Forty years after the Clean Water Act became law, Iowa’s rivers and streams, as well as those in other states, are still murky, a new analysis by Environmental Working Group (EWG) charges. The reason for what EWG terms the “most serious flaw in this historic and otherwise effective federal law” is that little or nothing is included to address agricultural pollution.
According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, EWG states, fully 92 percent of the nitrogen and 80 percent of the phosphorus – the two pollutants most responsible for the poor condition of the waterways – come from non-point sources. Only 8 percent of the nitrogen and 20 percent of the phosphorus come from municipal and industrial discharges.
“Yet Iowa’s water quality regulation almost exclusively targets municipal and industrial discharges, while agricultural runoff remains largely unregulated,” the study points out. “Instead, Iowa relies on farm owners and operators to take voluntary measures to reduce pollution, and taxpayers pick up much of the cost. Iowa’s towns, cities, and industries don’t have that choice. Under the federal Clean Water Act, they have been required to take often-expensive action to reduce pollution since 1977.”
EWG insists that Iowa’s rivers and streams can be clean, but only if Iowans take concerted action to reduce the nitrogen and phosphorus overload from agricultural operations, adding that the good news is that experience and science make it clear that concerted action does result in major improvements. EWG concludes that Iowa’s voluntary programs could work much better if they were revamped to be more effective and were provided with a larger and more secure source of funding. The governor and the legislature are being urged to act to implement the Iowa Land and Water Legacy amendment endorsed by 63 percent of Iowans in 2010.
But that’s not the whole story, according to the fertilizer industry, which insists that much of this is already being done. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) worked with Iowa State University over a two-year period to develop the strategy, according to The Fertilizer Institute (TFI). The resulting strategy, TFI emphasized, is the first time such a comprehensive and integrated approach addressing both point and nonpoint sources of nutrients has been completed.
“The Iowa strategy has been developed in response to the 2008 Gulf Hypoxia Action Plan that calls for the 12 states along the Mississippi River to develop strategies to reduce nutrient loading to the Gulf of Mexico. The Iowa strategy follows the recommended framework provided by EPA in 2011 and is only the second state to complete a statewide nutrient reduction strategy,” TFI pointed out.
“We find the draft Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy to be perhaps the most comprehensive state effort ever to address the complicated interplay of the multiple challenges that must be addressed to achieve this goal, and as earlier stated, we believe that state-led efforts to protect water quality by working with agriculture, municipal, and industrial charges are the most effective means of achieving water quality improvements.”