Opinion: I'm seeking a candidate, any candidate, who will truly put Iowa's water first

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a lack of regulation in Iowa encourages intensive farming practices that are seriously polluting our water and land.

Lisa Petrie
Guest columnist

Every week since June 4, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has issued beach advisories for Lake Darling, in Washington County. Advisories are issued when bacteria and the toxins they produce are found at levels high enough to make people sick. We ingest these bacteria and toxins when we drink, swim, or bathe in this water.

The source of this pollution may be a factory or water treatment plant, or, more likely in Iowa, runoff from agricultural land. And it’s not just Lake Darling in my neck of the woods that’s polluted. Backbone Beach was under advisory 14 out of 16 weeks in 2020. E. Coli advisories were up 87% statewide from 2019. And Iowa’s Raccoon River ― a significant source of drinking water ― was recently listed as one of our nation’s most endangered waterways.

Occasionally, natural sources of pollution muddy our waters (folks beholden to the ag industry love to blame the geese), but given the amount of cropland we have in Iowa, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a lack of regulation in Iowa encourages intensive farming practices that are seriously polluting our water and land. 

More:Central Iowa leaders are investing millions in water trails. But can they overcome water-quality concerns?

If you drive most back roads across Iowa right now, you’ll see corn, soybeans, and CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) stretching to the horizon. Unregulated application of fertilizer results in corn growing so densely in these fields that you can barely see between the stalks, and runoff from these fields pollutes our water. Instead of grazing animals on pasture like so many small farmers used to do, we subsidize a corporate CAFO model of packing millions of animals into confinement, and as a result, are forced to deal with unimaginable amounts of their water-polluting waste. If Iowa’s farmers are the original environmentalists, as Gov. Kim Reynolds loves to proclaim, many have clearly lost their way.

Agriculture and politics define Iowa, and folks have begun to throw their hats into the political ring. No doubt, most candidates for 2022 office will dance around the issue of water quality as they have for decades.

More:Opinion: What if I told you that a solution to Iowa's water quality was right in front of us all along?

This election cycle, I want to see just one politician tell me they care less about feeding the world, and more about making Iowa a healthy part of a regional, sustainable farming system. I want to hear just one candidate tell me that taxpayer subsidies will no longer fund monoculture cropping and CAFOs, or the voluntary initiatives they’d like us to believe have a significant impact on cleaning up our water. I want to see one candidate stand up to the Iowa Farm Bureau and the destructive agricultural practices they promote, and instead stick up for the kids who are drinking unsafe well water. And yeah, I want to see just one politician tell me we should be able to swim safely in our public, taxpayer-funded lakes on a hot summer day.

Just one candidate for state or national office. Is that asking too much? If you are out there ― Republican or Democrat ― you have my vote.

Lisa Petrie

Lisa Petrie is a librarian living and working in Iowa City. A 1994 graduate of the University of Iowa, Lisa's family farming roots greatly impact her life and work.