By Jennifer Sotelo, Atalissa
There has been a lot of crap coming from the Iowa House of Representatives lately, and Study Bill 657 is no exception. It would require the DNR to determine what percentage of excrement came from what animal in a polluted river before it could be added to the impaired waters list. Never mind that this testing would be expensive and likely result in violations of the EPA’s minimal requirements for drinking water, it’s probably impossible. Merely a thinly veiled attempt to avoid what little regulation we have, this proposal is a pathetic response to an issue that has put Iowa on the map for having some of the most polluted rivers and second for new cancer diagnoses in the nation.
Democrats knew when Iowa DNR Director Kayla Lyons was appointed by Governor Reynolds in 2024 that she was Kim’s willing puppet, a dairy farm lobbyist who would do as she was told. She fought the Biden-era U.S. EPA addition of seven Iowa river segments to the impaired list, saying that the standards were too high, that local water plants could make the water safe for consumption regardless of the nitrate levels and that there was no proof that the waters were impaired even though — as Cami Koons reported in her January 2025 article for Iowa Capital Dispatch — the EPA was using data that the DNR themselves provided and from the Des Moines Waterworks data which was public record. These segments include parts of the Cedar, Iowa, Des Moines and Raccoon rivers.
In July 2025, the Trump-era U.S. EPA took them off the list during a lawn watering ban in Des Moines as the city struggled to keep drinking water under 10 milligrams of nitrate per liter. The DNR just published their draft report for 2026, which also doesn’t list these waters as being impaired, meaning that they will only get dirtier. Our feces-filled fiords flow into the Mississippi — the most endangered river in the United States according to American Rivers — and then into the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. Iowa Environmental Council cites us as the worst offender for doing this repeatedly. They, along with Food and Water Watch, are now suing the EPA.
If you want the planning, funding and monitoring that comes with an impaired waters designation for our rivers, consider voting in a new Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Write to the DNR at IRComment@dnr.iowa.gov by March 19 to tell them why they should protect our waterways.
Jennifer Sotelo is a member of 82nd Indivisible, a group that “promotes government accountability, quality public services, clean water and more in the 82nd Iowa House District.”
