Editorial: It’s still dead

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig made the agribusiness argument on these pages that lower nitrate levels in surface water at the moment show that the state nutrient reduction strategy is working. They are cherry-picking the data, as much of the state has been beset by extreme drought the past three years. Even so, nitrate levels in Northwest Iowa rivers are running well above what is recommended by the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health.

Nitrate is fed to the river via drainage tile outlets, which have not been running much in Buena Vista County. The less water in the Raccoon River, the less nitrate and phosphorous. Naig credits infrastructure projects and in-field practices like increasing cover crops for improvements. While the efforts may be laudable, they are not solving the problem.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just released its report on the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists reported that the dead zone is 20% bigger than last year at 4,280 square miles but less than average. Still, the hypoxia (oxygen-deprived) area is twice the size that the Hypoxia Task Force (including the Upper Midwest) had set as a goal (1,900 square miles by 2035).

The size ebbs and flows with the Mississippi River, and what is being fed into it. Last year, flows were so low barges couldn’t pass in the deep South. Spring rains this year that flushed Upper Midwest soils helped drive hypoxia up this year.

"Lack of a downward trend in the dead zone illustrates that current efforts to reduce those loads have not been effective," said Don Scavia, a University of Michigan researcher who led one of the hypoxia report teams, according to Progressive Farmer. "Clearly, the federal and state agencies and Congress continue to prioritize industrial agriculture over water quality.”

Assessment will become more difficult as water quality monitoring is curtailed. The legislature eliminated funding for the state testing network, but Iowa State University pledged to partially maintain it through its own funding streams. It will mean less testing and analysis, under the thinking that what we don’t know won’t hurt us.

Ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico is our barometer. It does not appear to be improving, certainly not on track to its stewards’ goal. Nitrate is suffocating the fishing industry.

Too few conservation measures are taken. Too little state and federal resources are directed at conservation efforts on working agricultural lands. Adaptation of innovation has been slow because of a supply chain dominated by a consolidated food and chemical complex. Naig’s comments, however, are at least an admission that nitrate pollution exists. So was the creation of the nutrient reduction strategy. The problem is that the strategy was devised to support the existing infrastructure that created the dead zone in the first place. It also defends the consolidated system that has drained so much vitality out of rural communities.