The question is whether one Iowa county's promising new approach to an old problem can be expanded enough to finally address nitrate pollution that, for years, has endangered drinking water.
Polk County is doing it by making it painless for farmers — handling all the logistics and arrangements for the systems — and throwing in payments of $1,000 per site. Installations have exploded in the past two years, to 104, after only a handful were installed the eight years before that.
It’s easy to see why. Yields of corn — the king crop in these parts, and planted on about 90 million acres nationwide — are at least doubled by fertilizer, and farmers want to be sure their crops have enough nutrients. Adding to the problem are the quick drainage systems that lie beneath so many fields — known as tiles, but actually plastic pipes — that whoosh excess water away and into streams.
Iowa is among the largest contributors of nitrate runoff that flows to the Gulf, leading to the so-called dead zone by depleting oxygen necessary for marine life across several thousand square miles. Without hope of state mandates, local officials in Polk County sought to work cooperatively with agricultural groups. Part of that was studying why so few farmers were installing bioreactors and streamside buffers. They found an inefficient system for installation that made it expensive and bothersome for farmers, who had to arrange contractors and then seek reimbursement.
“We’re making it easy for a landowner to say yes, and then we bring the resources," Naig said."These are essentially 100% paid for. Either way, the work has to get done, and to have willing landowners and willing producers get involved, that will work much better.”
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