Iowa is at risk of losing most of its water quality sensors. Here’s why that matters.

IOWA CITY — Time has run out on a short-term plan to continue funding a network of sensors that monitors the water quality in Iowa’s rivers and streams. Unless new funding can be secured, dozens of sensors will be taken offline next year, eliminating the ability to measure nitrate and phosphorus to see if conservation practices are working.

The Iowa Water Quality Information System — or Iowa WQIS — combines data from sensors deployed by the University of Iowa, U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The UI sensors have been funded by Iowa State University’s Nutrient Research Center. In 2023, the UI sensor network received $375,000 from ISU, with a commitment to increase that funding to $500,000.

However, in May of that year, the Iowa Legislature passed and Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 558, a budget bill for agriculture, natural resources and environmental protection. The bill, among other things, shifted $500,000 — one-third of the ISU Center’s previous state appropriation of about $1.5 million — to a water quality program in the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Rather than back out of its commitment to allocate money to UI and the WQIS, Nutrient Center leadership announced they would take on some of the losses at ISU rather than zero out support for the sensors.

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Larry Weber, director of hydroscience and engineering in the College of Engineering at UI, said the state budget cut reduced funding to the sensor program and, as a result, fewer sensors are being deployed.

In 2024, the number of UI sensors was reduced from 75 to 65, and this year it’s down to 60.

“Then next year, if we did not find replacement funds by the first of July (2026), then we'll pull all of the sensors out, and we'll go from 75 to 65 to zero,” Weber said.

If the university’s portion of the WQIS network is cut, Weber said the USGS sensors still will be deployed because they’re operated by the federal agency.

Tom Stoeffler, an environmental field associate with the IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering Department at the University of Iowa, said the USDA sensors likely would remain deployed as well.

How does the sensor program work?

The Iowa WQIS network has water sensors deployed throughout the state, working all day, every day to measure nitrate and phosphorus in the water. Readings are taken every five minutes, and the senors send their data to the database every 15 minutes.

“So, you're getting as close to real-time,” Stoeffler said.

Stoeffler said real-time measurements of nitrate levels is helpful, especially during rain events, because researchers can measure upticks of nitrate from runoff and see how the nitrate is moving through the water.

Jordan Barnett, an environmental research assistant with IIHR, said there is a sensor in every main Iowa river that goes into the Missouri or Mississippi rivers.

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Stoeffler said some of the sensors remain in the water year-round, but most are removed during the winter months.

“It's when the ice breaks up in the spring and starts going down, it starts tearing sensors,” he said.

The sensor at Waterworks Prairie Park in Iowa City, near the University of Iowa campus, is deployed all year. Stoeffler said that’s because the Coralville dam upstream from the site keeps the water in the river from freezing.

He said the sensors are powered by a 12-volt battery and a 20-watt solar panel near the river’s bank.

Marty St. Clair, research scientist with UI’s IIHR — Hydroscience and Engineering Department, said each winter the sensors are taken back to their manufacturer to be recalibrated and rehabilitated. That annual upkeep costs about $1,200 per sensor.

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Looking for a new funding pool

Weber said his team needs to raise about $600,000 annually to continue the program.

“We're living in an inflationary economy, the costs of everything are going up,” he said.

He added that some sensors need to be replaced, and other equipment needs to be upgraded too.

But the biggest expense is staffing, Weber said.

Taking sensors out of the rivers and streams, fixing them for the next year, and redeploying them takes a significant amount of time since the sensors are scatters throughout the state.

“Then all summer long we're going out and taking grab samples at the sensor location sites and doing analysis to make sure that the sensors are reporting accurately,” Weber said.

Weber said he and his team have a “no stone unturned approach” to finding a funding source to keep the network of sensors deployed, but they’re finding that cuts to federal spending have affected funders’ ability and willingness to fund a water quality project.

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“There are other foundations and other private individuals that could support things like this, but in I would say all conversations with those foundations or those individuals, there's so much pressure on our social system today that they're finding the need to help support families, with food assistance needs, perhaps with immigration issues and help support families with health issues and medical needs,” Weber said. “When we think about something like a water sensor network, they don't want to fund something that should be the responsibility of our state or federal government.”

Representatives of WQIS also have met with an official from the EPA. Weber said they spoke with Bruno Pigott, who was acting administrator of the Office of Water for the Environmental Protection Agency last year.

“We told him about the network, the importance of it, the value of it, and asked him very directly, ‘Mr. Pigott, we need your help,’” Weber said.

Pigott’s EPA appointment was under former President Joe Biden’s administration. He was not reappointed under the Trump administration.

“The current interest in the Office of Water at EPA is not interested in water quality monitoring in Iowa,” Weber said.

Impacts of the shrinking program

Colleen Fowle, water program director with the Iowa Environmental Council, said if UI’s portion of the water sensors network disappears, there will be fewer data points throughout the state.

“We need more information about Iowa water quality, not less. The decision to remove funding from a critically important monitoring system is shortsighted and it hurts all Iowans by reducing access to information that has big implications on our public health,” Fowle said. “Why would Iowa ever want to reduce or remove residents’ access to data about the quality and safety of their own water?”

Fowle said the cuts come at a time when the public is “demanding more accountability for water quality” across the state.

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“Water monitoring is the very first step in determining the source and scale of pollution,” she said. “Defunding the water sensor system conceals this information from the public. Iowans deserve to know what is in our water.”

St. Clair, at IIHR, said while some Iowans may dig through water quality databases on their own, the network has been “the most visible way people can in one glance” see what the nitrate levels are in their area.

When you look at the map you “see the red, yellow, green, and can get some sense immediately of what's going on with respect to nitrate in the state,” St. Clair said. “I occasionally get emails from people in public just saying, ‘Thank you, but is there any way we could get a sensor in our area?’ And it's like, well, I wish we could because I feel like the public deserves to know what's going on in their surface waters.”

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com