For those who are interested, Black Hawk County received a D- for water
quality from the Black Hawk County Green party. Read the following:
****************************************
2004 Black Hawk County Environmental Report Card
GRADES FOR:
Black Hawk County
Air Quality: B (up from B- last year)
Water Quality: D- (down from D last year)
Energy & Conservation B+ (same as last year)
Recycling B (up from B- last year)
Greens Release 4th annual Black Hawk County Environmental Report Card Water
Quality Worsens; Air Quality, Recycling Improve
In honor of Earth Day, the Black Hawk County Green Party (BHCGP) has
released its fourth annual Environmental Report Card for Black Hawk County.
According to Jim O’Loughlin, BHCGP Treasurer, “It’s
been wonderful to see attention drawn toward many issues we’ve outlined in
past reports. But we know there’s a lot of work that still needs to be
done.”
The report card (a copy of which follows this release) details the state of
the environment in the county,
breaking down concerns into four main areas: air quality, water quality,
energy conservation, and recycling. The grades range from a B+ for energy
and conservation to a D- for water quality. A special section focuses on
the issue of Interagency Cooperation. The report card was tabulated by
members of the Black Hawk County Green Party, and is designed to draw
attention to environmental issues that don’t always generate headlines.
O’Loughlin notes that a recurring theme this year is the good, as well as
the limitations, of governmentally set standards. “Iowa has always had
wind, and the technology to harness it has long been available. But it took
a concerted governmental effort to provide the incentives to develop
“home-blown” wind power. But as the Bush administration waters down or
refuses to enforce existing environmental standards, there is less
incentive for future improvements.”
On a more disturbing note, Iowa continues to rank among the lowest states in
the nation in terms of water quality. While this problem is widely
recognized, efforts to combat it have not yet proven adequate to the task.
While agricultural runoff remains the main threat to water quality, sewage
treatment plants and consumer habits also play a role.
The Black Hawk County Green Party holds quarterly membership meetings open
to all interesting persons.
You can learn more about the Black Hawk County Green
Party at http://pages.cfu.net/bhcgreens/.
# # #
2004 Black Hawk County Environmental Report Card
GRADES FOR:
Black Hawk County
Air Quality: B (up from B- last year)
Water Quality: D- (down from D last year)
Energy & Conservation B+ (same as last year)
Recycling B (up from B- last year)
ATTENTION NEEDED: Interagency Cooperation
Air Quality: B (up from B- last year)
There’s good and bad news to report on this front. Recently released figures
from the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) rate Iowa as one of 19 states that meet national
protective air standards. Iowans
do not face the problems with smog that many Americans in congested parts of
the countries do (though some of our coal-produced energy contributes to
smog in Eastern states). We can be glad to be among the
fortunate 19, though there are limitations in relying solely on these EPA
standards as a measure of air
quality. These standards do not take into account all forms of air
pollution, such as particulate and toxin
emissions. Iowa remains one of only a handful of states not to regulate the
emission of air toxins, and
asthma rates in the state remain above the national average. In addition,
recent reports of national
environmental regulations having been rewritten by the energy industry point
to the danger of simply relying
upon the EPA, by itself, to protect the environment [1].
In light of these revelations about the limitations of the EPA, it is
particularly distressing that the Republican-controlled Iowa state
legislature pushed forward an “air quality” bill (HF 2552) that would have
forbidden the state to develop regulations that went beyond federal air
quality standards (fortunately, the bill was vetoed by Governor Vilsack).
We know that without reasonable regulations, factory hog farms can erode the
quality
of rural life and release dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia
into the air (and, under current
law, counties are unable to develop their own hog lot regulations). Had
such a bill passed, it could have
been devastating to rural Iowans. As it stands, regulations recommended by
the Department of Natural
Resources remain unimplemented, not because they were shown to be wrong on
the science, but because the
powers-that-be feared the difficulty of implementing rules that would truly
protect the health of rural Iowans. This remains a sad commentary on the
place of individual health within the concerns of the state legislature.
The cities of Waterloo and Cedar Falls continued to support local leaf
burning bans, the most practical and immediate steps toward preserving local
air quality. About 5,000 Waterloo homes are reported to be participating in
the “blue bin” recycling effort. In Cedar Falls, over 3,000 households use
yard waste containers to help dispose of leaves. Many other citizens use
alternative to leaf burning such as mulching or bringing their yard waste
directly to disposal sites.
Water Quality: D- (down from D last year)
We know that chemically intensive farming can threaten water quality. But
if you thought that this was just problem for primarily rural counties,
think again. Testing done at public wells in Cedar Falls in the past year
have found nitrate levels that barely meet EPA “acceptable levels.” We need
to encourage less chemically dependent methods of farming and better
administer ongoing efforts to encourage environmentally-sensitive farming
techniques, such as terraces, grass waterways, and buffer strips. Last year
Black Hawk County’s Environmental Quality Incentives program used less than
half its $145,000 allotment despite significant soil erosion and water
quality problems in the county.
