Chris Jones, a candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, warned students about the growing nitrate crisis in Iowa’s water linked to rising cancer rates.
Jones mainly worries about the nitrate water crisis in Iowa, nitrate runoff into the waterways, especially from fertilizers. Nitrates in our water have been linked to several types of cancer, including thyroid, bladder and ovarian cancer. According to the Iowa Environmental Council, Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the United States and is the only state with a rising cancer rate.
“There is about 600 million pounds of nitrates statewide,” Jones said Thursday to the Future We Demand Club. “The cost of nitrogen is about 80 cents per pound, and cost to remove nitrogen using BMPs is about $6 a pound to keep it out of the streams. The total estimated cost to remove all of the nitrates is $540M to $2.7 billion. We need to try something different. We can’t afford this.”
Jones explained his solution of diversifying farms. Iowa used to grow apples, oats and alfalfa. Now we just focus on corn and soybeans. Jones thinks that if we can diversify crops and rotate the fields five times a year instead of two, the nitrates will be reduced.
“We pollute at a continental scale. We contribute 55% of the nitrates in the Missouri river with only 3.3% of the land, and 45% of the nitrates in the Mississippi river while having 21% of the land,” Jones said.
The nitrates contaminating Iowa waterways run off into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
“There are 555 impaired rivers, 127 lakes, seven reservoirs, five wetlands, 80% of monitored streams have been impaired for at least 10 years and 43% of monitored lakes impaired for at least 10 years,” Jones said. “One third of Iowa’s public water supplies are vulnerable to nitrate contamination; 7,000 private wells have tested above the safe drinking water level.”
The EPA standardizes 10 mg/L as the safe drinking limit. The Des Moines River current nitrate rate is 14 mg/L. Des Moines Water Works removes nitrates from our drinking water daily. This plant opened in 1992, but water contamination continues to worsen. The University of Iowa uses reverse osmosis in its own treatment plant to remove nitrates from water used on campus. Jones believes that a lot of these issues stem from Iowa overproducing and focusing on ethanol.
“Why are we doing this?” Jones said. “This corn ethanol scheme, if no one is getting what they want? It is the big corporations, because they always get money even if the farmers don’t make any, and we have lost our control to the big corporations; they control us. Our current Secretary of Agriculture was a lobbyist for Monsanto.”
Jones stated that if Iowans leave big corporations out of our farming, we will be able to cut down on the nitrate contamination.
“We’ve lost control of our agriculture to big corporations, and they are extracting wealth from our state,” Jones said. “We assign no responsibility to them and ask the farmers to take the burden of this. Farmers feel pigeon-holed into this system.”
The big question is, how will farmers be able to afford this switch? Especially with the rising rates of farmer bankruptcy and suicide.
“Let’s improve our water quality, give some thought to off-ramps for farmers to transition to more sustainable growing,” Jones said. “Let’s have some of these taxpayer off-ramps so farmers can start switching out crops. Let’s create a policy to help. We must regulate this. We need some common-sense rules and regulations to control this to get better environmental outcomes.”