Iowa Water Quality

It’s the first of several that the Nishnabotna Water Defenders, a nonprofit advocating for water quality in southwest Iowa, plans to install.

Time has run out on a short-term plan to continue funding a network of sensors that monitors the water quality in Iowa’s rivers and streams. Unless new funding can be secured, dozens of sensors will be taken offline next year, eliminating the ability to measure nitrate and phosphorus to see if conservation practices are working.

The Nature Conservancy has studied this form of virtual fencing with cattle at its preserve in Muscatine County for the past three years.

To a gathering of residents in Dubuque this week, David Cwiertny, director of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa, said there is “no such thing as risk-free water.”

Two-thirds of Iowa’s state park beaches faced “swimming not recommended” advisories at least once this summer, with heavy rains fueling higher bacteria levels that pushed advisories to their highest rate in a decade, according to state monitoring officials and data.

The Iowa Department of Ag announced this week a pilot project that will provide $3 million to encourage farmers and landowners in the watersheds upstream from the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids metro areas to add perennial buffers to fields along streams.

Now, after its 40th year and 38th hypoxia cruise, The Pelican’s annually planned journey to measure the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico faces challenges to stay afloat, potentially undermining decades of research and future plans to get the dead zone under control.

Cedar Rapids will use settlement funds from a class action lawsuit to pursue the design and potential construction of an aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) well to hold drinking water in deep storage.

An environmental group that advocates for clean water in northeast Iowa has filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit brought by the state against a Postville meatpacking over its repeated wastewater pollution violations.

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rivers to the impaired waters list for nitrate, the same agency — now operating under the Trump administration — has rescinded the decision.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 Iowa Soybean Association and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have completed about 50 oxbows across the state through a partnership. That’s important because oxbows can prevent flooding, improve water quality and provide habitat for animals.

During a summer that’s featured high-profile nitrate spikes in Iowa waterways and water use restrictions for thousands of central Iowans, hundreds of people gathered in Des Moines this week to listen to discussion about the findings of a comprehensive water study that was commissioned by Polk County.