Graham Gillette got it about right, speaking of engineering initiatives along the North Raccoon River to control nitrate pollution. Gillette, a member of the Des Moines Water Works Board that grapples with nitrate in drinking water, says it is difficult to criticize placing bioreactors and saturated buffers on farms in Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties, as the Iowa Department of Agriculture is doing. But it’s not nearly enough.

“A good thing is a good thing,” Gillette told The Des Moines Register. “Bit it’s still piecemeal reaction.”

He was reacting to the news that the state will spend about $1.7 million installing some 30 bioreactors on Sac County farms along the river to filter out chemicals and sediment. Adding BV and Calhoun counties, nearly 100 bioreactors are planned in “Batch and Build” clusters among several farms to create efficiencies and amplify impacts.

It’s a virtual drop in the bucket. We drain 1,000 acres of former marsh and replace it with an acre of bioreactor. What’s more, extreme rains this year are unleashing record amounts of nitrate pent up in the soil from four years of drought. Our drainage systems overwhelm the best of intentions amid a new normal of whipsaw weather.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said his office is finding receptive farmland owners interested in batching with their neighbors. That’s heartening. It’s also important to note that the state is covering the entire construction cost. No cost-share for the farmer, just a maintenance agreement. Previous efforts to lure farmers into conservation with cost shares along the North Raccoon went wanting.

We will need thousands upon thousands of bioreactors everywhere to put a dent in the nitrate and phosphorous outflow from the Des Moines Lobe. But 100 or so is a start, no doubt. It shows that farmers will give up marginal pieces if somebody bids them out of production. We recall farmers complaining about the weather and the old 10-percent set-aside — they grumbled but cashed the check. The government was paying them not to farm it.

Set-asides get in the way of all-out corn production. The cropaganda machine will not hear of it. It will make you feel better that there are bioreactors in the counties that were sued over river pollution by the waterworks. The agrichemical complex is making an accommodation. It is hard to criticize a good thing. Batch and build is a good thing. So was the set-aside. We can’t talk about that anymore. Bioreactors and saturated buffers are the way to go when you predicate your entire economic enterprise on corn.

More engineering won’t keep our black gold from flowing to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. We do know how to keep soil in place and nitrate out of the Raccoon, and even how to mitigate extreme weather. We can see that if you pay farmers for environmental stewardship and to play by a certain set of rules, they will adapt their field practices. If you pay to grow corn, they will grow corn even if they have to go broke or poison Des Moines in the process. If you pay them to grow grass, they will grow grass. We could use more cattle on grass.

We are throwing pennies at a multi-billion-dollar problem. But every little bit counts.

Weak campaign plank

Border crossings dropped more than 50% in the six weeks since the Biden Administration implemented emergency measures that effectively shut down new asylum requests. The number is now lower than when President Trump left office during the pandemic.

The White House was happy to note the drop amid the Republican National Convention, which is trying to sell the idea that immigration is totally out of control and is choking the country. President Biden proved he can be as reactionary as Gov. Kim Reynolds by thumbing his nose at the Statue of Liberty.

But it’s working. We are shutting people out effectively, when we can barely find help for manual labor. It takes some thunder out of Donald Trump’s campaign against immigrants (even though he is married to one). Biden also took the opportunity to remind us that Trump scuttled a compromise border security bill struck between Senate Republicans and the White House. Trump wanted to use immigration as his leading issue but the facts, if they matter, are working against him.