Ep. 274 Why Iowa's Water Quality Is So Bad with Dr. Larry Weber

Jul 25

A Quick Snippet of the Podcast Episode

What do 28-foot rapids, stranded sheep hunters, and Iowa’s nitrate problem have in common? They’re all part of our incredible conversation with legendary water scientist Dr. Larry Weber. Before we get into the serious work of the Iowa Flood Center, Larry takes us on a wild rafting trip down Idaho’s Salmon River with stories of adventure and near-disaster. Dr. Weber, Director at IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering and Iowa Flood Center, knows more about our state's water than anyone. We highly recommend giving this one a listen.

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This is Larry Weber, the director of air hydro Science and engineering and the director of the Iowa Flood Center. This is the Prairie Farm podcast.
00;03;49;09 - 00;03;50;11
Speaker 2
Beautiful effect.
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Speaker 3
Beautiful. All right, so what is this? What is this story you were telling us? You rescued some people?
00;03;57;14 - 00;04;19;28
Speaker 1
Well, it's, you know, we we were doing a hunting trip, and this is all self-guided. So I have friends that live in Idaho, and we're doing a trip down the Middle Fork of the salmon River. The which is the river of No Return. And we were coming into Impassable Canyon, which is about a 25 mile stretch of the river that the only way through there is on a boat or out in a helicopter and, and, guided trips.
00;04;20;00 - 00;04;21;03
Speaker 2
Just because it's so steep.
00;04;21;04 - 00;04;39;09
Speaker 1
The it's incredibly steep. In fact, it's a deeper canyon than the Grand Canyon. Wow. Which a lot of people don't recognize. But, within the canyon, there's a number of very difficult rapids to manage. And at this time of year, late October, early November, you know, it's more about low water than it is about real high water danger.
00;04;39;09 - 00;04;54;18
Speaker 1
But you can rip a boat up. You can get a boat stranded on, wrapped on a rock, and a guy who had taken two clients in there and got wrapped on a rock and ended up having to flip his boat to get it off the rock. And they lost most of their gear. And so we were coming through as, three, you know, do it yourselfers.
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Speaker 2
Yeah.
00;04;55;01 - 00;05;12;11
Speaker 1
And, saw this, yard sale going on ahead of us. And so it got pulled off and got their equipment out, got their boat put back together and got them on their way. And so these two guys had come from out of state to do, sheep hunting in the UK. Yeah. And, and so, because of.
00;05;12;13 - 00;05;15;23
Speaker 2
That was some pretty nice gear floating down the creek. If there are a couple of sheep hunters out.
00;05;15;23 - 00;05;26;14
Speaker 1
There that was some really nice gear. Unfortunately, they ended up packing up and floating out, and and that was the end of their trip. Because the amount of material that and equipment that they couldn't get back, so. Oh, yeah, that's.
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Speaker 3
Pretty.
00;05;27;08 - 00;05;28;17
Speaker 1
Some wild adventures.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. So I mean, this was, was this an archery? All you were doing.
00;05;33;15 - 00;05;36;02
Speaker 1
That was a rifle hunt. So we were out there.
00;05;36;04 - 00;05;36;28
Speaker 2
In late October.
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Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we had both, mule deer tags and, elk tags.
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Speaker 2
Fixes. Mike there. Nikki's on a. There you go.
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Speaker 3
He was.
00;05;47;23 - 00;05;54;11
Speaker 2
On. So you were you were you had both Elk, emu, mule deer tags. Yeah. So you go. Do you go to Idaho often?
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Speaker 1
Well, I had, you know, professionally had done a lot of work with Idaho Power and did a lot of work down in the Hell's Canyon complex, which is on the snake River. And through some acquaintances and folks I worked with started doing some rafting out there and have been down, the snake River through Hells Canyon a couple times, self-guided my own boat through Hells Canyon was my first of, guided trip, with, my kids and my wife, which was exciting.
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Speaker 1
But we both were.
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Speaker 3
They.
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Speaker 1
They were probably nine and 11.
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Speaker 4
Oh, yeah.
00;06;26;29 - 00;06;46;14
Speaker 1
Yeah, that was a that was a wild trip. The river was actually up relative to seasonal averages. And and again, I'm with my friends who are great River. People. And we were a little bit debating on launch, because we were going to be heading down a pretty wild stretch of the river. And there two, you know, class four plus rapids once.
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Speaker 4
Oh, man.
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Speaker 1
One's called granite and the other one's called wild sheep. And in, in, in the upper one, basically when you come over the edge, it was about a 28ft drop and you go down into what's called.
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Speaker 3
Not a rapid.
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Speaker 4
Well, it's a waterfall. Yeah.
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Speaker 1
So you drop it down into what they called the green room. And when you're in there, all you see is green water around you, and it's kind of silent. It's a very, very strange feeling. And as you're coming up out of that, that hole, that, that hole.
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Speaker 2
So maybe you want to drop it. You mean you get out on shore, send the boat over, and then you recollect or whatever?
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Speaker 1
No, no, no, we're in the boat.
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Speaker 4
Oh, you take that 28ft drop. Yeah.
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Speaker 1
So. So we're in the boat.
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Speaker 4
With your kids? Yeah. It's not, it's not. It's so crazy. It's not vertical.
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Speaker 1
You know, but it's a whole it's 28ft, you know, down to the bottom of the hole.
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Speaker 2
Oh I see, so it's like it's more like a water slide going.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, but it's a while. It's a very steep water slide.
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Speaker 4
No it's a waterfall that is. All right.
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Speaker 1
So Michelle's she's on her knees in the front of the boat. An inflatable raft. She the kids are hanging on to the lifeline on either side. She's got her arms around them with her hands around the lifeline. We drop into the hole.
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Speaker 2
There's got the life vest under each weight.
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Speaker 1
Single or boat. And when you come out of the hole and you're on the. And you're climbing out of this, this deep hole, there's a breaking wave. And if that wave breaks when you're coming up, then your boat flips end over end. Which in a raft is not the way to flip a boat. Sideways is bad enough, but end over end is really problematic.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, I bet it's just folds. It probably does.
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Speaker 1
It. Well, I mean, it's just one big arching motion. And you know what? You kids that age, we were feeling very blessed to be able to come through that. All the boats in our, in our trip, I think there were five of us that went through and everybody made it through. But when we got to the take out, 6 or 7 days later, they had a Forest Service person there that said that at least one boat in each party was flipping end over end, in, wow, granite.
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Speaker 4
So that's that's insane.
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Speaker 3
That's crazy. You could get reported DHS.
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Speaker 4
Did your kids like it?
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Speaker 1
Oh, it kids loved it, you know.
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Speaker 4
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
I mean, you know, of course they don't quite understand. We didn't at that time.
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Speaker 4
Dad says it's okay. Yeah, yeah, well, dad's back here debating if it's okay. There was a.
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Speaker 1
Pretty serious pucker.
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Speaker 4
Factor. Oh. Believe me. Oh, and they look back at you and you're like, it's no good. It's all good. That's crazy.
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Speaker 2
Oh, man. So, I mean, how did you keep your stuff waterproof and.
00;09;21;02 - 00;09;38;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. So it's it's a quite an adventure. I mean, it's all in dry bags. It's all strapped and, you know, kind of the rule of thumb when you're rafting out there is always pack your boat as if you're going to flip. Yeah. And even if you know that you've got a mild day coming up and the rapids aren't as big as you might think, you got to be packed, to live every single day.
00;09;39;00 - 00;09;58;17
Speaker 1
And you know that that crew that, you know, just coincidentally, the crew that went into, impassable canyon, they got wrapped on the rock. That was a guided trip. So, like, I'd been down through that river a number of times, and we were in the last camp above Impassable Canyon. And we were, you know, getting geared up that morning and and we all had, dry suits on, it's November.
00;09;58;18 - 00;09;59;27
Speaker 1
Water's cold. I mean, you gotta.
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Speaker 4
If you if.
00;10;00;14 - 00;10;13;15
Speaker 1
You go in the water, I mean, you got to be you got to be prepared. And the guide hollered out at us, he's like, are you guys going to get wet today? And kind of laughed as if, you know, like, you know, what are your kids doing? Yeah. And it ended up that we were the ones that helped them out and, you know.
00;10;13;20 - 00;10;15;02
Speaker 2
Oh, so that same guide, who.
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Speaker 4
Is he was taunting you?
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Speaker 1
That same guy. He was he was a lot more humble, when we pulled up alongside. Yeah. You know, after they'd, flip their boat.
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Speaker 4
You guys get a little what, today? So he said. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there's some karma out there.
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Speaker 1
So, you know, better to help and, you know, than than to have karma come back and haunt.
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Speaker 3
You. Yeah. You know, it's interesting this, I mean, it reminds me, of course, of, like, American Buffalo, right, where Steve Ronnell is talking about hunting the, the, the bison in Alaska. And he's he's like, probably, I don't know, but seems purposeful, vague when he talks about, like, going on to the land on the other side of the river.
00;10;51;21 - 00;11;01;29
Speaker 3
But I didn't quite understand the climax where he was like like he like flipped a boat and his brother had come back to help get some meat or something, and they were trudging through the water.
00;11;02;02 - 00;11;25;27
Speaker 2
So he had to float the bison out. Yeah. River and his brother and a friend, they came to help him do that. But, you know, it was like after dark, if I remember correctly, and there was frigid water and he had a hole in his, dry suit. And so it was filling with that cold water, and he was hallucinating because he was hypothermic.
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Speaker 3
So his brother wasn't actually there?
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Speaker 2
No, his brother was there.
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Speaker 3
Okay.
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Speaker 2
But the three of them were working together to get that bison out.
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Speaker 3
Yeah, that.
00;11;34;02 - 00;11;40;16
Speaker 2
That. Yeah. There might have been a problem with the, I think his rafted slip and he. That's why he was in the water trying to guide all the meat to keep it from.
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Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean it's been a couple of years now or something.
00;11;43;24 - 00;11;44;21
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.
00;11;44;23 - 00;12;08;21
Speaker 3
But I mean, that stuff freaks me out. Yeah. Yeah I don't, I don't I don't like water. I don't want to think about water. I can't stand the ocean. I don't like rivers. I can't see the bottom of. It's like a, deep seeded fear of mine. But speaking of of of fear and water, we originally, before we were going to jump into that story, we were going to start with this question.
00;12;08;23 - 00;12;10;14
Speaker 3
Can I always debate on how we're going to start?
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Speaker 2
I really want to ask Larry what water, if he's willing to take his kids off a 28ft waterfall. What water are you scared of?
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Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1
So that's that's a good question. You know, I think as we study water in Iowa and across the agricultural Midwest, I think for most of us, you know, that do this scientifically. The concern about our water quality is, is really growing. And I think we are, you know, in the on the eve of, water quality crisis, you know, that's going to impact much of the entire agricultural Midwest.
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Speaker 3
Do you think we're already there and we're just not admitting it towards ourselves? Or do you think we're actually like, it's going to become basically undrinkable and much worse?
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Speaker 1
I think we're we're headed in that direction and certainly we are unwilling to admit it. And I think that's a really big challenge for our state. You know, if we want to take a longer view at this and we we try to think about where do we really want to be in 25 years, you can look back and say, where are we today?
