Iowa AG cares about woke but not water

It is unfortunate nitrate pollution isn’t “woke.”

That way, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird might be more likely to go after polluters with as much zeal as she’s shown investigating DEI disobedience at the University of Iowa.

Undercover video shows two UI staff members talking about working around a Republican-backed ban on all things DEI at our state university campuses. Gov. Kim Reynolds, “appalled” by the videos, filed a complaint, and her attorney general is on the case.

“We’re going to do it by the book and by the law, and you will see the result of the investigation. Because here in Iowa, our taxpayer-funded universities are supposed to be about education, not indoctrination,” Bird said at a political fundraiser on Saturday.

Just think if water polluters in Iowa faced Bird’s wrath. But they do not.

Case in point is NEW Cooperative. In March 2024, at the co-op’s facility in Red Oak, an employee left a tank valve open on a fertilizer line that was clogged.

It came unclogged and dumped 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen fertilizer into a drainage ditch leading to the East Nishnabotna River. The spill, which was unnoticed on a weekend, contaminated 50 miles of the river and killed 750,000 fish.

The cooperative killed a river. The fish destroyed were valued at $225,000. It was an environmental disaster.

But last week, Bird announced NEW Co-Op will pay a $50,000 penalty, fund a $50,000 environmental project in Montgomery County and is subject to a three-year injunction prohibiting the co-op from any more water quality violations.

Cross their hearts and hope fish don’t die.

“The tone-deaf outcome of this regulatory process is an affront to Iowans who, increasingly, are aware of, and disturbed by, the harshly-adverse impacts of industrial agriculture's dominance over Iowa,” James Larew, an Iowa City attorney and member of the Driftless Water Defenders, told me in an email this week.

“The pungent fumes arising from this sweetheart deal, coming 16 months after the tragic trashing of the Nishnabotna River, are wafting from one end of the state to the other,” Larew said.

NEW Cooperative, based in Fort Dodge, has 88 retail outlets, according to CropLife, which compiles agricultural information and data. The company’s 2024 revenue is estimated at between $201 million and $1 billion, CropLife reports. Selling fertilizer is its top revenue-producer.

So NEW can pay these penalties without breaking a sweat. It’s just the cost of doing business. And its punishment won’t serve as a deterrent. It’s like polluters are just doing what they want to. And our state government won’t be much of an obstacle.

Sure, spilling fertilizer is bad. But allowing DEI to spill into campuses, contaminating the innocent minds of our youth, is a far more insidious threat, we’re told.

We’ve got to pull back the curtain at UI, hunt down some libs and cure the “woke mind virus.” Nitrate exposure may lead to cancer, but DEI will lead to liberal indoctrination. What’s worse? Bird’s answer is clear.

You don’t have to be woke to understand how messed up our priorities have become. But voters can wake up and put a stop to it.

Maybe its starting to happen. More than 600 people showed up at Drake University Tuesday evening to hear scientists explain the findings of a water quality study commissioned by Polk County. It found that 80 percent of the nitrates polluting the Des Moines and Raccoon river watersheds come from farming operations.

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