Ames, IA — Today, Food & Water Watch, Progress Iowa, Iowa Environmental Council, and Driftless Water Defenders hosted a community forum at Iowa State University, on solutions to Iowa’s worsening factory farm water pollution crisis.

Speakers called for passage of the Clean Water for Iowa Act, which would require water pollution monitoring at more than 4,000 factory farms currently operating without pollution oversight.

Food & Water Watch research outlines the human impact of unregulated factory farm water pollution on public health, recreation and water bills. Iowa ranks #1 in the nation for factory farm waste, an established and unregulated threat to clean water; #2 in the nation for cancer rates; and more than half the state’s assessed waters are impaired.

The forum comes on the heels of a recent report commissioned by Polk County, which found that 80% of the nitrates found in the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers — the drinking water source for more than half a million Iowans — are directly tied to industrial agriculture, including factory farm manure and pesticides. High nitrate levels have contaminated drinking water across the region. Drinking nitrate contaminated water is linked to a host of negative health outcomes including birth defects and cancers.

Food & Water Watch Iowa Organizer Michaelyn Mankel said:

“Factory farms are at the heart of Iowa’s water pollution crisis. This summer put the issue front and center for many Iowans — our elected officials cannot ignore the facts any longer. The Clean Water for Iowa Act must be priority legislation next session to crack down on factory farm polluters.”

Chris Jones, water scientist and President of Driftless Water Defenders, said: “It seems the time may have finally arrived when the public’s cries for better water are being heard. But as Churchill said, ‘this isn’t the beginning of the end of the fight, it’s the end of the beginning’. Demands for something better from Iowa Agriculture and our political leaders will need to be zealous and relentless to overcome the entrenched system that can’t survive without a license to pollute.”

Iowa Environmental Council Staff Attorney Michael Schmidt said: “For decades, Iowans across the state have faced increasing pollution of our drinking water sources. The pollution affects our health in ways we’re just beginning to understand, and costs money for people downstream to treat. We need the state to step up and address the problem head on.”