Open Letter Regarding Water Quality in Iowa
As I’m writing this, nitrates in Central Iowa’s source waters are extremely elevated, causing Central Iowa Water Works (CIWW) to implement Stage III of its Water Use Plan — also known as a mandatory lawn watering ban. It’s a familiar scene; almost a year ago exactly, a similar ban was issued. Shortly after, we published this open letter, hoping to provide some context to the situation at hand. Outside of the dates and exact nitrate readings, nearly all of what you’ll find in that letter remains true today, but behind the scenes, there is more energy and appetite than ever to find a solution that works — for water, farmers, and our state.
Last week, Governor Reynolds signed the Farm to Faucet legislation, a meaningful, bipartisan commitment to the future of Iowa’s water. It directs nearly $320 million to proven conservation practices, water treatment infrastructure, and real-time monitoring. The bill allocates funding for the Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship to accelerate edge-of-field practices; to Central Iowa Water Works for expansion of its nitrate removal capacity; and a new rural infrastructure bank to help small communities modernize. This is real progress, and it deserves to be recognized as such.
Farm to Faucet demonstrates an unequivocal will for positive water quality change. Now we need the scale — and the systems — to match.
More than 10 years ago, Iowa adopted the Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS) with a goal of reducing nitrogen and phosphorus in our waterways by 45% by 2040. The momentum is building. Iowa farmers have expanded cover crop acres from under 400,000 a decade ago to nearly four million today, and wetland construction has tripled in pace over the past four years. But the objectives set before us still demand more.
To meet INRS targets, cover crop adoption needs to roughly double its current rate, adding 400,000 acres per year instead of the current 150,000–200,000. Wetlands, bioreactors, and saturated buffers need to be built at 15 to 20 times the current annual pace, reaching thousands of installations statewide. Farm to Faucet’s average of roughly $27 million in conservation investments per year moves us forward, but the INRS requires sustained investment closer to $200 million annually, paired with system delivery and permitting reform that expedites the rate of change.
The cost of delayed action is not abstract. Iowa utilities are spending millions to address nitrate issues in our drinking water, and that is without consideration of the burden placed on the approximate 10% of our population who source their drinking water from private wells. Rising cancer rates, depleted rural economies, and suffering natural resources are robbing our state of its full potential. But we are not left without a path forward.
What has become evident over the last year is that a growing coalition of Iowans from all walks of life are exhausted by the blame game and are ready for actionable solutions. The INRS provides us with the science and tools needed to reach our water quality goals, and even with limited funding and burdensome systems, Iowa’s farmers and landowners are choosing to participate.
The fact remains that the infrastructure required to fully realize our shared vision is lacking. Three things must happen to reach the goals the state has espoused, and without all three, the goals will not be reached.
- Current levels of conservation funding are insufficient and inconsistent. Additional funding is needed to support the goals identified in the INRS. Iowa Water and Land Legacy Fund (IWILL) enactment is the single highest impact action Iowa can take — providing approximately $200 million annually in permanent, flexible, state-controlled conservation investments that no federal program can match for stability or reach. Enacting IWILL creates a dedicated and renewable funding stream for wetlands, bioreactors, cover crops, and other interventions specifically identified in the INRS. Without this voter-mandated funding, the INRS is an unsupported directive to farmers and landowners.
- A watershed approach must be taken so that funding can be directed to high-impact areas, using data and analytics to make implementation more strategic, efficient, and effective. Models like the Batch & Build should be the primary delivery method, removing barriers for farmers and streamlining funding, engineering, permitting, and construction. Strategic investments in the highest priority watersheds are the fiscally responsible leverage the state needs to realize its goals.
- Iowa needs to eliminate every barrier we control and be a relentless advocate for removing the ones we don’t. Permitting at the state and federal level needs to be modernized so that it appropriately reflects the needs at hand — wetlands and buffers shouldn’t be treated the same as parking lots. This posture is honest, actionable, and positions Iowa as a leader rather than a bystander waiting on Washington.
Water quality is a public health issue. It is an economic development issue. It is a workforce retention issue. It is a tourism attraction issue. It is a risk mitigation issue. Every other sector where we’ve asked private actors to produce public goods — electricity, transportation, manufacturing — we eventually recognized that the market alone couldn’t close the gap and built public investment structures to match. The same should be true for water.
What stands in the way of progress at the farm level is a public funding architecture equal with the public benefit we’re asking farmers to deliver.
Iowans want clean water. Farmers want to be part of the solution. What we need now is the funding to match what we’re asking them to do, a watershed approach that puts dollars where they’ll do the most good, and permitting that moves at the speed of the solution. None of that is out of reach. The path is clear — and we’re ready to walk it together.
Hannah Inman, CEO
