2 Years Since Iowa's Water Quality Monitoring System Got State Support; Polk County Commits $200K To Keep Network Alive
EDIT
Most of the county’s 500,000 residents rely on the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers for their drinking water. Downstream from some of Iowa’s most intensively farmed counties, both rivers logged near record-high levels of nitrate pollution this year. The University of Iowa’s 60 sensors account for three-quarters of the state’s continuous water monitors. The U.S. Geological Survey manages an additional 12 sensors, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture employs eight in and around its research farms in north central Iowa.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources also reports data from monthly or twice-monthly sampling at a larger number of waterways across the state. That periodic data provides only a snapshot of overall water quality, said Weber. Despite providing the bulk of the state’s water quality data, the University of Iowa network has not received state funding since 2023, said Weber.
In 2023, the Iowa Legislature passed a bill slashing $500,000 in funding for the Iowa Nutrient Research Center—the same amount that the center had historically allocated to the University of Iowa sensor network. Sponsored by Republican state Sen. Dan Zumbach, a farmer, the bill diverted the half-million dollars to the Iowa Department of Agriculture to instead support voluntary conservation practices for farmers, such as planting buffer strips on the edge of fields to filter runoff or installing microbe-powered bioreactors to digest excess nitrate.
The bill also ended a requirement that the research center, housed at Iowa State University, collaborate with Iowa’s two other public universities. In the wake of the cuts, the Nutrient Research Center continued to fund the University of Iowa water quality network, absorbing the losses across its programs. The following year, however, the center discontinued the funding.
EDIT
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24102025/iowa-polk-county-water-quality-monitoring-agricultural-pollution/