Iowa’s water quality crisis becomes midterm campaign issue

Iowa is facing a budget deficit, high costs and economic strain from trade disputes that have squeezed farmers. But problems that have simmered for decades – water quality and cancer rates – have been forced to the forefront of state politics this year. They are the focus of debate questions, roundtable events and campaign advertisements for candidates from both parties, up and down the ballot.

The issue has historically been politically taboo to avoid pointing fingers at the powerful agricultural industry in Iowa, one of the country’s top producers of corn, soybeans and hogs. Chemical fertilisers and animal waste contain nitrates and phosphorus that can get washed with rain or snowmelt into the state’s web of rivers.

The problem has long caused tension between Iowa’s more liberal urban centers, which rely on rivers and lakes for drinking water, and mostly conservative stewards of its rich farmland. Farmers are increasingly participating in practices to prevent runoff, although critics say the lack of regulation forces downstream Iowans to pay for the pollution.

The spotlight has grown – and the political calculus has shifted – after back-to-back years of restrictions on water use in the Des Moines area coupled with a burgeoning “Make America Healthy Again” movement in Iowa’s small town and rural communities. Iowa has the second highest rate of newly diagnosed cancers in the country. Specific diagnoses, like prostate, breast and lung cancer, are increasing in Iowa faster than in the US overall. It’s affecting urban and rural parts of the state.

New state-funded research at the University of Iowa shows most – but not all – of Iowa’s above-normal rates for five cancers can be explained by demographic and behavioural factors, such as smoking and binge drinking. Researchers next assess environmental factors, including nitrate levels. “The real issue is the water and the nitrates,” said Democrat Josh Turek, who is running for US Senate, as he talked with cancer patients last week. “Every Iowan deserves when they turn on the tap to ensure that their water is clean and not giving them cancer.”

Some studies have found a link between nitrates in drinking water and certain diseases, but it remains an area of debate. The US Environmental Protection Agency does not currently classify nitrates as a cancer risk. The agency initiated a plan to review that assessment in 2017, but it’s been stalled, revived and stalled again under different White House administrations.

The Republican congresswoman running against Turek, Ashley Hinson, recently gathered farmers, researchers and local officials to discuss Iowa’s water problems. She said there is an ongoing need for investments in infrastructure, water quality monitoring and conservation programmes but also said that Iowans can feel safe because tap water meets federal regulations.

“We all know that we have some challenges here in Iowa,” she said. “I don’t think water quality is a partisan issue.” It’s been more than a decade since the Des Moines area’s water utility, fed up with paying roughly $16,000 per day to remove nitrates from water, sued counties further upstream to get them to help cover the cost. The complaint was ultimately dismissed, and Iowa’s Republican leaders celebrated the ruling.

Last year, Central Iowa Water Works issued its first-ever ban on lawn watering to reduce demand on its nitrate removal facilities, and state politicians rejected any suggestion of a “blame game” that would implicate farmers. Iowa had been investing nearly $100 million annually in its nutrient reduction strategy in recent years.

In May, though, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and lawmakers committed an additional $320 million for water infrastructure, conservation initiative incentives and other projects, including millions to Central Iowa Water Works to update equipment.

“Water quality isn’t a farm issue. It isn’t a city issue, and it isn’t a political issue,” Reynolds said. “But it absolutely is non-negotiable.” Still, criticism of slow progress has continued, including from candidates running to replace Reynolds. Republican Zach Lahn and Democrat Rob Sand both emphasize that the state needs to better prioritise the water problem, though neither have called for mandating farming conservation practices that reduce runoff.

Lahn, who was endorsed early in his primary by political committee MAHA Action, has diverged from many of his Republican peers in directly linking polluted water and agrochemicals to Iowa’s cancer crisis.

At Lahn’s agriculture-focused town hall in northeast Iowa in August, one attendee raised the issue. “Right now the farmers, I would say, are really getting blamed for the high cancer rate in Iowa,” she said. “Even our daughter calls from Des Moines and says: ‘Should we be drinking this water?’” Lahn said he knows certain agrochemicals are important “tools in the tool chest.”