Politicizing the Environmental Debate, 2000–2017 279
at a cost of more than a million dollars. But
the level and persistence of the pollution have
repeatedly overwhelmed the equipment. Absent
cleaner intake water, the Water Works will face
up to a $180 million bill to upgrade its equip-
ment, but this amount vastly understates the cost
of the problem. There are 260 cities and towns
in Iowa that face similar problems with their
water supplies, and removing the nutrients from
drinking-water intakes does nothing for the life
of the rivers themselves.
There’s another way to fix the problem. It
involves simple measures such as running farm-
field drainage pipes into restored wetlands and
permanent pastures instead of rivers. Ten acres
of wetland can treat the runoff from 1,000 acres
of hard-farmed corn. By timing their applica-
tions, farmers might also apply less fertilizer
while still ensuring their yields. These measures
do not mean growing less food, though they
might require some different crops, maybe even
raising a few cattle on grass. Scientists from the
state’s agricultural department and Iowa State
University have penciled out and tested a pro-
gram of such low-tech solutions. If 40 percent of
the cropland claimed by corn were planted with
other crops and permanent pasture, the whole
litany of problems caused by industrial agricul-
ture — certainly the nitrate pollution of drinking
water — would begin to evaporate. There are no
technological or financial hurdles to implement-
ing this program, but there is a political obstacle:
the federal government would have to stop sub-
sidizing the growing of corn. Between 1995 and
2012, those subsidies amounted to $84 billion.
At this point we would do well to remem-
ber that the time-honored mark of a develop-
ing country is that its tap water is undrinkable.
Today, “Don’t drink the water” is sound advice
in much of Iowa. Ironically, the American right
wing has become especially fond of charg-
ing that the policies, real and imagined, of the
Obama Administration have reduced the nation
to the status of a banana republic. This com-
plaint is especially prominent in discussions ofgovernor then and now, alleged by some to be
the thoughtful conservative among the [2016]
Republican presidential candidates, responded
to the contamination of a large city by calling
out the National Guard to distribute bottled
water. Later he signed a palliative bill, endorsed
by Big Ag, that did nothing to sully his business-
friendly reputation or to limit the phosphates
and nitrates responsible for Toledo’s problem.
None of this is mentioned prominently in his
campaign in Iowa.
At least a third of Iowa’s farmland is under-
laid with drainage pipes, like the veins of a hand.
The same is true in much of Kasich’s Ohio, as
well as in Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, and parts
of Wisconsin and Michigan. Again like veins,
the networks gather fluid in bigger and bigger
pipes that finally pinch together before discharg-
ing into rivers. The Environmental Protection
Agency says that farm pollution is not pollu-
tion because it doesn’t come out of a pipe, but
in Iowa, farm pollution does come out of pipes.
Nonetheless, paper is waved over the water, a
box is checked, and the toxic runoff is transub-
stantiated.
These days a fair amount of the nitrates are
derived not so much directly from chemical fer-
tilizers as from hog manure. There are about 21
million hogs in Iowa, and almost all of them live
in hog factories. Each hog produces the waste of
about 2.5 people, meaning Iowa bears the shit
equivalent, from hogs alone, of about 45 million
people, some fifteen times its human popula-
tion. But Iowa also has 52 million laying chick-
ens, 50 million of which are in concentrated
animal-feeding operations (CAFOs) that hold
more than 100,000 birds. These birds likewise
produce more manure than all the people in the
state. Almost none of it passes through a sew-
age-treatment plant or even a septic tank before
making its way through drainage pipes to the
public waterways and drinking water.
It is technically possible to remove nitrates
from water, and this past year the Des Moines
Water Works has been attempting to do that,