Iowa must do more to enforce Clean Water Act

Iowa has continued to fail to keep its waters clean, for it had 572 polluted waterways in 2010 and more than 630 today.

I admire Iowa farmers for their diligence and dedication to being good neighbors, stewards of the earth and providers of wholesome food. It is not our farmers, but Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), also known as 'factory farms,” that are guilty of most of the polluting. CAFOs are not truly farms, because they crowd animals into buildings where they don't have even enough room to turn around, where they must stand in their own excrement (a hog excretes about 14.5 pounds of waste per day) and where they're fed an unnatural diet laced with antibiotics.

As a result, CAFOs not only pollute our water, they have made antibiotics less and less effective as human medicine.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has drafted a new rule to better enforce the Clean Water Act and better protect our waterways and it is holding public hearings. It needs our encouragement to strengthen and to follow through on its proposed rule. Contact Gene Tinker, Iowa DNR, at (515) 281-8895 or Gene.Tinker@dnr.iowa.gov.

Doug Goodner

Kalona