Protect Iowa’s air and water

It’s been a tough stretch of high-profile pollution cases fouling Iowa’s water and air.

Just a few weeks ago, an incident in Northeast Iowa resulted into the death of 40,000 fish and other aquatic life on 20-mile portion of Crane Creek. Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources have not determined a cause.

The state also failed to find a pollution source resulting in a smaller fish kill on Crane Creek, a tributary of the Wapsipinicon River.

A holding company agreed to pay $7,500 after spilling chlorinated water into the McLoud Run trout stream in Cedar Rapids. An ethanol company. POET Bioprocessing near Shell Rock disclosed it had expelled unhealthy levels of pollutants for several years. Officials said POET’s emissions caused “Actual harm to the environment and public health.

More recently, Kraft Hienz’s ketchup plant in Muscatine discharged more that 1 million in polluted wastewater into a creek each day for more than two years, among other violations.

In March, NEW Cooperative’s operation in Red Oak reported spilling 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen fertilizer into a drainage ditch and on the Nishabotna River in southwest Iowa. The spill killed all the fish and aquatic life in the river for 60 miles.

The DNR turned the case over to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. The final amount of compensation and penalties NEW will pay has not been determined.

“I know many Iowans like myself feel, without needing to see the numbers, that our environment is critically damaged and getting worse, and it doesn’t seem as if anyone with the power to make change is paying attention or calling for a different path,” wrote Alicia Vasto, water program director for the Iowa Environmental Council, in a guest column for The Gazette in April after the Red Oak spill.

We feel the same frustration as Vasto. She criticized the “paltry” fines often issued by the DNR for pollution violations. We think the Attorney General should intervene more often.

Meanwhile, the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club has called on Statehouse leaders to provide additional funding for staff writing and renewing National Pollution Discharge Elimination Permits. They govern industrial and wastewater treatment plant emissions.

The Sierra Club also contends the DNR needs more staff to renew and support nutrient and manure management submitted by large livestock operations.

We agree with the need for new resources. We’d also point out that the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust fund created by voters 13 years ago remains empty. That funding could give the DNR more flexibility to hire regulatory staff. But state lawmakers have failed to pass a sales tax increase to fill the fund.

It seems as if Republicans who control the Statehouse don’t see protecting the environment as a priority. They’d rather sock away surpluses to pay for more and more tax cuts. But no tax cut can match the value of our natural resources. Protect them.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com