The Iowa GOP is dismantling water protections. Kansas and Missouri, you’re downstream | Opinion

Republicans are dismantling America’s water monitoring systems. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency will no longer be able to regulate some bodies of our nation’s waters. Agribusiness is elated.

While the Supreme Court was contemplating this decision, Iowa Republicans were busy trying to take apart an important water monitoring system here. And the people of Kansas and Missouri will pay a price.

The Mississippi River has the third largest drainage basin in the world, exceeded in size only by the watersheds of the Amazon and Congo rivers. It drains 41% of the 48 contiguous states of the United States. The basin covers more than 1,245,000 square miles and includes all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces. Waters from as far east as New York and as far west as Montana contribute to flows in the lower river. At the center of it is Iowa, which despite its average size, leads the nation in acres planted, at more than 24 million acres in 2022. In the United States, agricultural pollution is the top source of contamination in rivers and streams, the second-biggest source in wetlands, and the third main source in lakes.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard Iowa Republicans at the state and local level tell their constituents that the quality of Iowa’s water is improving — and even that it’s clean. It’s almost as if they think that if they say it enough, over and over again, we will believe it. The truth is about half of Iowa’s waterways are considered impaired, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The 2022 report shows 751 rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs and wetlands across the state fail to meet state requirements for one or more functions, such as supporting aquatic insects and fishing or recreational use, including swimming and boating, the state reported.

These impaired waters flow downstream, and nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizer used throughout the Mississippi drainage contribute to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where the level of dissolved oxygen in the water can fall too low to support fish and marine life. Last year, the dead zone covered about 2 million acres, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Republican lawmakers target monitoring network

Despite the need to monitor water quality throughout the region, Iowa Republican legislators this past spring session almost succeeded in dismantling a one-of-a-kind monitoring network that daylighted water quality data to the public in real time and helped research scientists publish results that could prove the legislators wrong. While Iowa Department of Agriculture Officials assure me that water quality monitoring efforts continue, if Republican legislators had their way, 66 stations would have been shut down that gather high-density data and serve a variety of research interests. At the last minute, Iowa State University stepped in to continue funding out of its own budget.

One person has elevated the problems with Iowa water quality and its downstream effects to the public. Chris Jones has been a thorn in the side of Republicans and ag corporations for many years. He’s a retired chemist and research engineer who was with the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research in the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Jones retired in May because he can’t take it anymore. He left because ag corporations and Republicans didn’t like what he had to say about the quality of Iowa’s water and because the state’s universities can’t afford to buck the Republican power structure without fear of losing funding.

Jones’ story has all of the elements of a great novel or movie; environmental destruction, heroes, villains, corruption, greed, arrogance, complicity, retaliation, incompetence, and indifference. Add a lack of ethics, violation of academic freedom, and First Amendment rights sprinkled with buffoonery, and you have it all.

Perhaps the most egregious offense occurred with one of the last trout streams in Iowa. The state stocks rainbow and brook trout in Bloody Run Creek in the northeastern part of the state, and the stream has wild brown trout. The Iowa DNR has classified Bloody Run as an Outstanding Iowa Water, which means it must be protected under state law.

GOP state Sen. Dan Zumbach contacted the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on behalf of Supreme Beef, a cattle feed lot near Monona. On April 5, 2021, the company won state approval of its plan to spread manure from 11,600 beef cows on fields near Bloody Run Creek. Zumbach, a farmer, is chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and a member of the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee.

One of Supreme Beef’s principals, Jared Walz, is married to Zumbach’s daughter.

The Sierra Club of Iowa and the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Trout Unlimited sued the DNR and Supreme Beef, and a Polk County judge recently reversed the decision of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to permit an 11,600-head cattle feedlot in northeast Iowa.

The ruling sends the case back to the DNR for reconsideration. But the feedlot continues operation.

But it is between the first ruling permitting the Supreme Beef operation and the Polk County Court rejecting the ruling when all of the shenanigans regarding the monitoring network occurred.

