Iowa’s leaders have failed on water quality, not Chris Jones

It’s tough to hear University of Iowa research engineer Chris Jones describe how he feels about the abrupt end to his career amid controversy over his must-read blog detailing the state’s failure to clean up our dirty water.

Republican Sens. Dan Zumbach and Tom Shipley made their displeasure known to the UI about providing a university platform for Jones and his hard-edge essays. After all, if the truth gets out, who will believe all the ag industry platitudes about how much it cares about the environment?

Jones agreed to move his blog. But in the end, he chose to retire.

“Well, I’m sad the way things have ended,” Jones said during a Zoom call this past week viewed by nearly 80 people, including members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, journalists and others who care about the declining state of Iowa’s environment. It’s a testament to the importance of his voice that he could draw a crowd on a Monday at midday.

“I feel like I failed,” Jones said. “I took your money, and the water isn’t better.”

God knows those of us who write about water quality in Iowa understand that feeling. We throw our most powerful prose into the stream of public discourse. But after a splash, the impact fades into the current and nothing changes. Meanwhile, politically powerful groups, politicians and companies pushing for a nitrate-laden status quo just get more powerful.

Of course, Jones did not fail. He spent years crunching data and thoughtfully explaining what it means to the rest of us, with conviction, authority, and humor. It’s our so-called leadership that has failed us, in both parties. We didn’t listen.

Republicans are beholden to a donor base filled with hog barons, agribusinesses and large farm organizations such as the Farm Bureau. On their behalf they’ve resisted taking meaningful steps to improve our water, set any sensible rules or stop farming practices we know are harmful. GOP leaders have handed the state’s environmental regulatory system over to agriculture lock, stock and barrel.

Democrats talk a better game but are too timid to acknowledge the damaging environmental impacts of our addiction to ethanol, nor will they take on an ineffective voluntary system of conservation that has done far too little to reduce nitrates and other pollutants flowing into waterways.

“It's crazy. But yet look at any TV commercial for any Democrat running for national office. What are they doing? They put on their farm garb, right? And they stroll across a farmyard with some millionaire farmer and talk about ethanol. And so to think that Democrats are not culpable in all this is totally wrong,” Jones said.

But it was Republicans in charge of the Legislature who recently voted to defund the system of 66 river and stream water quality sensors that Jones has used to conduct his research. The GOP budget yanks away $500,000 needed to operate the system and eliminated code language directing the Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University to collaborate with UI to fund the network. Zumbach led the charge.

Jones said the network will likely continue to operate for the next several months. After that, who knows? Either Iowa State will decide to defy the Legislature’s vendetta and fund the network. Or maybe another organization will create a new network. But Jones estimates that would take $4 million for equipment and $400,000 annually to maintain the sensors.

“The information, it's public information. It's available to the public. But future data collection is definitely in peril,” Jones said.

Jones said these actions are all about controlling the message.

For example, Jones points to the Agribusiness Association of Iowa, with a membership that, “consists of over 1,100 business locations across the state that supply feed, seed, crop protection chemicals, grain, fertilizer, equipment and additional products and services that benefit agriculture, as a whole,” according to the group’s website. It has an Enrich Iowa Nutrient Research and Education Council that collects some data and measures progress toward Nutrient Reduction Strategy goals, Jones said.

“I think that's part of what's happening here. They want to get control of the message. And so it's not so much the sensors and it's not so much the blog, it's the fact that all of this over here (at UI) is creating a message about progress toward water quality objectives that conflicts with what the industry wants to communicate to the public,” Jones said.

What’s really going on is many streams and rivers in western and southern Iowa, flowing through deep, eroded trenches and barely able to sustain aquatic life thanks to over-engineering by agriculture, are, Jones contends, too far gone to save.

“Now, in northeast Iowa and east central Iowa, we do have streams that still have some Integrity,” Jones said. “And so think about the Turkey River, for example. The Upper Iowa River, the Maquoketa, the Wapsie and the upper part of the Cedar. I think those watersheds all are salvageable. And so that's where we really need to focus our expenditure of public money, in my estimation.”

But saving what we can is going to take a massive, systemic change.

“So we have this system, the corn-soybean system, our entire landscape has been engineered, right? So we've straightened the streams. We've installed well over 2 million miles of drainage tile to lower the water table. We've removed all the perennial vegetation and we've added these enormous numbers of animals,” said Jones, who once estimated livestock in Iowa produces waste equivalent to 170 million people.

“And so to think we can come in and put diapers or Band-Aids on this and that's automatically going to deliver the water quality we want for the Iowa citizens is a fantasy. It's a fantasy. And people in my circle know that. We know that. And that's not something that any of us is very anxious to talk about. Because then you call to question the entire system,” Jones said.

We should all hope Jones keeps on questioning the system. He has a new book, “The Swine Republic,” and a new online site to find his latest writings.

We deserve the truth about our water. Don’t let interests profiting from fantasies and lies tell you otherwise.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com

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