Science is the key to ethanol questions

By The Rev. Mel Schlachter

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The firestorm evoked by the recent Associated Press feature story on the environmental cost of ethanol production in Iowa and elsewhere in the Midwest should surprise few people. The article was attacked on its data by farmers, ethanol producers, agricultural organizations and our own U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who immediately responded with other conservation-related data that was supposed to refute the AP writers.

Yet the AP contentions remain alive.

Unfortunately, the debate over the relative harm of current practices to both land and waterways seems destined to go on for a lot longer than it needs to. Are we desecrating land that should not be planted? Are farming methods resulting in continued pollution of our lakes, rivers, creeks and streams with field runoff containing tons of silt, tons of fertilizer and pesticides, and (with respect to large animal confinements) manure and antibiotics?

How do we answer these questions (and there is a lot of money riding on the answer)? With science.

Science is neither opinion nor a majority vote nor economic interest. We know that Iowa's rivers and streams are mostly endangered, mostly from agricultural pollution.

At the very time when we need data to take the full measure of problems; at the very time when we need baseline data to know if steps taken are improving our waterways; at the very time when lakes and ponds are fighting for their lives because of runoff-caused toxic algae blooms - at such a crucial time, our state leadership in the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Governor's Office are cutting scientists out of the DNR at an alarming rate, and this with a large state budget surplus.

It started in 2010 with a number of layoffs of DNR scientific staff and continued this year with a reorganization and reduction of force (RIF) that leaves our state with an inability to comprehensively apply scientific study to our waterways.

Even before the latest RIFs, we were unable to adequately warn swimmers of dangerous algae levels in our lakes. How will the large ongoing questions be answered?

Right now, they won't be answered. We will have no way of knowing conclusively whether the governor's plan instituted last year for voluntary compliance by farms for waterway improvement will have worked or not. But we need to know.

PUBLIC MEETING

Issues like this can be brought up at a public meeting at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the ISU Extension Building on the Johnson County Fairgrounds. Iowa River Friends, a watershed association dedicated to river improvement, protection and enjoyment, will be collecting ideas from individuals, organizations and municipalities in east central Iowa to give input on waterway improvement projects and priorities to the Iowa Legislature's Iowa Rivers and Waterways Study Committee.

At least one member of that committee will be present.

More information can be found at Iowa River Friends website: www. Iowariverfriends.org. Come and let your voice be heard.

The Rev. Mel Schlachter of rural Johnson County is Chair of Iowa River Friends. Comments: melschlachter@gmail.org