By Laurie Groves
I was 18 when I started my news career at a small radio station in north-central Iowa. Twenty-two years, six radio and two television newsrooms later; I can say that experience gave me an inside look at what makes issues ‘newsworthy’. The news business is evolving. In many ways that’s great. But, give-it-to-me-now bloggers and civilians armed with camera-phones have put good, solid journalists in competition for headlines. Simply put; sensationalism sells more newspapers than science.
A recent front page Register piece featured a story and photo with “Warhol-ian” professional agitators who claim Iowa’s water is the ‘dirtiest in the nation’ and Iowa livestock farmers are solely to blame. (Contrary to their claim, we don’t have the dirtiest water, but I’ll get to that later). But, what the public needs to know is what are these aquatic life standards? What will that cost me as a taxpayer?
First, the truth behind their claim that “Iowa has the dirtiest water in the country.” The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says 34 states have more impaired waters than Iowa. The EPA also looked at water system violations and, as reported in the Spring issue of Men's Health magazine, out of 100 other U.S. cities, Des Moines ranks in the top 20 for the cleanest drinking water.
Since 34 other states (even those with relatively no livestock) have greater water quality issues than Iowa, livestock cannot be the sole cause. According to the DNR, there are more than 700 Iowa communities (many of them close to Des Moines) that don’t even have wastewater treatment facilities.
The DNR reports say that nearly 75 million gallons of raw human sewage was discharged more than 200 times in Iowa so far this year. That’s in addition to those 700 communities putting raw, human sewage into our rivers, lakes and streams daily. Livestock facilities have reported eight discharges, with the DNR website only listing the amount of waste for two of them; 1,500 gallons. It’s illegal for farmers to discharge waste of any amount and any kind of discharge isn’t good, but I can tell you after walking beans barefoot in a field fertilized with hog manure and being a reporter during the Floods of ’93, doing live reports in floodwaters with human sewage, needles, snakes and rats floating by; the latter (personally) had a much higher ‘gross-out’ factor!
As for enhancing Iowa’s water, according to a recent Center for Rural Development (CARD) scientific water quality study, farmers have spent $435 million for seven major conservation practices (planted filtering grasses and trees and restored watersheds, etc.), to reduce nitrates up to 28 percent and phosphorus up to 58 percent in the last 10 years.
But in order to meet the EPA’s guidelines for ‘aquatic life standards’ (more water bugs in more streams, even those considered drainage ditches for storm water runoff), Iowans would need to reduce phosphorus (an element that naturally occurs with decaying plants) by more than 40 percent and nitrates (an element the occurs naturally from the breakdown of plants, animals, fish and waste from humans and animals) by more than 25 percent. CARD researchers say that would cost almost $613 million a year statewide, and we would still not meet the standards if we experienced a huge rainfall! Not only is that a lot of money for water bugs – it’s more than the annual budgets of the three state universities combined! Maybe a better question to ask is, what is reasonable and where CAN we get the most bang for our buck?
Perspective. That’s what it comes down to. That, and working together. Remember; real news is about truth and it only happens when you’re getting both sides of the story.
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