AGRICULTURAL IMPACTS ON HYDROLOGY AND WATER QUALITY IN THE MIDWEST

Iowa is in a water quality crisis. Iowa’s rivers, streams and lakes are contaminated with bacteria, chemicals, animal waste, and eroded soil. Intense drainage in the Des Moines Lobe increases water quantity and degrades water quality flowing to downstream communities. The best way to protect downstream public health and ratepayer funds is nutrient management and watershed protection to prevent is agrotoxins from directly entering Iowa’s water bodies.

Until laws and regulations are in place to reduce discharge of pollutants at the source, downstream water utilities and other water users must avoid water for some uses totally, or make infrastructure and operational expenditures to meet their legal obligations to the public they serve. Des Moines Water Works serves as an example of the financial and social costs of dealing with nitrate contamination. Until the agriculture industry joins all other industries to accept or have legally imposed responsibility to reduce the discharge of their pollution, downstream users will be forced to pay to mitigate problems created by their neighbors. Today it is the serious problem of nitrate in Iowa's water. However, emerging contaminants, not limited to but including microcystins, are looming as more recalcitrant problems that threaten a variety of downstream water users.