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IADEMO2004

(5,538 posts)
Fri Jun 6, 2014, 11:49 AM Jun 2014

New York Times Blog "Joni Ernst Fights for Dirty Water in Iowa"

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/joni-ernst-fights-for-dirty-water-in-iowa/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

The law’s value is so obvious that it shouldn’t even be necessary to defend it. But in Iowa, it remains a divisive issue, and Ms. Ernst’s offhand remark was a clear signal to the state’s big agricultural interests of which side she is on.

Iowa’s waterways are notoriously dirty, the result of runoffs from vast livestock operations and crop fertilizer. The problem has become worse in recent years with a sharp increase in the global demand for pork, leading to enormous hog farms that pack tens of thousands of pigs into small spaces. Last year, the Des Moines water utility had to turn on, for the first time, the world’s largest nitrate-removal plant to get the chemical — the result of manure and fertilizer pollution — out of people’s taps. (Excessive nitrates can cause cancer and miscarriages, and are linked to “blue baby syndrome,” in which infants suffocate.)

“The issue is the quality of the water in the Raccoon and the Des Moines” rivers, Bill Stowe, the waterworks manager, told the Des Moines Register last year. “This trend is absolutely off the scale. It’s like having serial tornadoes. You can deal with one, you can deal with two, but you can’t deal with them every day.”

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And in Montgomery County where she castrated pigs. Elloitt just competed a water project to get safer water. A recent water main break caused them to issue a bottled water only order. If you boiled their water the evaporation caused nitrate concentrations to be above safe levels.

http://www.redoakexpress.com/content/elliott-completes-water-project (subscription)

Former Elliott Mayor Stephen Howell, said the team explored various options, such as building a denitrification facility to improve the City’s well water, but they all came with a high price tag.

Further testing by Dan Cook, a Source Water Protection investigator from the DNR, revealed a natural solution to filter the water.

Land east of Elliott’s wells had been a wetland prior to being drained for farming many years ago; east of that area, wetlands remained intact.

“Groundwater samples taken from the west side of the nearby wetland showed little to no nitrate, even though the general soil conditions on its east side were similar t those at the Elliott well,” Cook said.

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New York Times Blog "Joni Ernst Fights for Dirty Water in Iowa" (Original Post) IADEMO2004 Jun 2014 OP
Good article, well worth the read n/t Cairycat Jun 2014 #1
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