Photo of Allen Bonini at Lincoln’s Tomb in Oak Ridge National Cemetery (Springfield, Illinois) provided by the author and published with permission.

Allen Bonini retired in January 2021 after nearly 45 years as an environmental professional, serving in various technical, managerial and leadership positions in water quality, recycling and solid waste across the states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. Most recently, he served fifteen and a half years as the supervisor of the Watershed Improvement Section at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. In retirement he continues to advocate for responsible public policy and actions to improve and protect water quality in Iowa.

I devoted my entire 44 year professional career trying to protect and improve our environment across three Midwestern states. I tried to do that through the policies, programs and advocacy I’ve been involved with and/or led. Some who know me personally know I rarely back down from a fight or am afraid to call out injustices or wrong-headed decisions by organizational leadership—whether in state, regional or local governments or in corporate America (all of which I’ve served in one or more capacities throughout my career).

A select few of you know I believe “sometimes you have to play hardball.” That sums up my view of where we need to go in terms of the efforts to clean up our water and other natural resources here in Iowa. 

My fellow environmental colleagues, it’s time to recognize you don’t win an alley fight by bringing an olive branch, and you don’t take a knife to a gun fight.

Enough “building relationships” with tone deaf, bought and paid for legislators and administrators. (I’ve had to deal with those types throughout my career, most recently during and after my fifteen-year career at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.) What needs to be done is to wake up the voters to the realities of what these special interests are doing to our state and its natural resources. Because that is the only “influence” other than money these legislators and administrators understand. Money may influence, but it doesn’t get a vote. 

My favorite quote on this topic comes from Abraham Lincoln during a debate on the issue of slavery:

In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

Sadly, the agriculture interests in this state are successfully deploying this very strategy. So coddling up to these folks will only get you token recognition of your views—not substantive, necessary change in how this state treats its land and water.

The environmental community needs to step out of its comfort zone and start making loud, disruptive noise. We need to stop apologizing for our outrage. And we need to stop tempering our outrage by saying, “Well it’s not all farmers. Some are doing the right thing. There are lots of conservation farmers. Etc. etc.” All that does is let the 80 to 90 percent who don’t give a damn off the hook by being able to hide behind the 10 percent who are true and caring conservation farmers. 

Let’s stop the coddling and settling for the table scraps. We need to start shocking the voters out of their comatose state. We need to get them to join us in demanding real change in public policy that will make cleaning up our water and protecting our natural resources a serious and sober state priority.