00;13;07;19 - 00;13;35;15
Speaker 1
And is this where we want it to be? Is this where we would have projected ourselves going 25 years ago? Yeah. And then if we continue this trajectory, is that really what we want, this, this livable state to be. And and I would say, no, I think we've got to make some major changes, to how we treat our land and water, to be able to ensure that we have this balance between our agricultural, economic, water, natural and human resources.
00;13;35;17 - 00;13;51;18
Speaker 1
And I mentioned this earlier that if we put everything into our agricultural and economic resources, neglecting the water and natural resources, we will no longer have a human resource that wants to live in the state to do the things that we do, and that's a growing concern.
00;13;51;20 - 00;14;01;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a great point. What that plays perfectly into Nicholas's original. So we've had two intro questions before the intro question, which is good. That's how you know you're having a good podcast.
00;14;01;13 - 00;14;14;24
Speaker 3
The the. So I'll say the question that was going originally we were just going to start with Doctor Webber. Webber. Yeah. What? Webber. Webber. Because it's spelled Webber like Webber, but just like the grill.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. Webber.
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Speaker 3
Webber. Grills. Was that you?
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Speaker 1
Great, great grandpappy Webber was. Messer.
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Speaker 4
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Not true. Well, I.
00;14;23;25 - 00;14;24;27
Speaker 3
Was just going to jump in and be like.
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Speaker 4
Describe if.
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Speaker 2
That was true. That would have been Larry's sheep on said he was.
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Speaker 4
Yeah.
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Speaker 3
Oh. That's that's funny.
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Speaker 2
You've been hanging out with, roasting sheep hunters. I never know how to pronounce his last name, but I think he's the wealthiest hunter.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, he's been out in the Middle Fork on sheep on some. That river, I bet.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.
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Speaker 3
And that's my dream is to be on that be so wealthy I get to go sheep hunting on the impossible river.
00;14;51;04 - 00;15;01;29
Speaker 4
Impossible Canyon skipping over 28ft water. I, I'm having a great time. Hang on kids. Yeah. Ken.
00;15;01;29 - 00;15;03;14
Speaker 3
Doesn't know, but I took his kids.
00;15;03;14 - 00;15;05;13
Speaker 4
To go. All right. Yeah.
00;15;05;15 - 00;15;15;17
Speaker 3
All right, all right. So, what do you think is the single biggest challenge facing Iowa's water quality right now?
00;15;15;20 - 00;15;38;28
Speaker 1
Well, the single biggest challenge is the acceptance that we have a problem and that we need to work on it together. I think that's the biggest challenge. And as the issues become, more and more of a concern, the divide between we need to improve it versus there's no problem has become deeper and more fractured, and there's more animosity.
00;15;39;00 - 00;15;59;11
Speaker 1
And I think, you know, when when again, when we think about what's going on this summer, although we had, you know, somewhat of a dry year last year and we've had some rains this year, this is by no means an abnormally, strange year. And yet we've got the city of Des Moines with a water curtailment to 600,000 residents.
00;15;59;13 - 00;16;15;25
Speaker 1
Is that our new normal? I don't I don't really think that's where we want to go. And as you know, we continue the pace of intensification of industrialized agriculture. We're not keeping pace with the work that we're doing and conservation practices.
00;16;15;27 - 00;16;37;29
Speaker 2
Yeah. What would be some. So we were abstractly talking about water quality is not good. What would be some like adjectives you would use or, you know, some conditions you would use to describe what's not good about, it was water. So different characteristics of it.
00;16;38;02 - 00;17;02;11
Speaker 1
Well, yeah. So different characteristics of what's not good. I mean it because again, of the, you know, the, the, the way in which we have tile drainage systems installed across our landscape, the fertilizer, commercial fertilizer applications, the manure applications that happen. We have a very leaky system. And within that leaky system, you know, we have a lot of pass through of agricultural pollutants directly into our water.
00;17;02;14 - 00;17;30;26
Speaker 1
And so, you know, the levels of nitrate concentration coming out of, you know, drainage tile, 30 to 50mg/l, well, well above the, you know, safe, drinking water standard. Now, of course, nobody's saying I'm suggesting that we should be drinking tile drainage water, but by the time that gets mixed in with the rest of the stream flow, you know, we're seeing nitrate concentrate coming into our major source waters for drinking water systems, you know, in the 15 to 20mg/l.
00;17;30;29 - 00;17;46;27
Speaker 2
So. So what's the concern with elevated nitrate levels? I think everyone can understand, you know, beaches closed, E.coli levels are too high. Well, E.coli that's a bacteria you really don't want here in the northern part of your digestive tract. Pretty common in the southern.
00;17;47;00 - 00;17;52;16
Speaker 4
But the but, the southern portion of.
00;17;52;18 - 00;17;56;21
Speaker 2
Everyone just thought of the Zach De films reel on pinkeye.
00;17;56;24 - 00;18;06;14
Speaker 3
Which, that's why it's gross to take baths without showering. First. I had a debate with a friend. The other day. Yeah, you gotta shower before you bathe. Yeah, and you can bathe.
00;18;06;16 - 00;18;09;19
Speaker 2
It's also what's gross about pools.
00;18;09;22 - 00;18;20;23
Speaker 4
You know. Oh, it's just enough chlorine in there. It's dead poop. That's what I'm supposed to be clear. How often do you go to public pools?
00;18;20;25 - 00;18;22;17
Speaker 1
Not for a long time.
00;18;22;19 - 00;18;24;06
Speaker 4
That's all you need to know, right?
00;18;24;09 - 00;18;32;01
Speaker 2
So, like, elevated nitrate levels. What? What's the associated risk with elevated nitrate levels for human health?
00;18;32;01 - 00;18;35;01
Speaker 1
Yeah. So again, I'm not, you know, I'm not a.
00;18;35;01 - 00;18;36;00
Speaker 2
Health care for medical.
00;18;36;00 - 00;18;45;16
Speaker 1
Question, right? You know, medical you know, question. But, you know, certainly I think it's well understood that women of childbearing age, there are definitely negative impacts of elevated levels of nitrate.
00;18;45;16 - 00;18;46;15
Speaker 2
I never heard that before.
00;18;46;15 - 00;19;05;19
Speaker 1
I absolutely, you know, young children, of course, the blue baby syndrome has been kind of well documented throughout the years. The, the there is medical and scientific research that's suggesting that the nitrate, EPA, nitrate standards should be lowered to five or even perhaps 3mg/l.
00;19;05;22 - 00;19;10;04
Speaker 2
Right now we say, what's the ten? Oh, wow. And as much so.
00;19;10;06 - 00;19;29;08
Speaker 1
So we're well above that. And and I think one of the biggest challenges when we have this source water issue like is going on in Des Moines, you know, they have a, reverse osmosis system that takes the nitrate out of the, out of the water, takes it all the way to zero. But they can only process so much water at a time.
00;19;29;14 - 00;19;43;19
Speaker 1
So they take that water, they take it down to zero, and they're blend it with whatever's coming in from the river at 15 or 20mg liter until they meet the EPA standard, and they put it out into their distribution system at 9.5 to 9.9.
00;19;43;19 - 00;19;54;23
Speaker 2
So they're just they're just, diluting it essentially with the cleaner water into the correct. And Rileys favorite line dilution is the solution to pollution.
00;19;54;26 - 00;19;55;16
Speaker 4
And he always says.
00;19;55;19 - 00;20;00;02
Speaker 2
He always says that with great, sarcasm. But, it's yeah, that's an.
00;20;00;05 - 00;20;01;19
Speaker 3
After you.
00;20;01;19 - 00;20;04;21
Speaker 2
Interview you interviewed, Ted.
00;20;04;24 - 00;20;05;13
Speaker 1
Ted Corrigan.
00;20;05;18 - 00;20;09;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. And what was the cause? That's extremely.
00;20;09;04 - 00;20;14;08
Speaker 3
Short. It was like $12,000 a day or something that they were running to run. That it's like a virus.
00;20;14;08 - 00;20;17;00
Speaker 1
Osmosis versus Moses, a system. Yeah.
00;20;17;01 - 00;20;20;00
Speaker 2
Okay. So that's that's insanely expensive.
00;20;20;02 - 00;20;20;13
Speaker 1
Right?
00;20;20;15 - 00;20;30;24
Speaker 3
But they don't run it all the time. There was some machine. They only run when that was the one that nitrates are hanging out from northern or northwestern Iowa down the Des Moines River.
00;20;30;24 - 00;20;50;00
Speaker 1
Right. And so they have, you know, they have a couple intakes. And so they're drawing water from the raccoon. They're drawing water from the Des Moines. And, you know, depending on what nitrate concentrations are, they can change how well, you know, they're, utilizing those two river systems. And then they do have some well water that they can supplement with, but they certainly don't have the capacity in well water to meet the needs of their service area.
00;20;50;05 - 00;20;51;01
Speaker 4
00;20;51;03 - 00;21;15;04
Speaker 2
Man, that is that is a real crisis. So and then with the kind of the new frontier and we want to be very clear here, there's no direct link yet between elevated nitrate levels and different cancers. But that's kind of the hypothesis. Hypothesis, I guess that is being looked at more carefully. Right.
00;21;15;06 - 00;21;40;14
Speaker 1
So there is a direct link between elevated levels of lead and some cancers. Now that were I think the, the, the discrepancy might be is the fact that the National Cancer Registry came out and said that, Iowa has the second highest incidence of cancer in the nation. And I think trying to put that incidence of cancer directly associated with the water that we drink, that association has not been made.
00;21;40;14 - 00;21;41;15
Speaker 2
That's the link that hasn't.
00;21;41;15 - 00;22;08;19
Speaker 1
Been that that's the link that has been made. The other piece of that count is that we also need to think about the air that we breathe. And, and I think those two pieces are going to take a lot of scientific evidence and study to really unpack what is the role of the water that we drink in the air that we breathe on the rate of cancer in Iowa, and that will take years and years of study, because it's very difficult to determine what each of our exposure history was to different pollutants in our water.
00;22;08;22 - 00;22;30;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. And it's even harder to figure out what is our exposure history of the air that we breathe. And I often tell this story that, you know, my wife and I own a 120 acre conservation property outside of Iowa City in Johnson County, and it's mostly, woodland, mostly hardwoods. And, and there's some, you know, regeneration of white oaks on that property.
00;22;30;06 - 00;22;54;25
Speaker 1
And when you see these white oak trees that are five years or younger and the leaves are curled up so tight from its exposure to dicamba that it's killing the tree. And I look at that tree and I think, you know what? I'm standing next to a tree, breathing the same air that that tree roots operates. And if that dicamba is killing that tree in the middle of 120 acres of timber, what's happening?
00;22;54;29 - 00;23;17;25
Speaker 1
What am I being exposed to? And, and and it starts to raise some concerns, you know, as our agricultural real crop system has become more and more reliant on insecticides and pesticides and herbicides. And, you know, there seems to be a chemical, solution to every bug or mite or fungus that we have.
00;23;17;26 - 00;23;19;27
Speaker 3
Or inconvenience, basically.
00;23;20;00 - 00;23;42;04
Speaker 1
Or inconvenience. And and again, you know, understanding that again, this is an open conversation for sure. Understanding that is something we don't understand. Yeah. But we need to study it and we need to trust in science. We need to spend the money to understand what these causal relations are. Because our life depends on it.
00;23;42;06 - 00;23;46;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think you're I think you're on to something there.
