News from our journalists and contributors about Iowa water quality, trends, conservation, watershed, stream nitrate levels and investigative journalism from The Gazette.
Recent testing by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources found “very low” levels of two types of industrial chemicals in Cedar Rapids’ public water supply, but the city reports that its water remains safe to drink.
Central City has concentrations of toxic chemicals in its drinking water that exceed safety thresholds in other states and that are the highest so far identified by a new Iowa surveillance program.
Iowa DNR records show the park draws water from a 140-feet-deep well that is highly susceptible to surface contamination because of the porous sediment in the area.
The city of Cedar Rapids, along with soil and water districts, is partnering with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to launch water quality practices projects.
Trout Unlimited, a conservation group that works to protect rivers and streams, wants to join a Sierra Club lawsuit against the Iowa Department of Natural Resources over an 11,600-head cattle feedlot near Bloody Run Creek in northeast Iowa.
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — The state of Iowa said Friday that it is suing Sioux City over what it says was the city’s manipulation of wastewater testing results and dangerous pollution of the Missouri River in a scheme that saw the wastewater plant’s former supervisor
Money from American Rescue Plan Act is on top of $110 million coming from federal infrastructure package for drinking water infrastructure.
The project at Camp Courageous will allow community leaders, elected officials, farmers and other residence to see several practices in place to improve water quality.
The $110 million in water quality funding is just a fraction of the $5 billion Iowa is expected to receive through the bipartisan infrastructure package.
We’ve tried politically acceptable voluntary approaches for decades.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources seeks to identify the pervasiveness of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — commonly referred to as PFAS or “forever chemicals” — in drinking water supplies across the state.
Professor Lisa Schulte Moore, a landscape ecologist who has conducted groundbreaking research to help address sustainable farming, water quality and climate change, Tuesday became the university’s first MacArthur Fellow.
In 2004, a group of Midwestern soil scientists, including John Sawyer at Iowa State University, developed the Maximum Return to Nitrogen, a practice that calls for weighing the prices of corn and fertilizer to find the sweet spot of productivity and profit without waste. The Iowa Farm Bureau Federation criticized the approach in a July podcast.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported 24 swim advisories at state park beaches this summer because of microcystins, toxins generated by harmful algae. These toxins, if ingested, can cause gastroenteritis, allergic responses and potentially-fatal liver damage. This is double the number of microcystin warnings in 2020.
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