During the run up to the 2024 election, why didn’t we hear more about clean water and Iowa’s water quality problems from candidates for office? I don’t know, but my prediction is in 2026 water quality will be front and center in large part due to citizen journalists and groups such as Sierra Club of Iowa and CCI who are reporting and organizing local communities and taking action.
With the demise of newspapers, other forms of news and information sharing are cropping up everywhere. Substack is one of those. There is some great journalistic work being done on the growing platform on Iowa environmental issues, particularly water quality. Nina B. Elkadi, of Corn Belt Confidential, is one to follow.
https://cornbeltconfidential.substack.com/p/mapping-illegal-manure-spills-in
Substack bio:
Iowan writing about ag & water. Bylines in National Geographic, Civil Eats, Inside Climate News, High Country News, Barn Raiser, and more.
Elkadi is an Iowa City native and is also a member of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative.
This is an excerpt from a recent post:
Manure spills in the state of Iowa have contributed to what environmental advocacy groups call a water quality crisis. In the capital city of Des Moines, the local water supply has one of the world’s largest nitrate removal facilities. Nitrate is the resulting chemical of manure that is not absorbed by the soil or crops. Due to high levels of nitrate in water, which can cause blue baby syndrome in children and colon cancer in adults, the Des Moines Water Works has to run its nitrate removal system more frequently as the situation worsens — at a cost of anywhere from $10,000 to $16,000 per day, which falls entirely on utility customers.
Here are some links to more of her work on BarnRaiserMedia.com, InsideClimateNews.org, and SentientMedia.org.
- Ag Pollution Is Keeping Des Moines Water Works Busy. Can It Keep Up?
- 13 Groups Sued EPA Demanding Stricter CAFO Regulation — the Court Struck Them Down
- Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too
- The Iowa Trout Stream at the Center of a Feedlot Fight
- Driftless Water Defenders Go on the Offensive in Iowa
You can also find an interview with Elkadi on Robert Leonard’s Substack, https://substack.com/home/post/p-152024548
Blog For Iowa 
Thank you, Trish Nelson.
I don’t know the answer to the first question, but my best guess follows. Republican candidates didn’t talk about water quality because they have an ongoing torrid affair with the industry most responsible for the pollution, which is Big Ag. The number of Iowans who still don’t accept that Big Ag is the big problem is bizarre, given that the vast majority of Iowa’s land is used for agriculture. Duh.
Democratic candidates didn’t talk about water quality because they were strongly urged to focus on just a few issues. And to the best of my knowledge, those issues were selected after voter polling. That polling apparently indicated that Iowa voters, for the most part, still don’t consider water quality a top issue, so water quality wasn’t discussed. Huh.
Those of us who have lived in states where water quality is more important to voters (Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to name three) can only marvel at what Big Ag still gets away with in Iowa.
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