Nitrate contamination of Iowa’s rivers has surged in recent weeks amid heavy, widespread rainfall, according to data collected by the Iowa Water Quality Information System. Concentrations of nitrate in several large waterways — including the Boone, Cedar, Iowa and Turkey rivers — have recently reached four-year peaks, the data show. Further, many of the affected […]
Water Quality
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Teach someone to love something and they’ll take care of it’: Paddle Fest wants more people, fewer fish floating in Iowa waterways
Everything in nature is connected, including us. Humans have been struggling with this concept since Alexander von Humboldt, in the mid-19th century and somewhat radically for the time, suggested that all of nature is an interconnected ecosystem. Even if this idea may seem obvious to us in the 21st century, we still struggle with it, […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’ by Austin Frerick
Austin Frerick’s captivating and necessary book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (March 2024, Island Press), is a road trip through America’s heartland — but not the one depicted in Grant Wood’s paintings of rural Iowa. Where Wood depicted an early 20th century lush with rolling fields of green, Frerick’s contemporary […]
Posted inCommunity/News
More than half of Iowa’s tested streams and lakes are ‘impaired’
There are at least 721 water body segments in Iowa that do not meet water quality standards for recreation, public water supplies and the protection of aquatic life, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. The DNR has drafted its latest list of “impaired” waters that it is required to submit to the U.S. […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Suspicious fire’ damages Iowa’s largest sycamore; Gov. Reynolds’ opposition to CAFO rules threatens waterways
Iowa’s largest sycamore tree, which is located in a state park near Burlington, was severely damaged by a “suspicious fire,” the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) said in a news release on Thursday. It’s not known if the tree, estimated to be about 350 years old, will survive. According to the DNR, a visitor […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Authors and journalists at the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat discuss the art of speaking truth to power
It’s a long drive from Iowa City to Lake Okoboji. Like most of my colleagues, I’ve never been to Northwest Iowa, and I was curious to visit this red and rural section of our former swing state. The scenery was serenely flat in all directions, punctuated by silos, windmills, telegraph poles, fenceposts, Trump signs and […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Petition asking EPA to crack down on water pollution from factory farms is rejected — six years after it was filed
This week the Environmental Protection Agency rejected a petition from a coalition led by Food & Water Watch that asked the agency to strengthen regulations regarding water pollution from factory farms. “For more than 50 years, EPA has knowingly shirked its crystal clear obligation to regulate factory farms under the Clean Water Act,” Food & […]
Posted inStatewide
Small farmers are being the change they want to see in Iowa agriculture
It will take a lot to turn the massive ship of Big Agriculture around in Iowa, even if the benefits — from improved water quality to a more competitive food market — are many. It is important for those who reside in the city and are generations removed from farm work to understand the perils […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa’s ‘chocolate milkshake’ water, expensive to filter and a menace downriver, comes courtesy of Big Ag and its allies in the statehouse
Ten years ago, the state of Iowa published its Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS), a plan to reduce the amount of nitrate and phosphorus polluting not just the state’s waterways, but that of everyone downstream from Iowa, until the pollution flows into the Gulf of Mexico, where it helps create the massive dead zone that forms […]
Posted inRecreation
No swimming at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area ‘due to level of E. Coli’
There will be no swimming permitted at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, “due to the level of E. Coli detected in Sand Lake,” the Iowa City Parks and Recreation Department announced on Monday afternoon. The ban “will last indefinitely until water quality improves.” Updates on the situation will be posted on the department’s Parks and Trails […]
Posted inCommunity/News
What makes Ames’ tap water hooray-worthy?
Your drinking water has to be pretty top notch in order to get mentioned in a song like “Hooray! For Ames Water” by Smiling Stone Soup. But lucky for Ames, it’s just that good. Water Treatment Plant Superintendent Lyle Hammes says that good drinking water starts with a good water source. “We’re sitting on a […]
Posted inCommunity/News
No swimming at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area ‘until water quality improves’
There will be no swimming permitted at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, “due to the level of E. Coli detected in Sand Lake,” the Iowa City Parks and Recreation Department announced on Thursday afternoon. Sand Lake isn’t the only local swimming spot currently having this problem. Last Friday, Lake Macbride was one of seven eastern Iowa […]