00;23;46;08 - 00;23;58;24
Speaker 3
What do you think of the, the nutrient reduction strategy? That was it been a ten years now or something like that, that it was put into place as a 2014.
00;23;58;27 - 00;24;00;23
Speaker 1
Do you 2014, 2014?
00;24;00;23 - 00;24;13;17
Speaker 3
Okay. I'm like, I did a whole docu podcast on this, I should remember, what are your thoughts on how it was drafted and how it's been implemented and, or held to or the, the results we've seen from it?
00;24;13;19 - 00;24;32;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. And if I could, just to give a little bit of background information on that. So, you know, as the director of the Iowa Air program, you know, our focus is on fluid mechanics, river hydraulics, watershed hydrology, environmental engineering and science. And we have a world class institution here in Iowa that many people don't know anything about.
00;24;32;28 - 00;24;59;05
Speaker 1
And principally because most of our work was done, across the country and around the world. And in 2008, with the floods of eastern Iowa, that changed, we were asked to provide, a program, proposal to the Iowa legislature. And that led to the formation of the Iowa Flood Center. And so the flood center became very active in monitoring rivers and streams for flow, helping communities better prepare for the onset of floods.
00;24;59;07 - 00;25;18;02
Speaker 1
When the nutrient reduction strategy was first released in the late, fall of 2012, I reached out to faculty at Iowa State University and said, gosh, you know, here we have this flood center thing that's doing really good on water quantity. There's a lot that we're going to have to learn before we'll be able to fully address this water quality issue.
00;25;18;02 - 00;25;41;25
Speaker 1
Why don't we team up and do something on water quality? And so that conversation led to the formation of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center. I know you had Doctor Matt Helmers on here a while ago. John Lawrence led that center, in its beginning. And Matt has taken over and done a nice job with that. Our role in the Iowa Nutrient Research Center was to monitor our rivers and streams for nitrate and other, pollutants.
00;25;41;27 - 00;25;56;24
Speaker 1
And so we've built the largest real time continuous water quality monitoring network in the country here in Iowa. And so, you know, sometimes we hear people grousing around and they're upset that we don't monitor enough. Well, I can at least say we monitor more than any other state in the nation.
00;25;56;24 - 00;25;57;05
Speaker 2
That's good.
00;25;57;12 - 00;26;24;13
Speaker 1
And so that's really good. And so what I can say that in response to your question about how well is the nutrient reduction strategy doing, I'm going to do that based on science. I do that based on load information. And of the roughly 90 sensors that we have deployed across the state of Iowa about, you know, a fourth of them are monitoring the inlet, an outlet of conservation practices, wetlands, saturated buffers, bioreactors.
00;26;24;13 - 00;26;44;23
Speaker 1
And then the thing, about a fourth of them have been deployed, in targeted watersheds for, for water quality improvement, like, hey, this is where we're working the hardest at. So maybe we should monitor those more densely to understand it. And then the remainder of them are, you know, put around the state of Iowa, many of which are at the terminus, streams or rivers as they flow out of the state.
00;26;44;23 - 00;27;09;18
Speaker 1
So we can calculate the load. Yeah. Leaving the state so back to the question, how is it doing? Well, we're simply not making progress. And as we look back on the inception of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force and the nutrient reduction strategy that they suggested a 45% reduction across the agricultural Midwest, remember, the first goal was to have a 45% reduction by 2015.
00;27;09;20 - 00;27;10;05
Speaker 4
Wow.
00;27;10;05 - 00;27;11;03
Speaker 1
We didn't meet that goal.
00;27;11;03 - 00;27;12;15
Speaker 2
Or ten years over.
00;27;12;18 - 00;27;31;03
Speaker 1
We didn't meet that goal. So then what they did is they kick the can down the road. They said, well, we're going to move it out 20 years. We need more time. We're going to go with a 45% reduction by 2035. But we need an intermediate goal. So the intermediate goal then was a 20% reduction by 2025. The year that we live in today.
00;27;31;05 - 00;27;48;19
Speaker 1
And I was saying back in the teens that not only will we not achieve our 20% reduction by 2025, the state of Iowa will have doubled by then. Well, I didn't know it would happen as quickly as it did, but by 2018 2019, the nutrient load leaving the state of I was doubled. Why oh.
00;27;48;19 - 00;27;50;00
Speaker 2
My goodness.
00;27;50;03 - 00;27;50;12
Speaker 1
Why?
00;27;50;13 - 00;27;51;11
Speaker 2
It's only getting worse.
00;27;51;11 - 00;27;53;22
Speaker 1
So it's only getting worse.
00;27;53;24 - 00;28;02;01
Speaker 3
I don't feel like farming practices change that much between 2015 and 2019. Why did it double and I could be way off? Maybe it did change a ton, but.
00;28;02;03 - 00;28;35;26
Speaker 1
Well, again, I would call this, you know, it's the intensification of farming. And just again, a lot of anecdotes. But one example of this intensification, we led a program in Iowa we called the Iowa Watershed Approach Project, where in eight different watersheds in Iowa, we built 800 different conservation practices and proud of every single one of them. The largest concentration of those practices were deployed in the Middle Cedar River watershed because of the flooding that it impacted Cedar Rapids in 2008, in part, and because there was just a lot of opportunity and willing landowners.
00;28;35;28 - 00;28;54;17
Speaker 1
So we spent $8.5 million and we built, 85 practices in the middle Cedar to reduce flows and improve water quality over the the six year period that we deployed those practices in that same watershed, 1200 miles of new agricultural drainage were installed.
00;28;54;19 - 00;28;55;09
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00;28;55;12 - 00;29;20;11
Speaker 1
Okay. Corn doesn't like wet feet. And that's kind of a common saying. And, and so we're putting patterned tile, in our fields across the state. We've created an exception leaky system. We have confined animal feeding operations across the state. They store livestock manure for six months. Farmers go out, they harvest the crop in the fall, they empty out all of their pits.
00;29;20;14 - 00;29;44;01
Speaker 1
That manure gets applied to the land. If it's a wet year, wet fall, then, that water's awb's the nitrate, within that manure and takes it into this leaky system and discharges it back to the river. Then again in the spring before the crop is planted, as you know, those same pits get emptied and that manure gets applied once again to the land in a very leaky spring system.
00;29;44;08 - 00;30;15;23
Speaker 1
And we see a lot of that nitrate coming out. The manure, I think in general, is not been seen as as reliable as, nutrient to the crop. And so farmer has to make a decision, you know, how much are we going to supplement our fertilization with commercial fertilizer on top of the manure that's applied? And I think the general consensus, when you look at commercial sales of fertilizer across our state by county, you look at the the livestock inventory across the state, you know, there's an over application.
00;30;15;25 - 00;30;31;15
Speaker 3
If you could change one thing that would affect nitrate, you can change one thing, whether it's add cover crops to every acre or add buffer strips around rivers or, change how much people are allowed to put on, you know, any of these things that we think of that are broad stroke. What would you change?
00;30;31;15 - 00;30;51;29
Speaker 1
Well, there's I mean, I'll kind of put it together as a couple things. A cover crops have to be part of it. I think that's an important piece. You know, adequately accounting for the, the the livestock based manure in the commercial application fertilizer and putting on, what is a more calculated level rather than if 170 pounds is good?
00;30;51;29 - 00;31;13;14
Speaker 1
I'm going to put 190 pounds on because I want to make sure to protect myself against a wet year, you know, that that sort of, process has been going on far too long. And I think it's, it's become so prevalent that within our system, we, we are no longer supply limited. So you can think about transport limited in this case or supply limited.
00;31;13;16 - 00;31;34;20
Speaker 1
In this particular case, we have, an almost infinite supply of excess nitrogen buildup in our soil column, that discharges back to the river when we've got tiles flowing and our rivers are flowing. Now, sometimes we hear the argument, that, the nitrate issue is just a weather issue. And every time it rains, you know, it's it's because it's only.
00;31;34;20 - 00;31;57;21
Speaker 1
And because of the rainfall that this is happening. Well, we have scientific data again, we're going to be science based. And we go back and we look at the turn of the century when it rained at the turn of the previous century, I should say, early 1900s, when we were farming Iowa and we were growing corn and, you know, the nitrate concentrations in the rivers and streams in Iowa were less than 1mg/l.
00;31;57;23 - 00;32;16;08
Speaker 1
And throughout the state, you know, then you go to the 1940s and 1950s. And that changed a little bit. We started applying more manure. We had a little more, commercial fertilizer starts to come into the game. And, you know, we elevate that to, you know, roughly a 3 milligram/l statewide average. You know, now we're approaching 7 to 8mg/l.
00;32;16;11 - 00;32;39;13
Speaker 1
Okay. So across that spectrum, you know, it's not that, our soils have changed. I mean, there's, you know, again, we hear oftentimes about the, several tons of nitrate, you know, that's mineralized in organic, mineral and organic material within the soil and that's, you know, overwhelms the few hundred pounds we're putting on. It's commercial fertilizer, but it's in a different form.
00;32;39;16 - 00;32;49;13
Speaker 1
Okay. The form of the commercial fertilizer and the livestock manure make it more readily absorbable by the water that then carries it to the tiled stream. And off we go.
00;32;49;15 - 00;32;50;12
Speaker 4
00;32;50;14 - 00;33;05;02
Speaker 3
Do you feel like, People are starting to care, and that the people who are of influence in these areas are starting to care, whether it's farmers or legislators or. You know what I mean?
00;33;05;05 - 00;33;24;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. I think, you know, we're with certainly with the water curtailment in Des Moines, the 600,000 people that are affected in that way. You know, it's and, you know, quite frankly, it's a little bit of an inconvenience not to be able to water your lawn. I mean, that that's not the biggest concern that I have. My my bigger concern is what are those issues relevant to our public health.
00;33;24;28 - 00;33;27;21
Speaker 1
And again, we'll leave that to the public health experts.
00;33;27;24 - 00;33;55;22
Speaker 2
Does that even make a difference to having people stopping or stop watering other than water supply? Obviously it makes a difference for that. But as far as increasing nutrient load, it seems like, Keith, Keith Schilling, Schilling, the state geologist did a study on that where they compared that, you know, well, these golf courses and people would quit fertilize and, you know, call on true green to fertilize their yard.
00;33;55;22 - 00;34;05;02
Speaker 2
And this and they compared that footprint to the agriculture footprint. And it was a drop in the bucket comparatively speaking.
00;34;05;07 - 00;34;16;10
Speaker 3
No. But that's not why people they're not saying hey you can't water because they're saying we can't clean enough for you to. Yeah. So you need to use it for your houses, not your lawn. Right.
00;34;16;10 - 00;34;20;03
Speaker 1
So they're trying to reduce the demand. So that throughput through the brain, right.
00;34;20;03 - 00;34;24;06
Speaker 2
That diluted water that they have to get out there. Right? Yeah. It's a supply.
00;34;24;11 - 00;34;43;01
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's a supply question. And and I think because it's impacting 600,000 people or even if it's not impacting them like they don't water their lawn anyway. So it doesn't impact them. They are at least more aware of the issue because now they're getting their curtailment notices. They know that within that service area they can't water the lawn.
00;34;43;01 - 00;34;46;17
Speaker 1
And there is the one issue and that is the nitrate levels are too high.
00;34;46;19 - 00;34;52;18
Speaker 3
You know, their lawns would still be green if they had prairie on those lawns instead of, oh.
00;34;52;20 - 00;34;55;12
Speaker 2
Native brown turf, native turf mix.
