We Iowans must be more assertive when defending Nature and our environment, Neil Hamilton urged attendees at the Iowa Nature Summit he hosted November 16-17 at Drake University. “Iowa nice” just may not accomplish what needs to happen to reverse what Hamilton described as our environment’s “continuum of little progress and slow decline.”
I was on Gov. Vilsack's Iowa 2010 Committee for Natural Resources and it makes me sad to think that all of our work has come to almost nothing. Urban sprawl continues to take the land and take away the top soil. As a Master Gardener I do see individuals planting more native plants in their yards which is a great step, but we need more native plants. To do that we need to convince cities and their residents to change their view of the appearance of native plantings. Just as we need to convince farmers that keeping trees bordering waterways is a good thing, not one more thing to be removed.
I appreciate your suggestion, or should I say call to action for Nature supporters to contact the legislators to discuss our concerns is great, but I'd like us to organize as a group to do things like that also. I have not had good luck getting anything done through the legislature. Let's do this everyone!
It is great to get everyone together and inspire change. Under the current situation, there is potential liability for creating dirty water, so legal counsel for agricultural interests have implemented a program to keep and continue degrading water quality, based on the fact that if you have clean water and it becomes polluted, this difference can be measured and damages assessed. Hence, the strategy is to keep the water polluted and any program that cleans it up will be defunded. Hence defunding of monitoring programs. In the meantime, the strategy has and is working beautifully, as an extra benefit is paying agricultural interests hundreds of million dollars for doing nothing to actually clean water. The legal system, on the side of the polluters and agribusiness, has successfully created a system that benefits from dirty water. Until polluters are held legally and financially responsible for their pollution, nothing will happen - in fact it will get worse. More dirty water - more money for farm operators. This strategy was implemented and evolved from about 2007 through 2012, and is still evolving today. Pardon my pessimism, but this is reality in Iowa. An engineered landscape for production of food and gasoline, with no environmental regulations.
Thanks for this report. Sorry I was unable to attend. I encourage all to attend meetings of their county soil & water conservation district commissioners, who tend to be farmers or landowners. Find out what barriers they see to adoption of cover crops, terraces, filter strips, field borders, tree planting, and the like. We must overcome the gap between mindsets. Debate, debate, argue with civility. Don’t descend to the name-calling and blaming and shaming which is getting Iowa nowhere. We may just find common ground which could lead to some slow progress.
Listening even to those with whom we disagree may well improve our land and water faster than preaching to the choir and reiterating how idiotic “they” are. Either way , this is a long, long road and no reader should give up in despair.
OK, I understand the bad news quite well, so what is the up side? What is it going to take to reverse this trend? Even in a small way, there has to be ways to improve things even in a small way to start pushing back. My God, if the Department of Natural Resources would simply man up and do its job that would be great, but it isn't happening. There are things going on that are largely volunteer like "Project Aware" cleaning up the rivers and streams, getting the junk and tires out. It may not be a big thing, but it is a step in the direction the DNR hasn't been credited with! If one looks at enforcement of these CAFO operations it is plain to see by the time the DNR starts its investigation the polution is already gone and in many cases it takes weeks to track where the tile lines run to figure out who is responsible. If the party responsible reports the spill the fine is automatically cut in half. It is just as easy to ignore it unless it really is bad and someone reports it, but it appears if no one reports it nothing will happen at all! The more reporting the better, since the DNR doesn't seem to look and the farmers simply ignore it.
I was on Gov. Vilsack's Iowa 2010 Committee for Natural Resources and it makes me sad to think that all of our work has come to almost nothing. Urban sprawl continues to take the land and take away the top soil. As a Master Gardener I do see individuals planting more native plants in their yards which is a great step, but we need more native plants. To do that we need to convince cities and their residents to change their view of the appearance of native plantings. Just as we need to convince farmers that keeping trees bordering waterways is a good thing, not one more thing to be removed.
I appreciate your suggestion, or should I say call to action for Nature supporters to contact the legislators to discuss our concerns is great, but I'd like us to organize as a group to do things like that also. I have not had good luck getting anything done through the legislature. Let's do this everyone!
It is great to get everyone together and inspire change. Under the current situation, there is potential liability for creating dirty water, so legal counsel for agricultural interests have implemented a program to keep and continue degrading water quality, based on the fact that if you have clean water and it becomes polluted, this difference can be measured and damages assessed. Hence, the strategy is to keep the water polluted and any program that cleans it up will be defunded. Hence defunding of monitoring programs. In the meantime, the strategy has and is working beautifully, as an extra benefit is paying agricultural interests hundreds of million dollars for doing nothing to actually clean water. The legal system, on the side of the polluters and agribusiness, has successfully created a system that benefits from dirty water. Until polluters are held legally and financially responsible for their pollution, nothing will happen - in fact it will get worse. More dirty water - more money for farm operators. This strategy was implemented and evolved from about 2007 through 2012, and is still evolving today. Pardon my pessimism, but this is reality in Iowa. An engineered landscape for production of food and gasoline, with no environmental regulations.
Congratulations, Larry!
Thanks for this report. Sorry I was unable to attend. I encourage all to attend meetings of their county soil & water conservation district commissioners, who tend to be farmers or landowners. Find out what barriers they see to adoption of cover crops, terraces, filter strips, field borders, tree planting, and the like. We must overcome the gap between mindsets. Debate, debate, argue with civility. Don’t descend to the name-calling and blaming and shaming which is getting Iowa nowhere. We may just find common ground which could lead to some slow progress.
Listening even to those with whom we disagree may well improve our land and water faster than preaching to the choir and reiterating how idiotic “they” are. Either way , this is a long, long road and no reader should give up in despair.
OK, I understand the bad news quite well, so what is the up side? What is it going to take to reverse this trend? Even in a small way, there has to be ways to improve things even in a small way to start pushing back. My God, if the Department of Natural Resources would simply man up and do its job that would be great, but it isn't happening. There are things going on that are largely volunteer like "Project Aware" cleaning up the rivers and streams, getting the junk and tires out. It may not be a big thing, but it is a step in the direction the DNR hasn't been credited with! If one looks at enforcement of these CAFO operations it is plain to see by the time the DNR starts its investigation the polution is already gone and in many cases it takes weeks to track where the tile lines run to figure out who is responsible. If the party responsible reports the spill the fine is automatically cut in half. It is just as easy to ignore it unless it really is bad and someone reports it, but it appears if no one reports it nothing will happen at all! The more reporting the better, since the DNR doesn't seem to look and the farmers simply ignore it.