Nor is agricultural runoff the only problem. A recent report by the Iowa
Public Interest Research Group argued that Iowa’s awful ranking among states
for water quality (9th from the bottom) is also due to lax
enforcement of regulation of industrial and sewage treatment plants. More
than 71% of Iowa’s facilities
were in violation of the Clean Water Act at least once for 2002-mid 2003
(11% above the national average)
[2].
Other water problems are more local in nature.
- Though the vast majority of nitrogen released into Iowa’s waters comes
from agriculture, urban residents
add to the problem through the use of lawn chemicals that can be washed into
our water supply. - There are hundreds of failed septic systems in Black
Hawk County. The county Health Department is charged with monitoring them,
but it has little funding to enforce the regulations governing septics. -
Testing in Iowa City has found measurable signs of prescription drugs in
local waterways. Proper disposal of prescription drugs needs to become a
part of our “common sense.” - Over the past 15 years, volunteers for the
Cedar River Festival have cleaned more than 80 tons of debris from the Cedar
River.
All citizens, rural and urban, need to take responsibility for contributing
to our water problems.
Energy & Conservation (B+, same as last year)
The coal that Iowa depends on for much of its energy in environmentally and
economically bad for us. In a given year, Iowa power plans give off 75,000
tons of nitrogen oxide, 125,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 39
million tons of global warming pollution. 90% of this coal comes from out
of state. Meanwhile, we have only
just begun to tap the renewable energy resources of the state, particularly
wind power.
Local utilities have invested in wind power. MidAmerican Energy is building
the world’s largest wind farm in northwest Iowa, with hopes of 200 turbines
generating enough electricity to power 85,000 homes. Cedar Falls Utilities
(CFU) owns part of wind farms in Algona and Hancock County. Governor
Vilsack has set a goal to have Iowa generate 1,000 megawatts of wind energy
by 2010. That is a reachable goal, but only if Iowans support and insist
upon further investments in Iowa-produced renewable energy.
Still, much of Cedar Falls’ energy is coal-fired and produced at western
edge of Iowa. More locally, both
CFU and the University of Northern Iowa operate aging coal facilities. Even
when managed well, these plants
remain a source of concern. The Bush administration has recently loosened
clean air rules, making it less
likely that older facilities will introduce new anti-pollution controls.
CO2 in the atmosphere, the primary cause of global warming, does not come
only from coal, however. In
fact, according to scorecard.org, the single greatest cause of air pollution
in Black Hawk County comes from
mobile sources (i.e. automobiles). Efforts to conserve energy through fuel
efficiency and stopping
suburban sprawl will improve our health, our pocketbooks, and our quality of
life.
Recycling (B, up from B- last year)
Last year’s biggest environmental disappointment was the raiding of the
County landfill cash reserves to fund Vision Iowa projects rather than the
environmental projects the landfill reserves were initially designed to
support. Therefore, this year it was heartening to see some small, but
significant, steps taken to improve local recycling with some of this
landfill money. In Waterloo, the bins used for collecting yard waste (as
part of the leaf burning ban) are alternately used to collect recyclable
consumer goods. In Cedar Falls, a computer recycling program has been
launched in an effort to keep some of the toxic chemicals in computers out
of the landfill.
Both of these efforts are steps in the right direction. It is important to
note that much more could still be done. Black Hawk Country is one of only
two Iowa counties to have no Household Hazardous Waste recycling program.
The county’s lead paint poisoning rate also remains unacceptably high, and
funding for county abatement efforts is insufficient.
ATTENTION NEEDED: Interagency cooperation
No matter how adept our county officials are, in many cases they can only do
damage control. For example,
nitrate levels in water in Black Hawk County have spiked higher than we
should be comfortable with, despite work being done locally to safeguard our
water. Why? Well, one reason might be the fact that an estimated 75% of
farmers around Charles City apply anhydrous ammonia on their fields in the
fall, despite that fact that conditions may cause as much as half of that
chemical to be lost into the atmosphere or into the water supply. [3]
Charles City, located upriver from Black Hawk County on the Cedar River, is
not simply a distant small town but is rather a part of our local watershed.
Environmental issues transcend county lines. County health and
environmental officials need to work on a
regional level in order to assure that problems are dealt with at their
source. Otherwise we run the risk of applying band-aids to open wounds.
Works Cited
[1] For example, see Paul Krugman’s April 6, 2004 New York Times column,
“The Mercury Scandal.”
[2] “Polluters Continue to Violate Clean Water Act: 71 Percent of Iowa's
Major Facilities Exceeded Pollution
Permits in Recent 18-Month Period.” Iowa PIRG. March 30, 2004.
<http://iowapirg.org/IA.asp?id2=12739&id3=IA&>.
[3] “Fall nitrogen leaching away” Matthew Wilde. Waterloo/Cedar Falls
Courier. Nov. 11, 2003.
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