Iowa’s impaired waters increasing; funding faces cuts

DES MOINES – Urban or rural, farmland or forest, flat land or bluff country, one characteristic shared by all 99 Iowa counties is polluted waters.

Whether they contain bacteria, mercury or heavy metals, there are nearly 600 impaired waters across the state – from small streams to larger rivers.

And regardless of the size of the water or the level of pollution, the impact is felt across Iowa and beyond, according to Mark Langgin of the Iowa Water & Land Conservancy, which is advocating for more aggressive soil and water conservation efforts.

Each lake and stretch of stream or river in Iowa is designated for a specific use - for contact recreation such as swimming or fishing, drinking water or maintaining a healthy population of fish and other aquatic life, Langgin explained. If the water quality in the stream or lake does not allow it to meet its designated use, it does not meet Iowa's water quality standards and is considered “impaired.”

The conservancy will unveil a map of 600 impaired Iowa waters at a Statehouse news conference April 7 to draw attention the problem and the relatively small effort to address it.

The number of impaired waters has doubled in the past four years, Langgin said. That's due in part to the higher volume of water flowing through the state's many watershed during floods in recent years.

“And with more money for more sophisticated water quality monitoring, we're finding more impairments,” he said.

Not all impairments are equal, he said, but major portions of the Cedar, Boone, Des Moines and Raccoon rivers are impaired.

“Ultimately, whether they are small streams or the larger rivers, they all feed into the Missouri and Mississippi rivers,” Langgin said.

Iowa watersheds have been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency and the USDA as major contributors of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, an impact that also affects Iowans, he said.

Even as the ability to identify impaired waters improves, it appears there will be less state funding to address the problem, Langgin said.

Iowa's natural resource and conservation budgets are being stretched to the limit, Langgin said, with proposed fiscal 2012 cuts to Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP), for example, total nearly 25 percent.

“This is after voters supported the Water & Land Legacy (constitutional) amendment with 63 percent of the vote” in November 2010, Langgin said.

The conservancy would like to see REAP fully funded at $20 million a year, but given the current budget situation, Langgin said the group would like to see at least $15 million put into the state's signature program for outdoor recreation and soil and water conservation.

This year, REAP received $15 million, down from $18 million last year. The governor and House have budgeted $11.5 million for REAP.

Senate Ag and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Dick Dearden, D-Des Moines, agrees with Langgin, but isn't optimistic.

“I'd love to put $15 million in,” he said. “I'd love to see $20 million.”

However, the “new conservative wave” in the Legislature makes that unlikely, Dearden said.

He holds out hope that Gov. Terry Branstad, now in his fifth term, “will make it his legacy that he did something for water and soil conservation.”

For more, visit

www.iowaswaterandlandlegacy.org.