Iowa’s leaders have failed us on water quality

It is a sad situation when we have to admit that we as Iowans have lost our way when it comes to taking care of the water in our state. Our state government has totally abandoned the idea of guarding the safety of our rivers and protecting our groundwater, water that is so essential to a decent life.

Earlier this year I was at the boat ramp on the lower end of the Upper Iowa River; I was on my way to conduct bird surveys at the confluence of the Upper Iowa River and the Mississippi River as part of project I have been working on for 40 years. As I got ready to put my boat in the water, I realized that the mud along the river, the air around the boat ramp, the river itself, and everything in the vicinity of the boat ramp smelled like hog manure. It was putrid. The smell dominated what was once a pristine and important river here in the Driftless Region of Iowa.

You might think this was just an isolated experience, but I would not agree. All across our beautiful state, our rivers have been ravaged by animal wastes, polluted by agricultural chemicals, and ruined by every type of activity from both the agribusiness and the industrial complex. We have lost our way in making sure we elect officials who will do what it takes to protect our water.

We Iowans have also lost our way when it comes to treating our neighbors and those downstream fairly. Our state continues to be one of the main contributors when it comes to applying fertilizers, animal wastes, and pesticides that have resulted in a huge “hypoxic dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the longtime family businesses in the shrimp and fishing industries in Louisiana have gone out of business due to this hypoxic zone.

This is not a new situation, it has been going on for decades and even when agribusiness here in Iowa became aware of the situation, they have fought any new regulations that would limit their applications of what increases their yields but participates in the destruction of an entire region of the Gulf of Mexico. The current regulations do not provide for adequate change in this regard and there is poor enforcement of the regulations that do exist.

How would Iowans feel or react if what the shrimpers did in Louisiana caused Iowa farmers to go out of business? Instead of making changes, the agribusiness community has not considered the rights of our downstream neighbors.

In my opinion the current government in Iowa has totally failed us when it comes to protecting our waters, our rivers, and our natural resources. It is time for a complete change in this regard.

Jon Stravers is the director of Driftless Area Bird Conservation. He has been working on bird monitoring and conservation projects in cooperation with state and federal agencies and other conservation organizations in northeast Iowa for over 40 years.