil health measures.
· Chris Henning said, "We need to tackle the third rail of agriculture: Iowa's livestock matrix. There were 12 CAFOs in Greene County in 1992; now there are 112," she said. "We also have to tackle the plumbing problem of pattern tiling."
The explosion of hog units has exacerbated Iowa's water quality problems. Although manure applied to land is an alternative to commercial fertilizer, Chris Jones's measurements of water quality in Sioux County, Iowa did not indicate that manure applications reduced the amount of commercial fertilizer applied.
Hamilton pointed to Minnesota's passage of legislation in 2016, making buffer strips mandatory along streams, rivers, sinkholes, ditches, and tile inlets
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Politicizing water quality
Despite the best efforts of panelists to cover the waterfront, after three hours, time ran out to plumb the depths of Iowa's water quality issues.
To round out their discussion, I'll say that the prevailing adversarial attitude toward government as the enemy is sabotaging water quality efforts, and the enforcement of regulations. In 2015, I reported on Waters of the United States (WOTUS), an EPA federal rule created under the Obama administration aimed at protecting small streams and wetlands. It's a prime example. Repealed under the Trump administration as too broad, burdensome, intrusive, and costly, it was revived by the Biden administration. Last month it was blocked by a North Dakota federal judge in 24 states. With Attorney General Brenna Bird joining in the preliminary injunction, Iowa is left out of the rule, which still stands in the remaining states.
"Stoking divisions is a great way to stall progress," Ruth McCabe pointed out. I couldn't agree more.
But over the past decade, I've also witnessed and written about the increased willingness of farmers to partner with advocacy groups including the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Foundation, Pheasants Forever, and the Environmental Defense Fund. That's encouraging, since the complexity of the challenge demands a full-throttle offense by agribusinesses, government, university researchers, landowners, farmers, and other stakeholders.
Can Iowa's Waters Be Saved? Matt Russell, and other panelists, responded with a qualified, "Yes, but . . . not unless something changes." Russell pointed out, "The real question is Will We Save our Water?"
Bob Leonard sounded the alarm in his Iowa Writers' Collaborative column, Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture last week. Leonard based his column, Iowa Water Quality Monitoring in Peril, on an interview with Dr. Chris Jones, University of Iowa research engineer at the hydraulics lab. Jones is retiring this month. Don't miss Julie Gammack's Potluck Zoom this Monday; her guests are Bob Leonard and Chris Jones.
Two water quality sensors are positioned on Bloody Run Creek, a cold-water trout stream in northeastern Iowa, where Supreme Beef, a 10,000 head cattle feedlot was allowed to build on delicate karst bedrock soil.
Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court found in favor of the Sierra Club's lawsuit accusing the Iowa DNR of incorrectly issuing a manure permit to this operation in April 2021. As earlier reported, the new budget cuts $500,000 from the Iowa Nutrient Center, which funds the Iowa Water Quality Information System. The budget proposal was managed by Sen. Dan Zumbach, whose son-in-law is co-owner of the feedlot.
Doesn't this smell to the high Heaven?!
Great column, Cheryl.
Thank you Cheryl for such a thoughtful article. Iowa will get nowhere fast by feeding the many adversarial aspects of the mess we find ourselves in. May I send you an e-mail?