Don’t underplay Iowa’s water issues

Jon Stravers

I just finished reading an article in The Gazette (9/7/2014) about 'Sharing the load - Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy is making progress.”

From my understanding of the quality of the water in Iowa's rivers, I am not sure claims of recent progress could be farther from the truth.

Agribusiness, farmers and politicians in Iowa and around the Midwest have known for a decade that they were using too much nitrogen and fertilizer, and spreading too much manure on their fields.

The Dead Zone and the associated hypoxic issues in the Gulf of Mexico are a direct result of poor land use decisions by a majority of folks associated with agribusiness.

Farmers, pesticide and fertilizer producers, politicians, and various agencies in Iowa have literally dragged their feet at every possible interval since these hypoxic issues first came to light.

I would argue that anyone who suggests progress has been made is either seriously uniformed or lying.

As a representative of the Audubon Society I attended a governmental forum on hypoxic issues and saw firsthand that many associated with agribusiness are resistant to change of this type.

Most of the shrimp fishing industry in Louisiana has already been put out of business due to the nutrient loads in the Gulf of Mexico, stemming from what we have dumped into the streams across Iowa.

If shrimp fishermen in Louisiana were doing something to inhibit or ruin agribusiness in Iowa, our farmers would be making a big fuss. They would not tolerate the same response in they have had to their calls of reducing fertilizer use.

The abuse of streams in Iowa goes well beyond nutrients; our rivers are choked with silt because of the runoff from land that should not currently be in crop production.

Water quality is abhorrent since every possible herbicide and pesticide the chemical companies can produce are running into Iowa's streams and rivers.

And, in case anyone reading this somehow believes water quality is not so bad in Iowa streams - a recent fish kill affected five miles of waterway along Buck Creek in Clayton County. This is just one instance that randomly got reported (and documented) in early September.

The sad fact is that this happens time and time again all across out state - most often unreported. A few weeks ago a fish kill that affected 28 miles of a stream in northwest Iowa got no press coverage whatsoever.

Water quality in Iowa is horrible and it keeps getting worse. We should all be embarrassed and ashamed of our political inaction, disregard for statewide water quality and lack of respect for the hardworking Americans who fight to make their living downstream.

Agencies and politicians continue to give in to the demands from agriculture and agribusiness, and we have allowed our waterways, streams and rivers to be ruined.

Anyone who suggests that progress has been made is simply out of touch with the reality of water in Iowa today and of the issues continuing to impact the Gulf of Mexico. This is where our collective sins have gathered and produced a Dead Zone.

It sounds like science fiction, but it is all too true.