Connecting the dots to clean up Iowa water

Behind a high-profile lawsuit and plenty of politically charged rural-urban finger-pointing, smart people are searching for ways to clean up Iowa's water, strategies that might actually survive our Golden Dome of Sausage Grinding.

One of those people is Jennifer Terry, agricultural policy specialist for the Iowa Environmental Council. She stopped by our shop this week to meet with a few members of our editorial board.

Terry, who grew up on a Hardin County dairy farm and has a law degree from the University of Iowa, is trying to persuade lawmakers and bureaucrats to strengthen Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy. That's the science-based strategy that sets goals for reducing agricultural nutrients, nitrates and phosphorous mainly, that run from Iowa's farmland, into Iowa's waterways and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico's infamous 'dead zone.”

It's voluntary, with goals but no requirements. Farm interests want to keep it that way. Environmental groups insist actual regulations are needed to hold producers accountable. The Des Moines Water Works' headline-making lawsuit against officials in three rural counties over nitrates running into the city's drinking water source has brought a long simmering debate to a boil.

Couple that with a record number of beach closures this summer due to toxic, fertilizer-fueled algae blooms, and Iowans are paying attention. Water quality is having its moment.

'We blew the record out of the water, unfortunately,” Terry said. 'I'll tell you what gets the public's attention. The safety of their drinking water and the unpleasant and dangerous conditions at the beaches.”

Everybody lauds the nutrient strategy's science. But it's the question of how do we actually get it done that prompts all the pitchfork-grabbing and lawsuit-filing. And the fact of the matter is there's a lot of good ground between the loose, ineffective status quo and tight, politically unlikely regulations. It has yet to be cultivated.

For starters, the nutrient strategy has no timelines for achieving its goals. Terry has lobbied to change that at the Statehouse to no avail. Iowa also lacks good, baseline, statewide water testing data. It's tough to know whether a strategy is working if we don't know where we started. Terry and her allies are in the early stages of creating a statewide testing network of labs, colleges and organizations.

'I'm even hearing farmers involved in watershed projects stand up at public meetings and ask for timelines,” Terry said. 'I think the message is catching on, but not necessarily with leaders, like Gov. Branstad or (Agriculture Secretary) Bill Northey.”

Funding is inadequate. The Legislature provided $9.6 million to the Department of Agriculture for its Water Quality Initiative, charged with implementing the reduction strategy. That sounds like a lot of cash until you realize cleaning up waterways will cost billions. Projects that could take decades to make progress are being funded for three years.

But the even bigger issue, as Terry sees it, is the fact that although Iowa has a strategy and a patchwork of programs intended to help clean up waterways, it has no comprehensive plan that stitches it all together.

That's what Terry and the Environmental Council, now in its 20th year, are trying to accomplish. And they're looking to Minnesota, where the state's One Watershed, One Plan program assesses the conditions of entire watersheds, targets practices to improve water quality, implements them, assesses progress and adapts to changes over a 10 -year period. The efforts pair government with the private sector, rural with urban. Terry envisions a similar holistic approach in Iowa.

'We're treating all the pollutants. We're blanketing the whole state. We're knitting all the plans together. We're using targeted practices not shotgun. And then we're also coordinating agencies and measuring progress. This sort of a plan, I think, brings it all together and actually results in cleaner water in Iowa,” Terry said.

Instead of having some programs address beaches, some address farm runoff and others tackle urban issues, we bring all the programs together to work on a common strategy across an entire watershed. And we provide higher, stable funding levels, presumably by finally filling the Iowa Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund with a three-eighths cent sales tax increase. The trust fund was approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2010.

So in the end, we'd have a coordinated, collaborative water quality effort with timelines, data, cooperation and dollars. All we need is the leadership to get it done, leadership to defuse turf wars, overcome the reluctance to change the comfy status quo and convince legislators that our conservation infrastructure is as important as pavement.

Branstad, Northey and others need to step up, wade in and speak out. So do farm groups, whose support would be a sure sign that this isn't just a bunch of environmentalists targeting farmers.

'They're asking, ‘Why are people suing? Why are people asking for regulations? One reason is because you're not listening,” Terry said.

When they start listening, they'll hear, clearly, Iowans want safe drinking water, clean waterways and open beaches. And their voices are getting louder.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com