00;34;55;18 - 00;35;07;17
Speaker 3
Yeah. So, so golf courses that that's a, that's a thing. Iowa has a lot of golf courses per capita and per acre. Do you feel like that actually matters?
00;35;07;19 - 00;35;29;01
Speaker 1
Well, and again, it goes back, you know, Keith Schilling did a really nice study in that regard. And the simple summary is the difference between a golf course and a cornfield. Is that the golf course, the superintendents are quite coming up with the title of the people that manage the course. They have access to every square inch of that golf course every day in the summer, so they can put a little bit of fertilizer on the mold lawn or the grass.
00;35;29;01 - 00;35;45;29
Speaker 1
They put a little fertilizer on them all the grass, they put a little fertilizer on them, all the grass. They can spread that out. And it's managed in a much different way. You know, you put all the fertilizer, the livestock manure, you know, that livestock manure that goes on in the fall. There's nothing to uptake that nitrogen throughout that whole winter season.
00;35;46;02 - 00;36;06;28
Speaker 1
And until, you know, we get a crop that gets started, not only started but then starts to need, you know, you know, nitrogen and then they've reapplied manure in the spring and then they put commercial on top of that, and then they side dress it with anhydrous ammonia. And so everything is stacked up on that soil column, you know, going into that summer season.
00;36;07;05 - 00;36;20;21
Speaker 1
So there's no compare. And by between the way that nutrients are managed on roughly 24 to 25 million acres compared to, you know, whatever it is, a couple hundred golf courses.
00;36;20;23 - 00;36;21;14
Speaker 2
Wow.
00;36;21;16 - 00;36;48;12
Speaker 3
So do you, So that you were saying that cover crop would absorb that? I I'm curious, I guess if they're dumping on nitrates and they're in very water soluble, forms, which I guess is nitrate, what would, the cover crops. So they're catching the nitrates even at that high of a concentration of being dumped on.
00;36;48;15 - 00;37;03;04
Speaker 1
So, you know, the cover crops are, you know, doing a couple things. One, they're they're improving and increasing soil organic content. So number one, I mean, they're they're improving our soil health, which then ultimately leads to the need for less fertilizer. So that's good. The.
00;37;03;04 - 00;37;23;13
Speaker 2
Way we should probably cover it because we always, we always say stuff like that. They're growing. So they're unlocking nutrients from the soil, bringing them into plant tissue, but they're also pulling nitrogen out of the atmosphere, carbon out of the atmosphere, bringing it into plant tissue, dying, decomposing. And now it's available at gross level for an annual crop like corn.
00;37;23;13 - 00;37;33;25
Speaker 1
Absolutely right. And and again, I'm not a soil scientist. I feel sometimes like I know an awful lot about, you know, or I know very little about an awful lot. And, you know, one of the things.
00;37;33;27 - 00;37;36;14
Speaker 4
I'm getting an education right now, I'm getting school.
00;37;36;16 - 00;37;53;24
Speaker 1
That one of the things that I think we, we have a pretty good awareness of is that, you know, when we think about our soils in Iowa, you know, the, the black gold, right? In the of the Midwest, it's our most important resource. There's so many different ways. But what we're doing is we're over mining it, and we've done that for a 100 years or so.
00;37;53;27 - 00;38;14;15
Speaker 1
And so through that, over mining of our soil, we've reduced the soil organic content, over a number of years and going to a, cover crop. No till rotation. I think the standard accepted number is that we can bring about, you know, a, a 10th of a percent, soil organic content back into the soil.
00;38;14;19 - 00;38;14;28
Speaker 3
Every.
00;38;14;28 - 00;38;37;09
Speaker 1
Year, each year that we work on, you know, a system like. Wow. So overall, that's amazing. You know, over a 20 year period, you know, we can bring 2% soil organic contact back into our soils, which may have been depleted by several percent. And so that's really good. Right. And that's what we're doing, in part with the no till cover crop cover, crop rotation.
00;38;37;11 - 00;38;43;14
Speaker 1
The challenge though, is that we just simply aren't doing it on enough acres. And if we.
00;38;43;14 - 00;38;50;20
Speaker 3
Covered every acre in the Midwest that gets corn and beans with a cover crop, do you think that would fix our nitrate problem?
00;38;50;22 - 00;38;56;20
Speaker 1
I don't think that it would fix it. But what it would do is it would start pointing us in the right direction.
00;38;56;21 - 00;39;03;24
Speaker 3
Okay. So it wouldn't it wouldn't be 100% like we would need to have other practices in place to, to fix.
00;39;03;24 - 00;39;35;00
Speaker 1
Yes. And, and I think where things become very important and that is that, again, the, a farmer or the farmers, the farmers of Iowa are basically doing what our, U.S. foreign policy have dictated them to do. And, you know, they get incentivized to do certain practices. And we're not incentivizing enough of the good practices. And I think one of the challenges that we have in this nutrient, issue is that we're incentivizing farmers, in some cases to do certain practices.
00;39;35;02 - 00;39;58;04
Speaker 1
But on the back end of that, there's no environmental performance standard. So it's a little bit difficult to see you know landowner be incentivized to build a, let's say a nutrient removal wetland and yet over apply commercial fertilizer and livestock manure above that wetland. Okay. The wetland isn't going to be the cure all. Okay. It does a good job in certain times.
00;39;58;04 - 00;40;11;17
Speaker 2
Not always. So what you're saying is incentivize or to build the wetland, but along with to get your incentive, the water quality in that wetland needs to remain healthy. Well, so whatever it takes to keep it healthy that.
00;40;11;19 - 00;40;22;23
Speaker 1
That's right. So if we've spent $250,000 to build a wetland, right. But we're still allowing over application of commercial fertilizer and livestock manure, then that wetland isn't doing what it was really built to, right?
00;40;22;24 - 00;40;24;11
Speaker 2
Yeah. Now it's an unhealthy swamp.
00;40;24;12 - 00;40;47;21
Speaker 1
And not only that, but remember that wetland is only capturing the water that drains to that point. And so if you have a farm operation, say, a thousand acres, and you've got 100 acres draining into a wetland, what could be happening is that that farmer got incentivized to build this wetland, providing some service on 100 acres, but on the other 900 acres that same over application of manure and commercial fertilizer is happening.
00;40;47;24 - 00;40;55;20
Speaker 1
And there's nothing treating that. And although, you know, we all feel good about what was built there, it's, it's it's just simply a drop in the bucket.
00;40;55;21 - 00;41;10;21
Speaker 3
About 100 episodes ago, I've got so many questions on stuff, and I'm just going to go with the terrain we're on with wetlands. We argued about 100 episodes ago about, what a wetland was, and we, like, looked up the official update. That pond I showed you. Is that a wetland?
00;41;10;23 - 00;41;27;07
Speaker 1
Oh, I don't you know, again, I think you I don't want to, I'm not the person to answer that question. I mean, in terms of the the wetland delineate delineation program in waters of the U.S. and all that kind of stuff. I think I would probably characterize that is not a wetland. Okay. I'm certainly a water holding body, but not a wetland.
00;41;27;07 - 00;41;51;17
Speaker 3
Okay. Interesting. All right. I want to go back. To drainage and rain. It rains a bunch in Iowa, and we kind of have this hypothesis here at Hoxie that we've totally, taken a chunk out of the water cycle that, and correct me if I'm wrong, we don't we've never actually seen any, like, scientific research that this has happened, but.
00;41;51;17 - 00;42;09;09
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's so we this year we are not in a drought. Nowhere I love it. I think it's great. This is this is awesome. If we get if we get an inch of rain every week, every year, that'd be great. But, that has not been the case. Not even close for the last 4 or 5 years previous.
00;42;09;11 - 00;42;41;02
Speaker 2
And, so maybe, maybe this year is just ruining my hypothesis, which I'm okay with. I'd be happy if my hypothesis got ruined, but, starting in 2021, I think it was. There was that first round of Icap payments that came, well, might have actually been 2020. Yeah, I think was 2020 when, all this, what does the Icap stand for again?
00;42;41;04 - 00;42;42;29
Speaker 2
It's a it's basically like a booster.
00;42;42;29 - 00;42;44;00
Speaker 3
Money for farmers.
00;42;44;03 - 00;43;02;13
Speaker 2
Yeah. Orlando, because of low crop prices, that was coming out of the trade war with China and, farmers. A lot of farmers lost a lot of money on that. And, it's a it's a nice political move, especially around election time to hand.
00;43;02;13 - 00;43;03;12
Speaker 3
Out money.
00;43;03;14 - 00;43;31;11
Speaker 2
To do something like that, but also going along with, with that was near the, all the challenges with Covid 19 and, and, you know, supply chains were interrupted for, manufacturing equipment. A lot of, farmers were buying land at that time. But also, as you looked around, there was so much pattern tiling being done during 2021 and maybe I'd say 23.
00;43;31;11 - 00;43;57;15
Speaker 2
And you still see it to this day. There's there's a fair bit that that goes on, but it's there was very aggressive at that time, and it just seemed interesting how we had some of the worst droughts, the longest droughts that we've had in a very long time. While we were essentially draining Iowa. And so the hypothesis that Nicholas is referencing is.
00;43;57;17 - 00;44;22;04
Speaker 2
Have we hit some kind of critical mass with how much draining that has been done, in our soils? To where we've disrupted the local aspect of the water cycle, where, you know, we're supposed to hang on to some of our rain, you know, in these wetland areas, fens, swamps, whatever wet spots.
00;44;22;07 - 00;44;23;26
Speaker 4
That's what a lot of us call them.
00;44;23;29 - 00;44;47;19
Speaker 2
You know, that water supposed to sit there and then it's available for evaporation locally and more precipitation locally, but with tiling things and increasing that drainage of the state so quickly, we're exporting that water almost as soon as it's landing on our surface. We're getting it in the, you know, low order streams into the higher order streams very quickly and out of the state.
00;44;47;22 - 00;45;01;22
Speaker 2
And so I just hypothesize maybe we've hit some kind of critical mass where we've disrupted that, that local, you know, evaporation, precipitation cycle of, of our, of our water.
00;45;01;25 - 00;45;18;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I think, great question. And a series of questions, in fact, Kent and I think we could spend probably the next hour kind of unpacking much of what you've talked about, and I'll get to that in a moment, but I'm almost feeling like I need to charge you guys tuition.
00;45;18;27 - 00;45;30;15
Speaker 4
We're getting a free education. Crappy. Because this is, like, just, could you just sign this at the end? Like, it's like a diploma? Yeah. I mean, we're going to.
00;45;30;15 - 00;45;32;05
Speaker 1
Do, like, you know, watershed hydrology.
00;45;32;05 - 00;45;35;03
Speaker 4
One one. Yeah. That's right. So you have to pay.
00;45;35;03 - 00;45;36;00
Speaker 2
Me more at the end of this.
00;45;36;00 - 00;45;40;16
Speaker 4
Because I, I think because your credentials one so. Well.
00;45;40;19 - 00;46;03;21
Speaker 1
So really good. I mean, the water cycle is a really important piece of all of this. And I'm going to, you know, try to unpack a lot of what you've asked about. And, and so first off, what a lot of people don't understand and maybe don't think of from the start. But if you think about the evapotranspiration, right, aeration and transpiration, roughly 70% of the moisture that falls is rainfall in our state goes back into the atmosphere as evapotranspiration.
