‘Clearly misguided’: Experts condemn EPA’s decision to rescind the expansion of Iowa’s impaired water list

Less than a year after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added segments of five Iowa rivers to the impaired waters list for nitrate, the same agency — now operating under the Trump administration — has rescinded the decision.

The move comes during a summer when Iowa has seen elevated levels of nitrate in some of its rivers.

The EPA’s region 7 office — which covers Iowa and much of the Midwest — on July 11 notified the Iowa Department of Natural Resources that the agency had reversed its November decision to add seven segments of the Cedar, Des Moines, Iowa, Raccoon and South Skunk rivers on Iowa’s list of impaired waterways.

The letter from the EPA to the Iowa DNR stated that the major rivers in Iowa are not treated as exceeding the nitrate standard for purposes of the Clean Water Act.

The federal Clean Water Act — which was expanded in 1972 — establishes how states can regulate the discharge of pollutants into waterways across the country.

When a body of water does not meet its state’s standards, it is considered “impaired.”

Under Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, states are required to submit a list to the EPA every two years identifying impaired waterways, along with a plan to mitigate the pollution.

In 2024, the Iowa DNR submitted a list of 577 water bodies with nearly 750 impaired segments to the EPA.

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Iowa has 576 sections of impaired waterways

Jason Taylor, the executive director for Bur Oak Land Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting natural landscapes and advancing biodiversity in Eastern Iowa said the decision harms Iowans.

“It is unfortunate that federal and state officials refuse to acknowledge what everyone knows: Iowa's water quality is abysmal,” Taylor said. “Playing games to delist known polluted waterways only protects the interests of those that are doing the polluting, not those forced to drink the water.”

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Taylor said that Bur Oak Land Trust is currently doing conservation work that will double the size of the organization’s protected watershed on the lower Cedar River but that conservation efforts by Bur Oak — and other groups in the region — won’t solve the problem.

“While we have the support of the community to do this work, to make a long lasting impact we also need support from state agencies and lawmakers,” he said.

In a statement, Michael Schmidt, who is general counsel for the Iowa Environmental Counsel, said the efforts to delist the Iowa water bodies for nitrate are “clearly misguided.”

“This action undermines the public process and the public trust in the agencies charged with keeping our water clean. The public already had (an) opportunity to comment and overwhelmingly supported the listing that reflected real-life conditions in these rivers,” Schmidt said. "We call on EPA and DNR to engage in a public process and bring Iowans together to address nitrate concerns that threaten the health and economic well-being of people across Iowa, rather than taking action behind closed doors.

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“EPA’s unprecedented rescission ignores the challenges Iowans face in protecting a critical public health resource — our drinking water,” he said.

David Cwiertny, director of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa, said the move by the EPA is “troubling.”

The decision “basically ignores monitoring data that shows these water body segments have contained unsafe levels of nitrate based on their use as drinking water sources,” Cwiertny said, who is also the director for UI’s Environmental Policy Research Program. “What is the point of having numeric criteria and water quality standards based on designated use, which are the foundation of the Clean Water Act, if they aren’t going to be used in determinations as to whether a water body is impaired?”

Summer nitrate spikes

The EPA’s decision comes several weeks after many major rivers in Iowa experienced nitrate spikes.

On July 2, the Raccoon River — which runs through Des Moines — reached a nitrate level of 16.04 mg/L. In late June, the Des Moines River was reported to have nitrate levels of 14.57 mg/L.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits nitrate levels in drinking water to 10 milligrams per liter.

In Cedar Rapids, nitrate levels were slightly lower as the city reassured residents that the water was safe to consume. In late June, the Cedar River’s nitrate level was 12.9 mg/L, but the two water treatment plants were measuring nitrate levels of 9.0 mg/L and 7.2 mg/L.

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“Iowa has just gone through an extended period where rivers across the state have had levels of nitrate that make them unreliable as drinking water sources. Iowans are rightly concerned about the safety of their drinking water supplies,” Cwiertny said. “This move ignores those concerns, and increases the likelihood that a water system reliant on these segments will eventually not be able to provide safe drinking water to their consumers.”

Chris Jones, a vocal water quality advocate with the Driftless Water Defenders group and former researcher with the University of Iowa, said he believes that by getting rid of the water impairment listing, there will be more room for new dischargers to come in.

“What they're doing here is they're essentially canceling the Clean Water Act. They're trying to get around the restrictions of the Clean Water Act to get new point source discharges in the state,” Jones said. “We're trading our water quality for some proposed economic development. We're flat out trading.”

Health impacts

Colleen Fowle, water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council, said the risks of nitrate in Iowa’s drinking water are significant.

Nitrate has been linked to some types of cancers, particularly colon, kidney and stomach cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute.

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Elevated nitrate levels in drinking water also can be harmful to babies and pregnant people. The contaminant has been linked to “blue baby syndrome,” a life-threatening condition that can reduce an infant’s ability to carry oxygen through the bloodstream.

Fowle said Iowans are living with these risks every day.

“Drinking water utilities around the state have struggled to ensure people receive water (that’s) safe for their families. This summer in particular has provided a clear picture of the consequences of high nitrate in our drinking water sources,” she said. "Iowans across the state have been concerned about nitrate in drinking water on all the rivers that EPA has decided to remove from the impaired waters list. All have regularly exceeded the drinking water standard, but not all the cities relying on them have treatment systems to remove nitrate.“

Larry Stone, an Elkader-based water quality advocate and conservation writer said decisions regarding water quality should come down from scientists.

“Whether these classifications come from state or federal officials, we Iowans deserve to have scientists, not politicians or bureaucrats or industrial agriculture apologists, assess the health of our rivers,” he said.

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