The authors of this post are Dani Replogle, a staff attorney with the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch, and Michael Schmidt, a staff attorney with the Iowa Environmental Council.

Safe, clean drinking water is a basic human right. In Iowa, that right is under serious threat as nitrate-laden pollution piles up, and state cancer levels rise unchecked. It’s time for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to step in. We filed a petition last week demanding just that.

Iowans have industrial agriculture to blame for worsening water quality. Over the past twenty years, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have steadily replaced family-scale operations statewide. Today, Iowa is home to far more of these enormous polluting operations than any other state. As Big Ag moved in, they consolidated control in Des Moines, permeating state government to tilt the scales in favor of industry.

The issue came to a head this month, when, on Governor Kim Reynolds’ directive, state regulators gutted commonsense measures that would have protected thousands of Iowans’ drinking water from CAFO pollution.

In response, Iowa Environmental Council, Food & Water Watch, Environmental Law & Policy Center, and ten other public interest environmental groups filed a petition for EPA emergency action to protect public health. In recent years, communities from Oregon and Washington to Minnesota and Wisconsin have filed similar petitions, turning to the EPA when states fall short. Together, these petitions signal that rural communities nationwide are sick and tired of sacrificing their water and health for CAFO profits.

Nitrate pollution is at the center of our petition to EPA. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to set national standards for drinking water pollutants that harm human health. One such pollutant is nitrate, a compound found in abundance in livestock waste. In 1962, EPA established a limit of 10 mg/L for nitrate in drinking water in order to prevent blue baby syndrome.

In the intervening years, nitrate has proven even more dangerous to human health. Recent studies indicate that long-term exposure to nitrate, even at concentrations below the federal 10 mg/L threshold, are linked to higher instances of various types of cancer and birth defects. As the state’s cancer rates reach alarming highs, Iowa is in desperate need of public health intervention to address nitrate contaminated drinking water. 

Our petition focuses on twelve counties in northeast Iowa that are particularly vulnerable to nitrate pollution. This part of the state, home to more than 300,000 Iowans, is characterized by a landscape known as karst topography. Karst regions are underlain by soluble rock that is prone to cracks and fractures. Groundwater moves easily through this porous rock, flowing more quickly from topsoil to the underground aquifers that many private wells and community water systems rely on for drinking water. Pollutants can thus enter and move through drinking water systems in karst regions more easily than in other landscapes, posing serious threats to human health. 

Data from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ private well tracking system shows that nitrate levels in private wells statewide have risen steadily since 2002. Over this same time period, as CAFOs polluted their way to dominance over more sustainable family-scale operations, Iowa lost more than two thirds of its farms.

That transformation left a drinking water crisis in its wake. In Iowa’s karst region, the problem is only getting worse. Data from 2016-2023 show that more than 10 percent of the private wells in Northeast Iowa have nitrate concentrations that exceed levels deemed safe for human consumption.

Our petition seeks to tackle this problem at its source: CAFOs. A Food & Water Watch analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture data found that Iowa produces more CAFO waste than any other state—a mind boggling 109 billion pounds of nitrate- and pollutant-laden waste every year. That’s more than 25 times the waste produced by the state’s human population, and it represents a 78 percent increase over 20 years.

Iowa has had numerous opportunities to adopt common-sense policies that protect drinking water from CAFO pollution—the state has squandered every one. As our legislators abdicate authority to protect safe drinking water from CAFO pollution, it is time for the EPA to step in. The Safe Drinking Water Act authorizes the EPA to take emergency action to abate an imminent and substantial endangerment where state officials have failed to safeguard public health. That is just what we demand.

Our petition asks the EPA to issue orders to: require polluters to provide free, safe drinking water to impacted residents; establish a moratorium on new CAFOs in northeast Iowa until nitrate in drinking water returns to safe levels; and require monitoring and remediation of contaminated aquifers.

A related petition filed last year in Minnesota is beginning to see results, and we expect a similarly swift response in Iowa. It’s time to crack down on CAFO pollution and put public health and clean water ahead of Big Ag interests.

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Top photo of warning sign posted at the edge of a large livestock manure storage lagoon is by Terah vdMeer, available via Shutterstock.