00;46;03;21 - 00;46;04;10
Speaker 1
Okay.
00;46;04;12 - 00;46;04;17
Speaker 3
So.
00;46;04;17 - 00;46;05;15
Speaker 1
That's interesting, right? Yeah.
00;46;05;23 - 00;46;07;14
Speaker 2
It's, you know, so the vast majority of.
00;46;07;14 - 00;46;12;25
Speaker 1
It, the largest majority, more than two thirds of it goes back up into evapotranspiration. So that's one piece we're going to.
00;46;12;26 - 00;46;17;08
Speaker 3
Keep that evapotranspiration is specifically from plants. Yes. Evaporative plants.
00;46;17;08 - 00;46;37;24
Speaker 1
It's evaporation which is across the landscape. And then transpiration from the plants. Oh okay. So when we put those two together, the evaporation that comes off your pond and you know, from us displacing water, we're going to put those two together. And so we have surface evaporation and transpiration from the plants. So those two things together account for two thirds of the water budget of the precipitation that lands in Iowa.
00;46;37;25 - 00;46;52;13
Speaker 1
So we got now we're going to deal with the other third. And that was the work that you're interested in. And so tile drainage changes that because it dries our soil. So that can change the kind of surface, evaporation that we get because we dry the soils out faster. And so there's a little bit less of that.
00;46;52;15 - 00;47;14;17
Speaker 1
It makes the plants more productive probably. So maybe we're getting a little more transpiration. So we might shift a little bit from evaporation to transpiration. So that's one piece of it. Generally we think about our low flow conditions, our base flow coming up. So the lows not being quite as low because our tiles continue to drain our soils over a longer period of time.
00;47;14;20 - 00;47;24;28
Speaker 1
So our low flows, tend to come out, we get a lot of transpiration, a lot of talk about, you know, what's the impact of corn in Nebraska on the humidity in Iowa, you know, so.
00;47;24;28 - 00;47;25;27
Speaker 2
There's sweat and.
00;47;26;04 - 00;47;46;05
Speaker 1
Sweat. So we got some of that going on. But when we think about the majority or the largest component of what our precipitation and rainfall are coming from, we're talking about moisture coming out of the Gulf. Okay. So warm, moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, into the Midwest that gets intersected by cold Arctic air in various frontal forms.
00;47;46;07 - 00;47;57;27
Speaker 1
And then we get this, rainfall that happens. And that happens in very intense and sometimes very narrow banded rainfall. That's called a mesoscale convective rainfall event. And so again.
00;47;58;04 - 00;47;59;20
Speaker 2
Vocab word of the day.
00;47;59;22 - 00;48;01;24
Speaker 3
They test me on this later.
00;48;01;26 - 00;48;40;22
Speaker 1
As you heard, you know, about what happened in Texas, the absolute absolute disaster in Texas, mesoscale convective rainfall was talked about in that narrow band and very intense rainfall that, impacted so many people along the Guadalupe River. That whole kind of system goes from the Gulf Coast all the way up into the Midwest. And if we go back over time, let's say the past, you know, 50 years, and we count the number of these events that have happened throughout our country, the bull's eye, the most occurrence of that is in Iowa and in the northern, say, 2 or 3 or 2 or 3 counties in Missouri.
00;48;40;24 - 00;49;01;19
Speaker 1
We have the greatest occurrence. 2008. If you studied the rainfall patterns, narrow banded rainfall in the upper part of the Iowa cedar, Turkey, upper Iowa watersheds that created little flood waves coming out of those first order streams. Second day of rainfall narrowly banded on that flood wave hydrograph as it was moving down through the Iowa and Cedar River system.
00;49;01;22 - 00;49;24;20
Speaker 1
That was a ten day series of storms with a couple of dry days in there, where we had exactly that occurrence that led to the devastation, of 2008 last year, 2024. What happened up in northwest Iowa? Yeah. Spencer. Yeah, rock Valley, Rock Rapids. I mean, people whose lives have, I mean, were destroyed. And those events, same type of an event.
00;49;24;20 - 00;49;45;19
Speaker 1
So we we have a little cluster of storms and we can actually track the origin of these storms. And that cluster, comes out of, you know, like northwest Nebraska and southern South Dakota into the northwest corner of Iowa. Then we've got this other kind of tier that comes out of Oklahoma and through Missouri, up across the rest of the part of the state of Iowa.
00;49;45;22 - 00;50;07;11
Speaker 1
And so we're seeing that happening now. We want to project that forward. Climate scientist for, you know, the last couple decades, say, 20 years have been telling us that what we're going to see in the agricultural Midwest is the intensification of rainfall. And we're going to have more and more extended dry periods that get broken by more intense rainfall.
00;50;07;13 - 00;50;29;11
Speaker 1
And when they try to characterize that or quantify that, they do it by saying that the 5% rainiest days, we'll get 10% larger by 2050, and the 5% rainiest days will get 20% larger by 2100. And so let's go through the thought exercise. Five inch rain and 24 hours would.
00;50;29;11 - 00;50;29;21
Speaker 2
Not be.
00;50;29;21 - 00;50;53;24
Speaker 1
Devastating that fall within our 5% rainiest days. Yeah. So by 2100, by 2050, that'll become 5.5in. And by 2100, that's going to become six inches. Now, our soils in the normal condition can take about two inches of rain as infiltration in 24 hours. So the five inch rain produce three inches of runoff. The five and a half produces three and a half.
00;50;53;26 - 00;51;04;13
Speaker 1
The six inch drink produces four inches of runoff. So the simple math is that 20% increase in rainfall resulted in a 33% increase in runoff.
00;51;04;16 - 00;51;05;13
Speaker 3
Yes. Oh yeah.
00;51;05;13 - 00;51;09;02
Speaker 2
Which is a certain percentage of erosion to and which.
00;51;09;02 - 00;51;09;06
Speaker 1
Is.
00;51;09;12 - 00;51;11;14
Speaker 2
Pulling of nutrients.
00;51;11;17 - 00;51;25;01
Speaker 1
Which adds to erosion and other things. But that's why when folks say, is our floods becoming more serious, well, our rainfall is intensifying. Our soils can only take so much. And that then results in greater runoff and that runoff.
00;51;25;04 - 00;51;47;29
Speaker 2
So that. Going back to Nicholas's question about the 2014 nutrient reduction plan. Yeah, that is probably in part explains why the numbers are getting worse, even if farming practices are more or less the same. If we have these more intense rain events, that's that would lead to more of that.
00;51;48;01 - 00;52;04;25
Speaker 1
And I would say, no, no, we're having more runoff. Yes, but what we're doing at the same time, over that ten year period, you know, we're increasing our nutrient load very. We have, you know, more livestock, fertilizer. We have more commercial fertilizer going on, the tile just.
00;52;04;25 - 00;52;05;12
Speaker 2
Purely that.
00;52;05;17 - 00;52;09;13
Speaker 1
The tile drainage, again, the 1200 acre or 1200.
00;52;09;15 - 00;52;10;14
Speaker 2
Yeah. We talked about the more.
00;52;10;17 - 00;52;19;01
Speaker 3
You're saying it's a it's a decision we have made that the that there's more nitrates in the Gulf of Mexico instead of, well, whether you know.
00;52;19;04 - 00;52;38;05
Speaker 1
It is and of course, you know the two things that you always want to separate on this nutrient, issue is concentration is important to us. Load is important to the Gulf of Mexico. What happens here? We don't care about necessarily about the pounds that are moving through the system. We care about the concentration because that affects our drinking water source in Iowa.
00;52;38;05 - 00;52;57;18
Speaker 1
To put it in the context, you know, probably three out of the last four years or so, I'd have to go back and look at the exact data. But roughly about three out of the last four years, we've exported a billion with a B pounds of nitrogen from Iowa. And I was on a call. This is, you know, a couple of years ago, and and it was everything.
00;52;57;18 - 00;53;13;26
Speaker 1
It was by zoom because it was the tail end of Covid yet, and it was a national or regional meeting. And I was on a panel and I was presenting, and someone else was presenting on the nutrient reduction strategy, and they talked about all the acres of cover crops and all the new wetlands and the bio reactors and saturated buffers.
00;53;13;28 - 00;53;36;08
Speaker 1
And they said that the reduction of load leaving Iowa was 1 million pounds, and some audience members said 1 million pounds, like forever or just that year. And the speaker was very proud to say no, 1 million pounds every year. And so then I reminded him, I said, look, in Iowa, that same year, we exported 1 billion pounds.
00;53;36;11 - 00;53;43;16
Speaker 1
So that's 1.001 billion. That's only one of those two ones is significant.
00;53;43;16 - 00;53;44;24
Speaker 3
So 0.1%.
00;53;44;24 - 00;53;45;11
Speaker 1
Yes.
00;53;45;11 - 00;53;50;11
Speaker 3
Point one. We were with all of our practices we put in so far, we've reduced 0.1%.
00;53;50;11 - 00;54;09;03
Speaker 1
And what we're not accounting for is like your checkbook, right. What we're not accounting for is the increased drainage, the increased commercial fertilizer, the increased livestock manure. So when we when we're saying that we're reducing things, we're not also then saying, look, this is what's happening on the other side of the ledger.
00;54;09;05 - 00;54;19;27
Speaker 3
Oh, they're not actually tracking what is much in the water. They're tracking the practices and then extrapolating how much they expect to be in the water from that. Right. That's that's crazy. That's crazy. Way to track data.
00;54;20;02 - 00;54;26;08
Speaker 1
You know, like each of us here would be millionaires today if we only counted the income side of our check.
00;54;26;11 - 00;54;33;14
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah. The expenditures. Oh, okay. Oh, what are we what what are we supposed to do?
00;54;33;16 - 00;54;57;29
Speaker 3
Okay, I've got a question. I've got a question about this. It ties a little bit. Taxpayers benefit from ecological and environmental practices because they get clean water. They get to help keep civilization afloat by having soil here, yada yada. Farmers benefit because they get money, farm Bureau benefits because they get money. John Deere benefits because they get money.
00;54;57;29 - 00;55;17;19
Speaker 3
So I would say farmers and the pickax sellers, they all they're all kind of in a camp where they, they benefit from ecological or from, what would you say? Incentives. Incentives. Yeah. From the incentives. So who should pay for these? Should it be the taxpayer or should it be the farmer.
00;55;17;21 - 00;55;18;12
Speaker 2
Pay for it.
00;55;18;18 - 00;55;51;01
Speaker 3
For the environmental practices like prairie buffer strips or, you know, set aside acres or you know what I mean? Because I actually don't think, my kid killed for this one. I mean, that, exaggeration, but, hyperbole. I, I might, I might get in trouble for this one. I don't think that farmers on mat on macro level would lose that much money if we took out 10% of the production, because the Chicago Exchange would say, oh, we don't have as much as we needed.
00;55;51;01 - 00;56;01;23
Speaker 3
The price needs to go up, you know what I mean? So they end up getting the same amount of money would be put into the agricultural. So, I mean, you can't do that for 25%. You can rip out you're.
00;56;01;23 - 00;56;04;24
Speaker 2
Increasing your decreasing supply therefore. Yeah. Yeah.
00;56;05;00 - 00;56;18;13
Speaker 3
Exactly. And I think that the market would respond in a way that protects, that mitigates a 5 to 10% decrease in like, I think we could healthily decrease 5 to 10% of our production. Anyway. You seem like you had a point there.
