Lawsuit aims to reduce ag pollution

Christine Hensley offered an opinion [Lawsuit can detract from water goals, Nov. 23] in her capacity as co-chair of the Iowa Partnership for Clean Water. This is important to note because Hensley was not speaking for the city of Des Moines, where she serves on the City Council. Hensley raised her voice for a political organization largely funded by the Iowa Farm Bureau, a group that has spent over $400,000 on television attacking Des Moines Water Works for filing a water pollution case this year. Hensley’s piece is the latest act sanctioned by her allies to distract, confuse and distort facts with the hope Iowans will focus on anything but Iowa’s agriculture water pollution problem.

Agriculture water pollution poses significant environmental risks. Water pollution poses a threat to public health and a growing financial burden for DMWW ratepayers. For more than 20 years, DMWW engaged with state officials, agriculture industry representatives and community leaders to seek solutions. Only after it became apparent these conversations were not going to produce meaningful results did DMWW file a lawsuit in federal court — that is what reasonable people do when faced with critical problems that cannot be solved when one side is unwilling to recognize the other side’s rights.

When it comes to water pollution, big agriculture is fighting to maintain the status quo of inaction. Vocal agriculture industry leaders and their supporters don’t want enforceable pollution limits that may decrease profits. Hensley and the agriculture industry craft far-flung, incendiary suggestions hoping people will choose sides. This isn’t about sides in a political fight; it is about protecting a natural resource. The DMWW case against drainage districts in three counties has one thing at its core: limiting agricultural water pollution.

Government drainage districts were built to empty natural wetlands and construct some of the world’s most fertile farmlands. Remarkable feats of ingenuity, these systems continue to be re-engineered over the years to move water from farm to river. Unfortunately, these systems move pollution into rivers. Legal responsibility for this pollution has not been assigned and its impact has been ignored, as it grows steadily worse.

Agriculture- and chemical-polluted water being dumped by drainage districts is not the result of the latest rain, drought or some other act of Mother Nature. Intricate systems efficiently move water tainted with dangerous toxins from ground to waterway — water that would have stayed put or moved much more slowly without man’s intervention.

Drainage districts, like sewer, storm water utilities, and factories, discharge into rivers. Drainage districts should have the equal responsibility for what comes out of their pipes. This is the purpose of the DMWW case. Note, this does not place the burden on farmers individually, but on the collective government entities managing the land drainage infrastructure.

Rhetoric cannot obscure that the DMWW case has one aim: reducing agriculture water pollution at is source. There are steps Iowa can take now:

1. Improve testing and monitoring of waterways to pinpoint pollution sources;
2. Create policies that assign responsibility and regulate all significant point sources of polluted discharge equally and without exclusion;
3. Fund cleanup of Iowa’s dirty water

DMWW has a proud history providing central Iowa with safe, affordable drinking water. I do not wish to minimize the myriad of issues raised in the previous essay. The cost of capital improvements and population growth are important, but they are unconnected. The issue is water pollution.

Water utilities and Iowans who draw water independent of public utilities should no longer be put at risk and placed fully on the hook for solving a problem created by industry upstream. DMWW is willing to collaborate to pursue solutions, but such an endeavor begins by honestly acknowledging water pollution is the problem and identifying its cause. Only then will Iowa be able to start solving its agriculture water pollution problem.

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This entry was first published in the print edition of the Des Moines Register. 

Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com