Threatened university funds over chemist’s blog

Chris Jones is a chemist. His work, in part, was to be in charge of the aforementioned 66 sensors on rivers and streams across the state that posted real-time data on water quality. He hosted a blog on the University of Iowa website. The blog was popular but controversial in that Jones used data to paint a picture of how bad Iowa’s water quality is — and there are many people not interested in hearing that story, summarized in his new book, “The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality.”

According to Jones, many in the agricultural industry as well as select legislators didn’t appreciate the comments in his blog. Two Republican lawmakers, state Sens. Tom Shipley and Dan Zumbach, allegedly pressured University of Iowa officials not to allow Jones to continue posting on the school-hosted website, with an implied threat of legislative funding to the university being impacted. After allowing Jones one final post, which university officials censored, Jones has moved his commentary off-site. He offered his resignation shortly afterward. Zumbach denies the allegation.

The Gazette of Cedar Rapids reports that the Iowa Senate and House passed a budget that could cut Iowa’s water sensor network that Jones supervised. Two of the sensors are on Bloody Run Creek, below Supreme Beef’s cattle operation that Zumbach’s son-in-law owns — a conflict of interest, to be sure.

But it’s much bigger than Zumbach. Jones says that without these real-time monitors, government officials and the ag industry would be able to tell any story they want about the quality of Iowa’s water. Models are used to project water quality based on agricultural practices, but without the work of scientists and “ground-truthing,” it will be impossible for Iowans and the rest of the nation to know what the true state of Iowa’s waters are.

For now, Iowa State University has decided to fund the monitoring stations, but future funding is uncertain.

State Sen. Janice Weiner, a Democrat from Iowa City, says it’s University of Iowa staff who’ve been measuring whether water quality projects are working.

“We know that water quality is a problem,” Weiner said. “We know that Iowans deserve better, but without data it will be easy to say: ‘There’s no problem,’ or ‘We don’t know how to measure the problem’ — so problem solved.”

Zumbach, in closing remarks on the bill, said the water quality funds shifted to the Iowa Department of Agriculture will be spent on science-based initiatives. “What we do know is practices on the land and in our towns is what makes cleaner water,” Zumbach says, “and so when we made the decisions on how to appropriate dollars, it was all about let’s put practices that help clean our water.”

While this is true, shifting money from actual monitoring to practices avoids accountability. Without monitoring, we won’t know if the practices are working.

Big Ag better than Big Oil at hiding environmental damage

Silvia Secchi, professor with the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences and Senior Research Fellow with the Public Policy Center tells me: “Unfortunately, Big Ag has been more successful than Big Oil in hiding from the public its contributions to climate change and other forms of pollution. And Iowa is ground zero for this, where federal policy debacles combine with a captured legislature and state agencies and the most intensive unsustainable system.”

She adds: “Nobody — except Chris — had the gall to stand up to these forces coming from all sides.”

But let’s step back and ask the question: Why don’t Iowa Republicans want water quality monitored? What motivates them? At least three forces are at work. First, anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric that puts us all at risk. Second, the powerful corporate forces that seek to externalize their costs to improve their bottom line. And finally, radical individualism in the party that ignores the common good.

While Zumbach looks like the villain here, he’s just being a good anti-regulatory Republican. Regulations be damned, use your power and authority to profit at all costs. Cast ethics aside, and place your own self-interests above the public good, even if it destroys one of the last good trout streams in the state of Iowa. Or the Texas power grid, or financial institutions or railroad safety initiatives.

And with respect to water, we all live below our own Bloody Run Creeks. While water conditions have gotten better in general since the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency and the states have identified almost 70,000 water bodies nationwide that do not meet water quality standards today.

And not enough is being done to improve the situation. For all of us.

Remember, Missouri and Kansas — you are just downstream. And what are your local officials doing to monitor your water systems?

Robert Leonard is an anthropologist in Knoxville/Pella, Iowa. He writes the newsletter Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture at rleonard.substack.com