Iowa Policy Debate Centers On Nutrient-Pollution Costs

Iowa policymakers are having a heated debate over how much municipalities should spend to prevent and clean up nutrient pollution.

Officials in Clarion, IA, are caught in the fray. Water and sewer bills for Clarion residents have more than doubled in the last five years.

A March ruling from a district court judge found that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources “failed to appropriately enforce the state’s clean water anti-degradation standards when it approved a wastewater treatment project [in Clarion] that would increase pollution in the Des Moines River watershed,” The Gazette reported.

That means Clarion and other Iowa communities could wind up paying “even more to protect the environment as they make changes to their wastewater treatment,” The Des Moines Register reported.

In response to the court ruling, some advocates are looking for state-level rule changes.

“Iowa businesses, cities and towns have responded quickly to the March court ruling, asking the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission to change the state's rules, capping wastewater plant cost increases linked to environmental benefits at 115 percent of base costs, already an informal guideline,” The Register reported.

Tim Whipple, an attorney at the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities, questioned the value of certain expenditures. His group represents 540 cities with electric, gas, water and other utilities.

"How much do you force people to spend to get pollution reductions?" he said, per the report. "There's a point of diminished returns, where you can keep adding millions and millions in additional costs for smaller and smaller benefits."

A key struggle in Iowa and other farm states is who should shoulder the cost cleaning up nutrient pollution.

Iowa Press described the struggle like this: “Water is dividing Iowa, not topographically, unlike some other areas of the nation. In Iowa, there isn't a shortage, but purity is a concern. In central Iowa, that is creating animosity, finger-pointing, if you will, alleging responsibility and demanding court enforced changes.”

Des Moines Water Works, for instance, is suing three north Iowa counties over high nitrate levels in the Raccoon River.

“The utility wants upstream drainage districts and, indirectly, farmers, to fall under federal oversight like cities, manufacturers and businesses,” The Des Moines Register reported.

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Wastewater Regulations And Legislation Solutions Center.