Cedar Rapids is digging deep to protect drinking water

Cedar Rapids smartly signed on to a national class action lawsuit against water polluters, and a settlement will provide funds to help the city’s drinking water remain safe.

Four manufacturers are settling suits accusing them of allowing “forever chemicals,” PFAS, which are linked to cancers, thyroid disease and reproductive issues, to contaminate drinking water. Among the companies, Minnesota-based 3M has reached a $10.3 billion settlement. The others, BASF, DuPont and Tyco Fire Products, are still working on settlements.

Cedar Rapids’ share of the 3M settlement is $5.9 million. It’s likely the payouts from the other firms will be smaller.

Although the lawsuits were about industrial PFAS contamination, the money also will help protect drinking water from spikes in nitrate levels spawned by agriculture.

Cedar Rapids Utilities Director Roy Hesemann recently told our editorial board that settlement funds would be used to design and construct an aquifer storage and recovery well, putting treated drinking water into underground storage.

The well will be filled during low water demand. In times of high nitrate levels, for example, the well would serve as a source of drinking water or would be used to dilute water with contaminants.

“You take your regular water, treat it and then pump it down into the well as a kind of storage tank, basically,” Hesemann explained. “Then during times of high nitrates, peak loading or whatever the case might be, you pump the water back out and it’s treated and ready to go.”

Cedar Rapids gets its drinking water from 52 shallow wells along the Cedar River that suck up groundwater percolating through the riverbed. The water filters through layers of sand, gravel and clay before being treated.

That filtering removes some of the nitrate, but not all of it. What remains is managed through treatment. A new well would help ensure the system can manage high nitrates.

It’s estimated that a well would take a year to design and a year to construct. Settlement dollars would not erase the $12 million price tag but would cut the cost considerably.

Clearly, this makes sense and should happen. There are few government duties more important than providing clean drinking water.

But unfortunately, local governments feel the need to spend millions of dollars to deal with nitrate, primarily from farm operations. Our state leaders refuse to do anything meaningful to halt that pollution.

Republicans and many Democrats, who do the bidding of farm groups and large agricultural interests, have sold clean water down the river. It’s Iowans, and candidates for office in 2026, who must demand action.

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