Environmental group pitches bottle tax for water quality efforts

JOHNSTON - Statewide water quality problems demand a statewide solution - including funding, according to advocates for conservation, the environment and agriculture.

'This is a tipping point,” Roger Wolf of the Iowa Soybean Association said during taping of Iowa Press Friday. 'We have to have strong soils, we have to have cleaner water. Our jobs and economy in this state depend on those things. It's a shared responsibility, it's a shared investment.”

Although the finger is often pointed at farming, 'we all contribute to the problem,” added Ralph Rosenberg of the Iowa Environmental Council. 'So I think the solutions can be shared as well.”

That includes paying for water quality efforts, said Jan Glendening, Iowa Director for the Nature Conservancy, who cited a recent University of Northern Iowa study that found 'over 80 percent of Iowans think that we all have a collective responsibility to pay for this.”

The Iowa Legislature is grappling with that as well. The one plan that is moving calls for an excise tax on metered water sales that would raise about $28 million a year for grants to cities for water and wastewater treatment. The panel agreed that's a start, but not enough to address what has been estimated to be a $10 billion price tag on improving water treatment infrastructure.

After the taping, Rosenberg said the Environmental Council is proposing a water bottle tax that could raise about $23 million a year for water quality improvements. Even paired with the water excise tax, however, the funding would fall short of the $150 million to $180 million a year that's necessary, Rosenberg said.

That's why he and the Environmental Council favor a plan 63 percent of Iowa voters endorsed in 2010 when they approved a constitutionally protected Iowa Water and Land Legacy. Under that plan, which the Soybean Association has endorsed, the next time the Legislature raises the state sales tax, three-eighths of a cent would go toward natural resources protections and enhancement.

'It's transparent, everyone knows the formula, people know where the money is going to be spent, it helps the ag community, it helps parks, it helps recreation, it's going to deal with wetlands,” Rosenberg said. 'And we still feel that there is a chance and we still hope that the Legislature takes it up realizing it is a tax.”

Regardless of how the state funds water quality efforts, it's imperative something happens soon - preferably before the Legislature's scheduled adjournment later this month, the panelists said.

'This is a $4 billion issue. We need to address this much quicker, in a better way (without) people having to choose and the legislators having to choose between water quality and conservation and education,” Glendening said.

Iowa Press can be seen at 7:30 p.m. April 1 and noon April 3 on Iowa Public Television, at 8:30 a.m. April 2 on IPTV World and online at www.IPTV.org.