{"id":291783,"date":"2021-07-05T19:24:39","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T16:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/des-moines-faces-extreme-measures-to-find-clean-water\/"},"modified":"2021-07-05T19:24:39","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T16:24:39","slug":"des-moines-faces-extreme-measures-to-find-clean-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/des-moines-faces-extreme-measures-to-find-clean-water\/","title":{"rendered":"#Des Moines faces extreme measures to find clean water"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Des Moines faces extreme measures to find clean water<\/strong>”
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DES MOINES, Iowa \u2014 In the dim light just after dawn, Bill Blubaugh parks his Des Moines Water Works pickup truck, grabs a dipper and a couple plastic bottles and walks down a boat ramp to the Raccoon River, where he scoops up samples from a waterway that cuts through some of the nation\u2019s most intensely farmed land.<\/p>\n

Each day the utility analyzes what\u2019s in those samples and others from the nearby Des Moines River as it works to deliver drinking water to more than 500,000 people in Iowa\u2019s capital city and its suburbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome mornings walking down, it smells like ammonia,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s concerning. I\u2019m down here every morning and care about the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Water Works for years has tried to force or cajole farmers upstream to reduce the runoff of fertilizer that leaves the rivers with sky-high nitrate levels but lawsuits and legislative lobbying have failed. Now, it\u2019s considering a drastic measure that, as a rule, large cities just don\u2019t do \u2014 drilling wells to find clean water.<\/p>\n

Small communities and individuals use wells, but large US metro areas have always relied primarily on rivers and lakes for the large volumes of water needed. Surface sources provide about 70 percent of fresh water in the US, as a reliance on wells for big populations would otherwise quickly deplete aquifers.<\/p>\n

However, the utility in Des Moines is planning to spend up to $30 million to drill wells to mix in pure water when the rivers have especially high nitrate levels from farm runoff, most likely in the summer.<\/p>\n

After spending $18 million over the last two decades on a system to treat the tainted river water, it\u2019s frustrating to pay out millions more for something other cities wouldn\u2019t imagine, say utility officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at it in disbelief,\u201d said Ted Corrigan, the CEO and general<\/a> manager of Water Works.<\/p>\n

Des Moines has become an extreme example of the conflict over clean water between agriculture and cities in farm states with minimal regulation.<\/p>\n

Iowa is a national leader in producing corn, soybeans, eggs and pork and all that agricultural bounty results in enormous amounts of chemical fertilizer and animal waste pouring into waterways. The state\u2019s 23 million pigs produce waste that would be the equivalent of 83 million people \u2014 more than 25 times the state\u2019s human population, according to University of Iowa research engineer Chris Jones.<\/p>\n

Most of that manure is spread over Iowa\u2019s 26 million acres of cropland, along with chemical fertilizers.<\/p>\n

The natural and chemical fertilizers have helped Iowa increase its corn and soybean production by roughly 50 percent over the past 30 years, but much of it ends up in Iowa\u2019s waterways, especially in areas of north-central Iowa that drain into the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers. That\u2019s because the area\u2019s farmland is relatively flat and relies on drainage systems called tiles that don\u2019t allow excess fertilizer to filter through the soil but instead quickly pour it into streams, leading to high levels of nitrate and phosphorus.<\/p>\n

Although there is plenty of agreement on ways to filter out chemicals, such as by leaving buffer zones and planting cover crops like rye when the ground would otherwise be bare, the state\u2019s farm lobby has opposed mandatory rules and Iowa legislators have favored a voluntary app<\/a>roach that so far hasn\u2019t made a dent in the problem.<\/p>\n

Water Works and other groups have filed lawsuits demanding more rigorous action, but judges have decided to leave the issue to the Legislature.<\/p>\n

Lately, utility officials have become concerned by increased algae blooms, caused by a combination of fertilizer runoff, high temperatures and slow-moving water. Rivers tainted by the algae can\u2019t be used as drinking water. Nitrates can cause so-called blue baby syndrome in which infants lose the ability to properly process oxygen into the bloodstream, giving their skin a bluish tint.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question was \u2026 \u2019what\u2019s next with these challenging surface waters we\u2019re dealing with?\u201d asked Corrigan. \u201cAre we just going to have a rolling series<\/a> of multimillion-dollar processes that make our treatment process more complex and more expensive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Water Works is now paying the US Geological Service $770,000 to evaluate spots to drill wells just north of the city.<\/p>\n

Brian LeMon, vice president of Minneapolis-based Barr Engineering Company, said he didn\u2019t know of another large city with such high levels of nitrate. The much larger Minneapolis\/St. Paul metro area to the north has no similar problem with the water it takes from the Mississippi River, in part because of less intensive farming and animal production upriver, required buffer strip<\/a>s and the river\u2019s larger volume.<\/p>\n

\u201cNitrate removal is not cheap,\u201d said LeMon, whose company is a consultant for Des Moines Water Works\u2019 planning process.<\/p>\n

Mike Naig, Iowa\u2019s secretary of agriculture, acknowledges the runoff problem but supports the state\u2019s voluntary Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which uses limited state and federal funding to pay for water quality projects on farmland. Workers are now installing buffers and implementing other efforts in Polk County, where Des Moines is located, but even advocates acknowledge that making a significant difference would require filtering runoff at thousands of locations, potentially costing billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Dave Walton, who grows soybeans and corn in eastern Iowa, said farmers should do their part to reduce nitrates but that each farm is different and regulations wouldn\u2019t be uniformly effective. He said preventing runoff is costly and would require public-private partnerships that likely would take decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a farm operation is going to be sustainable, they have to create profit year after year,\u201d Walton said. \u201cTo ask a farmer to invest in something that doesn\u2019t add to the bottom line in a period of time when they were not making a profit anyway, it\u2019s just a moot point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Timothy LaPara, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, said nearly every city faces some complication in ensuring safe drinking water, but Des Moines\u2019 problem requires an unusual solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cNitrate doesn\u2019t usually get to the levels you see in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers,\u201d he said. \u201cCentral Iowa has some of the worst water quality you\u2019ll find.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Des Moines faces extreme measures to find clean water” DES MOINES, Iowa \u2014 In the dim light just after dawn, Bill Blubaugh parks his Des Moines Water Works pickup truck, grabs a dipper and a couple plastic bottles and walks down a boat ramp to the Raccoon River, where he scoops up samples from a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/des-moines-water-02.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[79387,111119,78408,72413,71681,34115],"class_list":["post-291783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-agriculture","tag-7-5-21","tag-des-moines","tag-farming","tag-iowa","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}