Partnership must tackle real issues

Note: This is a condensed for print version of a piece posted on Saturday.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted Mayor Ron Corbett's plan to 'pivot” from flood recovery work to traveling the state to talk about Cedar Rapids' effort to partner with rural counties upstream on reducing runoff.

Turns out Corbett now is on the board of the Iowa Partnership for Clean Water, a non-profit 'designed to help broaden the understanding of agriculture as it pertains to clean water and conservation initiatives within Iowa …”

The group 'will help balance the dialogue between the need for agriculture production in Iowa and water quality solutions that enable meaningful progress,” a news release said. It 'plans to bring together rural and urban Iowans and highlight the critical importance of voluntary and collaborative efforts to improve water quality and sustain Iowa's agricultural production.”

Hard to argue with any of that. Anything else?

'IPCW works to inform all stakeholders - both rural and urban - about the consequences of frivolous legal action against farmers and the agriculture industry.”

So what we have here is a public push to counter a lawsuit filed by the Des Moines Water Works against three rural counties it contends have done too little to reduce nitrate runoff into the Raccoon River.

The Water Works points out, according to the Des Moines Register, that the Iowa Partnership for Clean Water lists the Iowa Farm Bureau's West Des Moines headquarters as its address and the bureau's general counsel as its registered agent. The partnership contracted with a marketing firm to buy $157,000 in TV ads.

'Such (legal) action has the potential to impede the progress we've made toward improving our waterways,” Corbett said in the release.

I'm all for cooperation and collaboration. Fact is we have a voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy aimed at cutting pollutants, and we have to make it work. There is no political will to impose mandatory standards.

But of all the things impeding progress on water quality, the Water Works lawsuit doesn't make the top 10.

The real problem is how we've failed to provide dollars needed to make sure voluntary standards will work. We need hundreds of millions of dollars to partner with farmers in adopting practices we know reduce pollution, improve soil quality, lessen the need for fertilizer, mitigate flooding, etc. So far, we've thrown peanuts at the elephant.

Instead, we have Gov. Terry Branstad, who vetoed millions of dollars in 2014 that would have gone to these partnerships. His budget plan for next year does nothing to fix his mistake. There's been no serious legislative effort toward a sales tax increase to fill a natural resources trust fund approved by voters five years ago. Among Statehouse priorities, water quality sits somewhere between business tax breaks and legalizing bottle rockets.

So this lawsuit isn't really the culprit keeping Iowa's water dirty. The Water Works went to court because our political system failed to address its problem. And if the Iowa Partnership for Clean Water wants to be more than a PR campaign, it needs to speak truth to Statehouse power, including to its friends. It needs to demand a pivot toward resources and leadership.

' Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com