00;56;18;16 - 00;56;23;23
Speaker 1
Hi. Yeah, I do, how are commodity prices today?
00;56;23;26 - 00;56;25;12
Speaker 2
Bad. You know, they're not good.
00;56;25;12 - 00;56;45;23
Speaker 1
These are good, right? You know, that ebbs and flows, right? So that changes over time. But again, another example of, how we could be doing better is in 2019. So think about the Missouri River for a little bit. 2011 the Missouri River was above flood stage for 100 days. And that all happened. We had a major right.
00;56;45;23 - 00;56;48;20
Speaker 2
Yeah. For all the flooding that spring was crazy.
00;56;48;26 - 00;57;13;28
Speaker 1
We had a very wet spring, a very kind of late spring, late winter, up in Montana, filled the, the federal reservoirs, once those reservoirs are full, takes a long time to drain them out. And then in 2019, eight years later, very different system, right? We had a lot of snowpack, snow water equivalency around the Midwest and, and the the depth of water on their frozen soils was about 6.5in.
00;57;14;00 - 00;57;23;02
Speaker 1
And we had a relatively small rainfall event that came through Nebraska, put 3.5in of rain on 6.5in of frozen water.
00;57;23;05 - 00;57;24;24
Speaker 2
That's right. Braska really flooded.
00;57;24;28 - 00;57;48;11
Speaker 1
And produced 100% runoff. So we had a rainfall event that was the equivalent of ten inches of rain with 100% runoff, and we had 53 breaches in the Missouri River levee along the Iowa border, the Platte River, the nearby, I mean, it was a mess, right? And so when you look at what had happened out there, what a disaster year following that event that year.
00;57;48;11 - 00;58;18;23
Speaker 1
And we had flooding across the nation that year, USDA came out with monies for their emergency wetland program. I got $36 million. It's a big deal. Yeah, $36 million at $10,000 an acre, takes 3600 acres out of production. Okay, in that same year, in the open enrollment period, 30,000 acres came voluntarily into an FSA office and said, pick me.
00;58;18;25 - 00;58;21;10
Speaker 1
If we would have had $300 million.
00;58;21;16 - 00;58;22;01
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00;58;22;03 - 00;58;33;17
Speaker 1
We could have taken 30,000 acres out its production. And when you think about that a little bit and again, kind of bear with me on the thought exercise, 30,000 acres on 24 million acres, like one.
00;58;33;17 - 00;58;35;26
Speaker 2
Percent. Yeah. What a huge deal.
00;58;36;02 - 00;58;55;29
Speaker 1
What's that do with supply? It's not a huge deal. These are farmers that wanted to help, that needed some federal assistance and deserve federal assistance. But we didn't have the funding to do it. We farmed 400,000 acres in Iowa. That is in the two year floodplain. 400,000 acres. Now in some years that could be some of the best ground that.
00;58;56;01 - 00;59;12;03
Speaker 1
Yeah. Right. Yeah. But in a lot of other years when, when somebody comes to me and says, gosh Larry, why does it flood more than every, you know, once in every 100 years in 100 year flood plain. Well, you can probably say the same thing for the 50 year floodplain in the 25 year, in the ten year, in the five year in the two year.
00;59;12;06 - 00;59;30;25
Speaker 1
Right. So if we wanted to start to address things, we could take 400,000 acres out of the two year floodplain. And then the second part of the question is, what do you think the impact of that ground is on our water quality? Yeah, well, it is the most connected to our stream man. Immediately tiled or not tiled. Okay.
00;59;30;25 - 00;59;38;08
Speaker 1
We have a base flow coming through our soil column. Oftentimes sandy soils that are moving, you know, that material back to our streams very quickly.
00;59;38;10 - 01;00;11;00
Speaker 2
So, so kind of going back to Nicholas's question, though. Yeah, because I love that idea. How do we fund that? I mean, we could just through tax increase taxes. That would probably have to come. I mean, it affects our water quality, affects everyone downstream from us, the gulf of whatever it's called now. Mexico. Yeah. That that, that, gets, you know, we have a huge dead zone there because of the activity upstream.
01;00;11;02 - 01;00;47;02
Speaker 2
But I got to think that someone in Vermont, has them paying federal income tax to support 400,000 acres of Iowa cropland that shouldn't be farmed anyways. To to pay someone to do the right thing. That's that's a bitter pill. Especially when you look at all the chatter that's going on about our deficit. And they're looking at selling off federal land of time as if that would ever help, to, to sell or to pay off our deficit.
01;00;47;05 - 01;01;13;01
Speaker 2
It just seems that increasing expense on a federal level now, Iowa financially is doing better than our, our, federal government is but even still, that's a lot of acres for Iowans to, I mean, a big tax increase there. How do we how do you think we could come up with money to support, or is it just simply farmers if you own that land?
01;01;13;04 - 01;01;28;00
Speaker 2
I mean, whatever we got for CRP, whatever we got for other existing programs that we can, you know, maybe even like, Kevin Griggs and, Iowa, wetlands mitigation. What's that called again? Wetland mitigation.
01;01;28;05 - 01;01;30;27
Speaker 3
Oh. You're you're you're.
01;01;30;29 - 01;01;32;09
Speaker 1
Well, that's that's his company.
01;01;32;09 - 01;01;35;28
Speaker 3
Oh, the. Yeah, the Iowa wetland mitigation banking bank.
01;01;35;28 - 01;01;54;18
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. We got programs like that. But I mean, that's we only got funds to, to, to cover that. I mean, how do we how do we make that happen, do you think? Or is it just purely it's a stick instead of a carrot. Quit farming that stuff that's quickly polluting our most immediately polluting our waters.
01;01;54;22 - 01;02;32;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. So, again, great question. I'm certainly no expert in, you know, national finance and, you know, our, our federal budget and federal deficits. And those are arguments and conversations for, for others to have. But I think one way to sort of put it into context, and you mentioned this a bit earlier count, was that because of, you know, trade imbalance and tariffs and other things in the previous Trump administration, you know, there were some economic, programs for farmers and, you know, across the country that came out in two different, tranches, $12 billion and $16 billion, direct support for agriculture.
01;02;32;18 - 01;02;39;21
Speaker 1
And when you think about $28 billion with absolutely zero strings attached to it, and you think about the good that.
01;02;39;24 - 01;02;42;11
Speaker 2
Are the two Icap things that we're talking about here, okay.
01;02;42;13 - 01;02;47;17
Speaker 1
Think about the good that could have been done with $28 billion if we put that into conservation programs.
01;02;47;17 - 01;02;53;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Basically say here's your Icap funds. Right. These are what you can spend it on.
01;02;53;27 - 01;02;59;23
Speaker 1
Here's your Icap funds and spend 10% of that on conservation. Yeah right. It's been 20% up.
01;02;59;26 - 01;03;02;23
Speaker 2
Know that's a great point I like that. That's a good that's a good solution.
01;03;02;23 - 01;03;32;16
Speaker 3
Yeah. I I was thinking this and now it might be it might be a bad analogy. So please correct me if I'm wrong, but let's say, can you live in Des Moines? Let's say you're kind of a mad scientist in your garage. You find a new way to power a nuclear power plant. And, if people get radiation from it, instead of instead of everybody dying like they, you know, that would like, 50 years ago, it's more like one in every 10,000 people that come in contact with it, they they tend to get cancer and they die.
01;03;32;23 - 01;03;49;17
Speaker 3
And it's fine when it's all contained, but you're practicing with it in your garage and there's no regulation on what's leaking out of your garage. Who's responsible for that? Your neighbors to pay you to put up new walls to keep that radiation in? Probably not right for all of you.
01;03;49;19 - 01;04;15;08
Speaker 1
Well, but and again, I think our system, you know, again, this global economic and agricultural system that we've created, right. We created this through policy. Policy is driving where we are today. And when you think about, you know, we're growing corn to feed into an ethanol system, you know, that has a net energy, you know, of somewhere around 1.0 or whether it's 1.001 or 0.999.
01;04;15;08 - 01;04;20;23
Speaker 1
You know, it's just, you know, it's barely making that part work. It's an economic program for the state of Iowa.
01;04;20;23 - 01;04;29;12
Speaker 2
And that's because not just what ethanol can can produce energy wise, but also the energy that goes into, right, making the ethanol system work.
01;04;29;16 - 01;04;51;16
Speaker 1
Right? So so it's basically a wash. And again, it can be a little better than a wash, a little less than a wash, but it's basically a wash. And so that's an economic driver for the state of Iowa. No question about that. But but but that's a policy decision. You know, then we have a heavily subsidized, you know, crop insurance program, which used to be about yield and now is about,
01;04;51;19 - 01;04;52;10
Speaker 2
Expected.
01;04;52;10 - 01;05;01;15
Speaker 1
It. Well, yeah, it's about it's an economic insurance policy rather than a yield policy because it's based on a basis and a unit price on corn and so on and so forth. So that's an issue.
01;05;01;15 - 01;05;02;07
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah.
01;05;02;09 - 01;05;16;26
Speaker 1
You know, and then we say, well, you know, again we want to try to reduce nutrients. So we're going to go out put cover crops on. But then how do we terminate those cover crops. Yeah. So if we had 26 million acres of of cover crops out there and we've got to use glyphosate to terminate it, I don't think that's a future that we want.
01;05;17;02 - 01;05;17;26
Speaker 2
Right.
01;05;17;28 - 01;05;25;09
Speaker 3
What do you what why do you think we're in this system? Like one foot in front of the other? What were some of the big steps that got us to where we're at?
01;05;25;11 - 01;05;40;28
Speaker 1
Well, again, I think it goes all the way back. And I know it's been talked about in the podcast before. It goes back to my time on the farm as a child. And my dad, you know, making a living and raising a family on 128 acres. And Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture, came out and said, get bigger, get out.
01;05;41;01 - 01;05;42;17
Speaker 1
And, you know, that was a decision.
01;05;42;18 - 01;05;44;12
Speaker 3
What was his thought process there, though?
01;05;44;12 - 01;05;45;27
Speaker 1
Well, again, I was opening up.
01;05;46;01 - 01;05;52;19
Speaker 2
He's opening up global trade, more global markets. So you're growing corn not just for Iowans. Not even. So he.
01;05;52;19 - 01;05;54;29
Speaker 3
Was saying get efficient so we can compete on the.
01;05;54;29 - 01;05;55;29
Speaker 2
Single market. Right.
01;05;55;29 - 01;05;57;02
Speaker 1
Right, right.
01;05;57;04 - 01;06;01;16
Speaker 2
So it kind of pushed everyone into the same lanes to in order to do so.
01;06;01;22 - 01;06;08;25
Speaker 1
Right. And we have 25 million hogs under the roof at any given time. You know, six month life. That's 50 million years a year.
01;06;08;25 - 01;06;10;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, 3 million people.
01;06;10;15 - 01;06;13;28
Speaker 1
I don't think my wife and I, we love pork. I don't think we eat a whole hog every year.
01;06;13;28 - 01;06;14;15
Speaker 4
Right. Yeah.
01;06;14;16 - 01;06;38;21
Speaker 1
You know, so obviously that's a big export. That's an important economy for Iowa. But when we're selling it to underdeveloped or developing countries at the at less than the full cost of production, when we add in the environmental cost, then it's kind of interesting, right? This wonderful developed country that we live in, providing pork at a cost less than the full cost of production to a developing country.
