I wasn’t great at science in high school. Following a set of basic lab protocols was somehow harder for me than memorizing the entirety of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel. I scored even worse on the science portion of the ACT than the math portion, which is saying something.
That said, I love science. I love rocks, trees and critters. I’m just not a science doer.
Or so I thought.
Through their Nitrate Watch program, Izaak Walton League of Iowa and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) have teamed up to deliver free nitrate test kits to people who request them, with a few reasonable conditions: Try to use all 25 test strips; waste not. Test Iowa streams, rivers, wells and tap water. Then upload the results online on cleanwaterhub.org/nitratewatch.
The actual test is the simplest part of this process. You dip one of the tiny white strips into a water source for one second, hold it level, wait exactly 30 seconds, then compare the color of the top pad to the nitrate color guide on the bottle to get your measurement. So simple, an English major like me managed not to screw it up!
That said, it’s not an exact science. Judging the color requires some interpretation — be sure to take off your tinted shades to get a good look. Rest assured, any tests you’re able to complete and record are useful to the people who know how to use this data for the greater good.
Why it matters
Nitrate pollution in waterways isn’t unique to Iowa, but it is uniquely bad here. The authors of Currents of Change, the 232-page scientific analysis of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers published earlier this year, examined federal water quality data on nitrate pollution and found “the highest nitrate values nationwide are predominantly found in Iowa.”
There’s no question as to the culprit: agricultural runoff. Iowa ag is dominated by farms prioritizing maximum yields of corn and soybeans, resulting in an overapplication of fertilizer containing nitrogen — both chemical fertilizers and animal manure — and other practices, like planting to the edge of fields and not using cover crops, making runoff inevitable.
High concentrations of nitrates in waterways lead to the algae blooms that deplete oxygen and are often dangerous to humans and animals, causing everything from beach closures in Iowa to the annual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. High nitrates also require water utilities to implement expensive filtration measures to meet Safe Water Drinking Act standards, which has resulted in higher utility costs, lawn watering bans and boil water advisories.
Nitrate levels in drinking water should not exceed 10 mg per liter (or 10 ppm), according to federal standards set in 1962. At the time, excess nitrites were a major cause of “blue baby syndrome,” which drops blood oxygen levels to dangerous lows. But as the Iowa Environmental Council points out on its site, “blue baby syndrome is now rare, [and] an increasing number of scientific studies are making connections between long-term, low-level nitrate concentrations in drinking water and other health issues, including birth defects, cancers, and thyroid disease.”
Some researchers believe that a 5 mg per liter standard would be a more reasonable cap. If that standard was adopted, it’s likely every waterway in Iowa would be considered “impaired.”
The Reynolds administration and the Iowa Legislature have decided to respond to the state’s water crisis by cutting back on data collection. In 2023, funding for the Iowa Water Quality Information System (IWQIS) was diverted, making it likely the monitoring program run by the University of Iowa would shut down in 2026. In October, the Polk County Board of Supervisors allocated $200,000 to help fund IWQIS, and Johnson and Linn County are expected to do the same. The Iowa chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America has launched a grassroots effort to keep IWQIS going. The league has set up a GoFundMe page with a goal of raising $500,000 for IWQIS.
—Paul Brennan
Related articles:
This article was originally published in Little Village’s November 2025 issue.
