Driftless Water Defenders
Time to board the bus
In the 50 years that we’ve lived in Clayton County – as well as a decade of visits to NE Iowa before that – we’ve witnessed and lamented the gradual loss of woodlands, diverse farms, fencerows, grass waterways, and clean water.
Many fellow residents also have noticed and mourned those changes.
Nostalgia? Sure.
Progress? Is it really “progress” to see the destruction of habitat, farmland erosion, and sterile monocultures that are transforming “the Driftless?”
About 50 of my Clayton County neighbors met in Elkader recently to share their frustration about the path we seem to be on. They responded to an invitation by attorney James Larew, who’s organized Driftless Water Defenders (DWD), a nonprofit that will focus on advocating, educating, and litigating to defend Iowans’ fundamental rights to clean water.Driftless Water Defenders
The DWD president is clean water advocate Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality. https://icecubepress.com/2024/06/01/the-swine-republic-2/
Jones told the Clayton County group that, sadly, we live in a state where “the culture permits” such environmental hazards as Supreme Beef’s 11,600-head cattle feedlot in the headwaters of Bloody Run Creek, a prime trout stream that’s been designated an Outstanding Iowa Water.
“It should be self-evident,” he said. ”You shouldn’t put a facility like that on one of our best streams.”
“That infuriates me,” Jones declared. “Why do we tolerate it?”
That “culture” is part of what has led to the abundance of livestock in Iowa, Jones noted. He famously has pointed out that the manure from Iowa’s hogs, beef cattle, dairy cattle, and poultry is equivalent to the waste produced by more than 130 million people. Notably, though, human waste nearly always goes through a sewage treatment plant or septic system, while animal waste generally is applied to the land untreated. And guess what? The nitrogen, phosphorus, and other “nutrients” in that raw livestock sewage sometimes end up in our streams and our groundwater, as well as volatilizing into the air we breathe
It's not just livestock waste that’s polluting Iowa, however. Most farmers use nitrogen-based fertilizer to boost their corn yields. When over-applied – as it often is – water-soluble nitrogen leaches into our waters to join the animal waste, and eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico, where it contributes to the “dead zone.”
Following recent drought years, accumulated nitrogen finally got flushed out of fields by a wet spring. Jones calculated that the equivalent of one 1,000-gallon tank of anhydrous ammonia (nitrogen) got washed out of the state every minute of every day during May and June.
Jones blasted as “bullshit” repeated claims by agriculture industry apologists that the state’s voluntary “nutrient reduction strategy” is improving water quality.
Steve Veysey, a retired Iowa State University chemist from Ames, said Iowa’s water quality laws and rules are weak at best – and that industrial agriculture facilities often do “an Irish jig” in an attempt to circumvent even those regulations. He cited the Supreme Beef facility, with a 39-million-gallon lagoon that was converted to manure storage after plans to use it for waste from a methane digester fell through. The operators and state officials ignored the fact that rules for manure storage in karst regions are stricter than for a wastewater lagoon.
People are getting fed up with such examples of disregard for the environment, Larew said.
“I think we are on the cusp of a new Civil Rights movement,” Larew asserted. “That is the citizens’ fundamental right to access clean water for their homes, businesses and recreational needs.”
He compared the movement with the Civil Rights battles, which came to a head in 1955 when a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Race discrimination finally was outlawed with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Larew hopes meetings of DWD and other citizen groups will lead to a groundswell of support for tougher rules to prevent pollution – just as meetings in community halls and church basements laid the foundation for Rosa Parks to challenge segregation by boarding a bus.
“We’re feeling our oats,” Jones declared. “Make something happen . . . create change.” He urged the group to talk to their neighbors – and to pressure public officials.
“When do we board the bus?!” shouted one of the crowd.
“Soon!” Jones responded.
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As a song lyric I know says, “Local people shall rise again to build the earth, the common earth.”
More power to the local folks who are standing up for a healthy environment
How do we board the bus? I want on.