01;06;38;23 - 01;06;41;28
Speaker 1
Okay. That's interesting right. That's a concern.
01;06;42;00 - 01;06;49;16
Speaker 3
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. This is interesting. Okay. Well I only have one.
01;06;49;19 - 01;07;18;28
Speaker 2
Well one of the things I want to while we're talking about the changes with ethanol production, that's a marked thing from a habitat standpoint in Iowa. I can't remember the exact dates that they give. I've, I've referenced it before, but I believe it's at the beginning of, the, upland roadside surveys that they do every summer and release the results around the 1st of September or late August, early September.
01;07;19;00 - 01;07;50;00
Speaker 2
Our friend Todd Bogan shots overseas and they I think it's at the beginning of that survey. He always mentions how much habitat has been lost in Iowa since. I can't remember the day. I want to say it's like 1995 or something. And the last, the last time that I remember looking at that specific part of the roadside survey was, maybe back in 2020 and, you know, now I just go straight to the top of the tables are how how's our wildlife doing?
01;07;50;03 - 01;08;17;08
Speaker 2
But, I think it was, 2020 and it was, I believe, a ten mile wide band that stretched from Davenport to Council Bluffs of habitat had been lost in that time. And a big part of that was ethanol mandates that came down from the federal level. And so there's a marked, you know, difference in pheasant populations and quail populations.
01;08;17;11 - 01;08;32;12
Speaker 2
And, just in the habitat that you see while you're out traveling across the landscape, has there been a noted difference in water quality pre ethanol post ethanol?
01;08;32;14 - 01;08;52;04
Speaker 1
Yes. I also because we like to speak in scientific terms, not having that data in front of me, that's absolutely something that could be looked at. I don't really have that in hand. You know, the comment that I made earlier where we sort of group things into early 1900s, kind of 1950s, present day, you know, those were just kind of big markers now.
01;08;52;05 - 01;09;10;15
Speaker 1
Yeah, ethanol and the inception of ethanol, in there. Certainly, based on process and everything else would move it towards higher nitrate loads. Because we again, were farming the land more intensely. Right. And but but again, I'd have to go back and pull that data.
01;09;10;19 - 01;09;12;06
Speaker 2
Sure. You know. Yep.
01;09;12;09 - 01;09;33;26
Speaker 3
Man. Well, before we got started, you mentioned something about, we have a world class, program at University of Iowa, and, and it's used in the world. I can't you weren't here. You you were saying that you guys helped set up London's. Was it sewer system? Yes. Drainage system.
01;09;33;29 - 01;10;10;27
Speaker 1
So, beginning in, roughly 1920, the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research was formed. And so, 105 years ago, this program existed, about 25 years ago, we renamed the program to Iowa for the acronym Hydro Science and Engineering. And we, you know, study everything from fundamental fluid mechanics to river mechanics or hydraulics, watershed hydrology. So, and environmental engineering and science and as some examples, we did all the hydraulic design for the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which is the stormwater system for the City of London.
01;10;11;00 - 01;10;41;17
Speaker 1
We designed the stormwater system in Abu Dhabi. We have actual active projects in, South America right now looking at, dissolved gas mitigation at large hydropower dams. Interesting. We have been under continuous funding from the Office of Naval Research since World War two, helping the Navy better design their surface combatants and submarines. We also create, both laboratory experiments and have the the most sophisticated wave basin for naval hybrid dynamics in the world.
01;10;41;19 - 01;11;18;15
Speaker 1
University of Iowa. But we also do computational research, and we've create our own mathematical models for simulate flows around ships called computational fluid dynamics or CFD ship Iowa. And so that serves the Navy. We've had a number of world's first experimental, and numerically, that have been created here at the university. Then again, we created the Iowa Flood Center, okay, nation's only academic center focused on flooding, helped to co-found the Iowa Nutrient Research Center in partnership with Iowa State, moved the Geological Survey from the Iowa DNR to the University of Iowa.
01;11;18;17 - 01;11;41;10
Speaker 1
They study, of course, the rocks and minerals and subsurface drought of the state, but they also look at groundwater as a resource. I can keep showing whose name was mentioned earlier as a state geologist. So we're we're we're a program of about 30 faculty, about 70 full time staff and typically 100 graduate students studying master's and PhDs or 200 people, and nominally about $20 million a year.
01;11;41;10 - 01;12;10;25
Speaker 1
Operation 2 million comes from the state to support the flood center and the Geological Survey. And then about 12 million, would come from federal grants and 6 million in contract work, like the City of London. Right now, we're developing a stormwater system for Newtown Creek, just outside of New York City. We did a, a stormwater system for, Ellicott City, where they had 2000 year floods, in a three year period with loss of life.
01;12;10;27 - 01;12;40;20
Speaker 1
We just designed a $250 million fish bypass system for, agricultural water diversion on the Santa Clara River just north of LA, servicing about 15,000 acres of high value cash crops in the Oxnard Plain. And so we we work on this sort of industry commercial side. Our challenge right now, is, you know, with 100 graduate students, we would normally be inviting 25 to 30 new graduate students coming to Iowa from all around the world to study these things.
01;12;40;22 - 01;12;44;00
Speaker 1
Each fall, this fall, we'll have two new students.
01;12;44;03 - 01;12;45;01
Speaker 3
Why?
01;12;45;03 - 01;13;03;23
Speaker 1
Because students internationally do not want to come to the United States, and two, because of cuts in federal funding in order for us to protect the jobs of our full time staff, we have chosen to keep those people on, on payroll, rather than, sacrifice, you know, their jobs.
01;13;03;25 - 01;13;24;20
Speaker 3
Why did, so federal is giving you 12 million, which probably doesn't feel like enough, but you really, it feels like it should be a shining jewel for Iowa, and they should put a little more money into it. That's easy for me to say from the peanut gallery, but, Yeah, I don't know what, what is going on there?
01;13;24;22 - 01;13;50;29
Speaker 1
Well, it's a challenge. And because before 2008, we got zero from the state of Iowa, okay? We were all grant and contract funded and federally funded the flood center and moving the Geological survey to the university, you know, ended up with that $2 million. The Geological Survey, came in 2014. That's when we made that transition. And from 2014 until last year, they had a budget of $695,000.
01;13;51;01 - 01;13;59;13
Speaker 1
When you compare that next nearest 14 states to Iowa, the average geological survey, there's one in every state is funded at $4 million.
01;13;59;13 - 01;14;00;05
Speaker 2
Wow.
01;14;00;08 - 01;14;34;04
Speaker 1
And so this last year, on the hard work of Keith and myself and advocating for our programs, we were able to get a $200,000 increase in that budget. The Iowa flood Center began in, 2009, with a $1.3 million state appropriation. Governor Branstad, came back to the governor's office. He raised us to 1.5 million and then in 2017, when the Iowa legislature flipped to a full, Republican control House and Senate, they zero day silent, 2017.
01;14;34;06 - 01;14;59;14
Speaker 1
And we had hundreds, if not thousands of points of contact on the legislature the morning that that news was released and the legislature restored us, at 1.2 million. And we've been flat ever since then. Wow. And the reason they zeroed us out, the, the language was use that they didn't like the fact that the Iowa Flood Center was studying water quality in Iowa and the floods.
01;14;59;16 - 01;15;17;06
Speaker 1
Well, the reality is that the work that we were doing and water quality was moneys that came through the Iowa Nutrient Research Center to fund our work, not flood center money. So the flood center focused on floods. The nutrient center did nutrients. The Geological Survey does geology. But it was all under this.
01;15;17;09 - 01;15;20;28
Speaker 2
The budget was. And the reason they didn't like it that you were studying, waterfall.
01;15;21;00 - 01;15;48;16
Speaker 1
All right. So now flash forward a couple years and two years ago, the legislature decided to cut the budget of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center by 500,000. So from roughly 1.5 million a year to 1 million, that was administered across the all the Iowa Nutrient Research Center programs. And then the following year, it became more evident that the intent was not to have that be a universal cut, but to simply cut our program.
01;15;48;18 - 01;15;58;09
Speaker 1
And so beginning, last year, we no longer get funding from the state of Iowa to run the nation's largest and most important water quality monitoring network.
01;15;58;11 - 01;16;00;05
Speaker 3
So where do you go to get that funding?
01;16;00;10 - 01;16;08;13
Speaker 1
So thankfully, we approached the Walton Family Foundation and, they saw the importance of keeping it running. And they.
01;16;08;15 - 01;16;12;18
Speaker 2
We talked about that in a coffee time. The guy from Feather Fest told us about that.
01;16;12;20 - 01;16;14;19
Speaker 3
Walton Family Foundation. Yeah, yeah.
01;16;14;24 - 01;16;51;07
Speaker 1
So they provided, two year grant to us to keep it running for two years, but they made it clear and said that this is only bridge funding. And we expect you, Larry, to go out and find either corporate funding, foundation funding, state or federal funding. And, you know, and when you do that or when I'm doing that, you go to private foundations and you think about the needs that they get, or, and requests that they get today, to help people write, to help all across all the spectrum of the the needs that people in society have, they're not really interested in, like, funding stop signs on our roadways.
01;16;51;07 - 01;16;51;25
Speaker 2
Yeah.
01;16;51;27 - 01;17;19;10
Speaker 1
You know, so they're not really interested in funding, you know, water quality monitoring systems. It's really a state or federal responsibility. Last fall, in September, I invited, the acting assistant administrator of the Office of Water from EPA Bruno Pig head to Iowa. He spent a day in Des Moines at Des Moines Waterworks. He spent an afternoon that afternoon on, farmer, around the Des Moines area looking at conservation practices.
01;17;19;13 - 01;17;44;09
Speaker 1
And then he spent the second day with us learning more about the the work that we do, in eastern Iowa and across Iowa and water quality, he had a real interest in funding our program. His position was, a politically appointed position under the Biden administration. And I think the general consensus is that currently at the EPA, they don't have an interest in, funding a water quality monitoring network in Iowa.
01;17;44;12 - 01;17;45;18
Speaker 4
01;17;45;20 - 01;17;55;02
Speaker 1
So next year, in, probably late July, we'll pull all our sensors out and that'll be the end of the network unless we find another way to fund it in the interim.
01;17;55;02 - 01;18;07;15
Speaker 2
Wow, wow. And it's ask Iowa. What's your economy? Farming. What do you need? Soil and water. Well, should you keep an eye on him?
01;18;07;18 - 01;18;10;11
Speaker 4
You know, it's just it's just worth it.
01;18;10;14 - 01;18;32;05
Speaker 2
And then you factor in, well, what directly impacts you, what directly impacts your health? Not interested. It's just it is. I mean, if you're an Iowan, you should be offended by that. Yeah. It's an insult to your health and your intelligence that that, the the powers that be get away with that. It's it's a big screw.
01;18;32;05 - 01;19;00;16
Speaker 2
You get out of the way. Somebody needs to make their money. And that I normally don't get so impassioned politically, but that's what that that's exactly what that is. And, it I mean, well, correlation is not causation, but it is real. Dang interesting that our building interest, that our cancer rate is as high as it is, the rate of increase is as high as it is.
01;19;00;19 - 01;19;10;12
Speaker 2
And our water quality is as poor as it is. And to then say, no, we do not want anyone monitoring that. We will not support that.
01;19;10;14 - 01;19;12;06
Speaker 3
Yeah. Get out of our closet.
