Iowa’s Water Crisis. It’s only just begun.

“While the political parties rage and tear each other to pieces, and the multi-billion-dollar agriculture corporations turn a handsome profit, Iowa citizens pay a terrible price with every drop of water consumed.”

Sometimes I feel as if I’m living in a strange cross between some Orwellian future, and 1984. The rains in Iowa have been pounding steadily for months and the rivers have been running milky brown and over the banks the entire summer. In 2024, Iowa received a total of 36.95 inches of precipitation on average. 2025 has kept the pace going. “July 2025 ties 1897 as the 46th warmest and ranks as the 2nd wettest July in 153 years of statewide records.” – Iowa Ag.

This has come at a price, seemingly out of nowhere for most Iowans.

For some of us, the cursed few you might say, who’ve ended up working in and around Natural Resources (an oxymoron in Iowa) and Agriculture, the recent explosion of news around Iowa’s high nitrate levels that have lead to lawn watering bans (what better to make the average suburbanite angry?) has been anything but surprising.

I spent one summer decades ago riding around on a 4wheeler through central Iowa’s cornfields, chalk full of little channels sliced through that beautiful loam straight to the nearest creek. One incident near my home town has always stuck with me two decades later, a hog confinement set back on a hill in the middle of a field, with a beautiful creek behind where my friends and I would spend summer evenings … nothing will erase the sight of that river of waste running straight out the back of the hog confinement down to the creek.

Even at my young age of 20 or so, it felt wrong, and I knew that there wasn’t a person for 100 miles who knew, cared, or would do a single thing about it.

The nitrate (pollution) problem.

Recently, and as if on queue, once the initial hubbub of the high nitrate levels in Iowa’s rivers had settled down and most all of the water restrictions had been lifted, the EPA decided to walk back the decision to add some waterways to an impaired water list. One can almost see the grand game of hot potato, or hide the pickle, being played out on a national, or at least state, stage.

What baffles me is that the sheer evil (what else do I call it?) that corporate overloads and apparently humanless politicians, as well as the Iowa DNR, subject the people of Iowa too, a people which apparently like to lie down and say “Thanks you sir, may I please have another?”

I say this to shame of all Iowans. How dare you let corporate CEOs and soul-less politicians (of both parties), play with your health and the health of your children, which you care nothing about as long as you can water your lawns?

While in other parts of the country, water itself being as precious as gold, out west and down south, we appear to have the opposite problem in the Midwest and particularly Iowa. We get plenty of it, sometimes a lot of it, and the first thing it does is wash all those lovely pollutants into our drinking water.

Yes. It’s purely agriculture … in both application and farming practices themselves. Only a ding-a-ling would argue this well documented point.

“Based on the NAWQA study, it was estimated that 2% of public-supply wells and 6% of private wells exceeded the MCL; whereas, in agricultural areas, 21% of private wells exceeded the MCL [10].” – NIH

Can I give you a few quotes to get you off your couch and into the ear of your nearest governmental representatives email, phone, or office? This is something that has been not covered very well by the media at large, and is basically unknown to most Iowans. I’m going to give it to you like you’re 5.

Where did the limit of 10 mg/L for nitrate come from?

Ok, hold onto your panties, and try not to laugh because it’s funny … not funny.

“The federal limit of 10 mg/L for nitrate in drinking water was established in 1962 to protect against methemoglobinemia, commonly known as “blue baby syndrome” – source

Let me put that in perspective you Tahoe driving, Starbucks drinking, soccer complex visiting ninny. In 1962 we had the Cuban Missile Crisis, and apparently in 1962 the Federal Government said “nitrates in water bad, 10 mg/L very bad, defects, no good.”

Are you listening to the words dripping of my keyboard? 1962. You think science has come a little farther since then? You think that’s a remote possibility? Dear Lord.

Do you mind if I take a second to show you some quotes from the the Polk County Iowa Health Departments own website? You can’t make this up. I’m not making it up, it’s right here for you to see it, if you care enough.

Surprise surprise, in some strange twist that absolutely no one could have seen coming since 1962, it appears that possibly … *gasp … long term exposure to nitrates at much less than the 10 mg/L FROM 1962 apparently has serious health concerns including some cancers.

Do you know how the internet works? Did you know there are sensors in the rivers always reporting levels? Go look for yourself you hobbit.

Are you getting picture yet? Are you ready to light the torches and get the pitchforks yet?

I mean the head of the Iowa DNR, gag, had this to say last year about nitrates and your water.

If you go to this document, on page 141 you can read Kayla Lyons response to the EPA. I can summarize her response to Iowa’s water quality problems, as seen in nitrate levels for you if you don’t want to read her letter yourself.

… While nitrate is a consequential and harmful pollutant, the EPA has never legally classified nitrate as a “Toxic Pollutant” under the CWA …”

Essentially Kayla’s argument is about semantics, if it isn’t exactly by the books you can’t hold us accountable end of story. I’m assuming you can go and figure out who the DNR is trying to protect …

• source

I mean seriously, all you have to do is follow the money.

Hmmm … a 3.6 BILLION dollar deal for a fertilizer plant in Wever, Iowa.  Hmm … could there possibly be any lobbyist down at the ole’ capitol who might know about this??? Well who could this be, say it ain’t so.

By George, what’s this address lookup up to for “Iowa Fertilizer”?

,

Hmmm OCI Nitrogen of Iowa. 3.6 billion dollars, for one plant??

Heck, those stinkers got a more than one person on the payroll it appears.

Jeffrey Boeyink
Brittany Lumley
Courtney Craig
Elliott Meyer
Mark Joyce

Now what possibly could these good folk been up to? Nothing??? They got paid all that money from that 3.6 billion dollar fertilizer plant and not a single thing to declare they did for Iowa Fertilizer in 2025??

Maybe it’s just a bunch of hardworking folk, who knows. What a strange thing.

What else strange can we find, who is the second biggest donors in Iowa? National Pork Producers Council. Look who else makes it on the list close behind.

Now what do all those pork producers do with all that manure? And what do they “apply” manure on the land to gain? Just google it.

Now where have we heard the name of Summit Agriculture Group?

Pipelines, agriculture, board of regents for Iowa. I mean you should see the connections between Gov. Reynolds and Rastetter (Summit Group lead).

Are you getting the picture yet?

Even researchers at Iowa State University sum up the end of it all.

“Reducing nitrogen fertilization rates to the environmental optimum would cause a drop in yield of about 6% while only slightly reducing nitrogen loss, an unfavorable trade-off, Archontoulis said.

“If you want to cut nitrogen fertilizer rates below the required optimum and also maintain yields, well, we can’t have everything. If you reduce the nitrogen, you reduce yield,” he said.”
– Iowa State

In plain English, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that there will be a reduction in agricultural inputs that cause high nitrogen in Iowa’s water. Not ever, not going to happen. What? You think that after a century of certain farm practices, overnight, the large majority of famers are going to suddenly stop putting in tile lines, over applying chemicals and fertilizers, put in buffer strips around field edges and water ways?

Seriously?

The money flowing from Big Ag into the pockets of the politicians has been going strong for years. Iowa’s corn ground is worth its weight in gold. The human nature favors the dollar over the greater good. It’s only going to get worse before it gets better.