01;19;12;07 - 01;19;27;18
Speaker 2
Right. It's it's, it's it's a, it's a direct effort to keep people blind and not saying they want people to be sick, but they really don't care if they are. And and that's, that's wrong.
01;19;27;20 - 01;19;42;05
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. The, here's, if you find funding, I hope you find it from this podcast. This is all we ask is that you take Kanai on a river rafting trip.
01;19;42;07 - 01;19;49;05
Speaker 4
That's all we want. Neither one of us is equipped for a 28ft freefall.
01;19;49;07 - 01;19;54;04
Speaker 1
I was trying to figure out, you know, how you guys would be kneeling in the front of the boat? Who would have their arms.
01;19;54;04 - 01;20;02;21
Speaker 4
Around you, like. Well, while you were screaming. Yeah, I would be praying. I'd be holding on to Ken. Oh, like, I.
01;20;02;21 - 01;20;03;15
Speaker 3
Think he's not going to.
01;20;03;15 - 01;20;05;25
Speaker 4
Budge. Well, you know.
01;20;05;28 - 01;20;24;12
Speaker 1
So having been down, you know, the snake, and, the salmon River, when you get down near the confluence, there was, you know, back in the 1960s, you know, in the hydropower and flood control systems were being built in the country and, and the, the three dams of the, of the snake River complex were built with Brownlee in Hell's Canyon.
01;20;24;12 - 01;20;54;24
Speaker 1
Oxbow. There was a dam that was proposed for the lower part of the, of the snake River, called the High Mountain Sheep Dam. Okay. And and again, when I float that river and, and I think in going through that gorge where that dam didn't get built. And the reason it didn't get built is that as the funding was going through the federal Congress, the outfitters were bringing, congressional men and women out there and taking them down the river and giving them float trips and taking them on hunting trips and showing them what a loss that would be for our country.
01;20;54;27 - 01;21;12;23
Speaker 1
And, you know, and I think for the same thing in Iowa, you know, what a loss it is for the state of Iowa that we don't put our water, natural resources at a higher level. Why is it that we expect that we go to, you know, to Minnesota and Canada for lake fishing and the 10,000?
01;21;12;28 - 01;21;13;05
Speaker 2
Yeah.
01;21;13;09 - 01;21;26;05
Speaker 1
Why is it that we have to go to Colorado in the mountain streams, you know, to, you know, to recreate on streams and yet, you know, they say, well, you know, for the intended uses, you know, we should forget about the streams of Iowa, do you think not? Right.
01;21;26;07 - 01;21;35;12
Speaker 3
That's because Prairie was so easy to rip up compared to some of those trees and stuff like that, that we were able to do it before anyone looked around and and made a difference.
01;21;35;13 - 01;21;40;07
Speaker 2
Well, that soil, the soil under it was just so you could grow what you wanted to grow.
01;21;40;11 - 01;21;58;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. And again, I think it's unfair for us really to go back and try to put judgment on what happened 100 years ago. You know, when people were trying to do what they thought was the right thing for them at the time. I think where I get frustrated is that I think we know what some good things that we should be doing now are.
01;21;58;15 - 01;22;27;13
Speaker 1
And again, I talked about, you know, the conversion of, of real crop agriculture in the two year floodplain, something that we should be moving with much greater pace on. The adoption of these conservation practices should happen, you know, the perform environmental performance standards when you sign up for and take federal and state assistance, you know, you should have some more holistic, like the conservation stewardship program that Senator Harkin, brought to USDA, back when he served Iowa, the program that's never been fully funded.
01;22;27;13 - 01;22;37;15
Speaker 1
We fund CRP, but we don't fund that whole farm program, CSP program like it could be funded. You know, there are so many different things that we could do, but it takes strength of leadership to do it.
01;22;37;22 - 01;22;40;00
Speaker 2
Yeah. And and admitting there's a problem.
01;22;40;04 - 01;22;41;13
Speaker 1
And a problem.
01;22;41;18 - 01;22;55;03
Speaker 2
And that's I mean that's that's really where it starts. What's a body of water. Let's get it. Let's get off on it. Let's finish on a good a good a good note here. What's a body of water you're scared of. Like like a famous body of water. Oh, because I definitely have two on my list.
01;22;55;05 - 01;23;14;16
Speaker 1
Okay, well, that I'm scared of. I mean, I'm scared of the power of water, you know? So, you know, believe me, when I've gone down the snake and the. Yeah, the the, salmon River. I'm not frightened to a in, you know, inability not to do that, activity, but I'm very respectful of the river and and I think that's an important piece to remember.
01;23;14;16 - 01;23;15;29
Speaker 1
Water has power.
01;23;16;01 - 01;23;20;20
Speaker 2
I'm scared of the North Sea, okay? And I'm scared of the Congo River.
01;23;20;22 - 01;23;21;17
Speaker 3
Why? Why?
01;23;21;22 - 01;23;23;12
Speaker 2
Because the North Sea is.
01;23;23;20 - 01;23;36;20
Speaker 4
There's sea monsters in there, man. It's for the fun the Vikings were scared of. The Vikings are scared of something. Everybody should be scared of it. We just seem so angry and cold and dark and deep. Yeah, and there's sea monsters in there.
01;23;36;20 - 01;23;39;25
Speaker 3
There's for sure sea monsters. And there might be in our pond.
01;23;39;25 - 01;23;42;20
Speaker 2
And the Congo River is so deep.
01;23;42;22 - 01;23;44;10
Speaker 3
I think the. Is it really I didn't yeah, I.
01;23;44;10 - 01;23;50;27
Speaker 2
Think I think it's. And that's an angry river too. I mean, you look at that, it's so turbulent and and it's like 700ft deep.
01;23;51;00 - 01;23;52;14
Speaker 3
What really.
01;23;52;16 - 01;23;54;22
Speaker 1
I don't know that to be true, but, I'll take care.
01;23;54;29 - 01;23;59;15
Speaker 4
Of that fact. Check it real quick. All right. I think I think the deepest parts. Lake. Yeah.
01;23;59;18 - 01;24;07;14
Speaker 2
I mean, when I heard that, it was like, you got to be kidding me. And the Amazon, of course, creeps me out. There's a million things in the Amazon, I can tell you. Yeah, but I think I would have rather.
01;24;07;16 - 01;24;14;10
Speaker 3
Is in the Congo where, like people say, they used to see those like 60ft snakes or whatever. Isn't that that.
01;24;14;10 - 01;24;16;28
Speaker 2
Oh like the titanoboa. Yeah. Yeah. It could be.
01;24;16;29 - 01;24;18;13
Speaker 3
720ft.
01;24;18;15 - 01;24;18;26
Speaker 1
Wow.
01;24;18;27 - 01;24;21;01
Speaker 3
That's reaching depths up to. I mean, what's.
01;24;21;01 - 01;24;29;20
Speaker 2
The greatest depth of Lake Michigan? It's got to be close. I think superior's over a thousand, isn't it? Yes.
01;24;29;22 - 01;24;34;15
Speaker 3
Of Lake Michigan, 922.
01;24;34;19 - 01;24;36;26
Speaker 2
That's crazy. So it's almost it's almost there.
01;24;36;27 - 01;24;37;23
Speaker 1
Yeah. Crazy.
01;24;37;25 - 01;24;39;09
Speaker 2
Yeah. That just creeps me out.
01;24;39;12 - 01;24;56;14
Speaker 1
Well, but when you think about it again, you know what? When we when we look back in time and, you know, the things like the creation of the national park system, you know, creation of the Clean Drinking Water Act, you know, where are those? You know, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats that want to be, you know, the conservation.
01;24;56;22 - 01;25;19;24
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, leaders of our of our day, where are they? And, you know, I wish that we could find champions out there. Today, when we hear about what's going on both in our state legislature and our federal legislature, the conservation groups that I'm involved in, it's all about playing defense. It's. We stop this bad bill, and we stop that bad bill, and, you know, and yet those bad bills keep coming back each year.
01;25;19;27 - 01;25;21;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. When are we going to have what are we.
01;25;21;08 - 01;25;24;01
Speaker 3
Making new Neal Smith? Reservations.
01;25;24;02 - 01;25;24;14
Speaker 1
You know.
01;25;24;17 - 01;25;46;05
Speaker 3
Exactly. Wildlife. I mean, one, thank you for joining us today. Really great message. You. I know you speak a lot, but you said it very eloquently. My my doll brain was able to comprehend what was going on. And I think that's important. And for people listening, there are things you can do to make a difference. If you got a million bucks laying around.
01;25;46;05 - 01;26;08;02
Speaker 3
Yeah, you can put, you know, 500 acres into prairie, but you have no money in your bank account. You can share this episode and help people just understand it's a big deal. We're not trying to rile people up to be emotional. We're trying to show them that it actually is a big deal. And, and when enough of us realize it's a big deal and enough of us start talking about it, we don't even have to scream about it.
01;26;08;02 - 01;26;32;21
Speaker 3
We can just talk about it. Things will start to change. The conversation will start to change. Democrats and Republicans, I believe, will be able to see like these. The people who are voting for me say that this is important. So I need to do something about this. And let's not wait till it's too late. Let's not have to move out or get huge, huge federal grants of billions of dollars to deal with cancer in our state.
01;26;32;21 - 01;26;46;25
Speaker 3
Right. Let's actually do something about it now. So share this podcast or, Doctor Webber, where can they find some of this information you're talking about? If they want to actually really know what they're talking about, make sure what they're saying is, is accurate.
01;26;47;02 - 01;27;06;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. So very quickly, I mean, you can Google Air hydro Science and Engineering or the Iowa Flood Center and you'll come directly to our information sources there. We have online information sources. The Iowa Flood Information System is best in class. The Iowa Water Quality Information System is seen as best in class for water quality data and sharing.
01;27;06;13 - 01;27;13;21
Speaker 1
Anybody can go to those resources. And then we have a team of exceptional scientists, that can help and answer anybody's questions.
01;27;13;24 - 01;27;35;10
Speaker 3
So I'm going to give you guys a little life tip. Go in your phone, go to the notes section. And this is going to take you 30 minutes. And from from then on it's going to take you three minutes. Find all of the people that represent you at a local, state and federal level and then keep up with that list, write down their email, and then you just put them all, CC them all in an email.
01;27;35;10 - 01;28;01;18
Speaker 3
When you're passionate about something that affects all of their levels of government and just send them that, that email and they will start to get the word. So the first time, yes, it will take you 30 minutes to do it every time after that, you can write up a little thing three minutes and, and I, I guys every single person that lives in Iowa or a state surrounding Iowa or the Gulf of Mexico, you know, our legislators should have heard from all of us that are passionate.
01;28;01;18 - 01;28;23;14
Speaker 3
If you're listening for the first time, I really appreciate you being here. But if you're recurring, you call yourself a conservationist. Super, super important that your legislators hear from you because it doesn't happen in the water or in the soil. You know, conservation happens one mind at a time.

Hoksey Native Seeds

Ep. 274 Why Iowa's Water Quality Is So Bad with Dr. Larry Weber

Podcast Transcript

Ep. 275 (Coffee Time) How to Manage Land for Better Water Quality and Doug Duren’s New Podcast w/ Doug Duren

Ep. 273 (Coffee Time) Mitigating Big Bluestem and Rural Hospitals in the Big Beautiful Bill