Des Moines, IA — On Saturday, dozens of people joined Food & Water Watch, Progress Iowa, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and the Harkin Institute for a Water Quality Solutions Town Hall to discuss solutions to Iowa’s rising cancer rates and worsening industrial agriculture-linked water crisis. Groups plan to make the issue, long neglected by Iowa lawmakers, a priority next legislative session.

Impacted Iowans and community members came together in groups to discuss solutions to widespread toxic pesticide use, rampant factory farm pollution, gutted state water quality monitoring, and more.

Food & Water Watch Senior Iowa Organizer Michaelyn Mankel, an organizer of the event, said:

“Iowans want clean water. As today’s event showed, we are ready to get to work enacting bold solutions that put our health and environment first. Iowa’s worsening water crisis is widely and deeply felt. Together, we are united in demanding that clean water solutions be at the top of lawmakers’ agenda next session.”

Iowa drinking water is routinely contaminated with toxic nitrates in excess of the federal safety limit of 10mg/L. Drinking nitrate-contaminated water is linked to a host of negative health outcomes including birth defects and cancers; new evidence suggests that nitrate exposure may be toxic even at lower levels. Iowa has the nation’s fastest rising cancer rates, and the second-highest cancer rate overall.

This summer, nitrate levels in the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, Central Iowa’s urban drinking water supplies, were in excess of the federal nitrate safety threshold for 33 days. A recent report commissioned by Polk County, found that 80% of the rivers’ nitrates stem from industrial agriculture, including factory farms. Northeast Iowa’s sensitive driftless area has experienced decades of factory farm nitrate exposure above 10mg/L; 13 groups have petitioned EPA for emergency action.

Jen Sinkler, creative director for Progress Iowa said: “Groups of people working together come up with wildly creative and effective solutions for this problem that affects us all in some form. Water is an issue that unites people across all sorts of lines. Iowans want to see the legislature and other decision makers protect clean water and our health.”

Adam Shriver, Director of Wellness and Nutrition Policy at the Harkin Institute, said: “Since we hosted the Central Iowa Source Water Resource Assessment in August that attracted over 600 people in person and 3000 online views, the question we keep getting from the public is, ‘What can we do about this problem?’ This town hall is an excellent way to both find out about some potential policy solutions to our water quality issues and to learn how individual people have a big role to play in working for change.”

Ava Auen-Ryan, Organizing Director at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, said: “We want to improve our water for us and for future generations. That’s going to require addressing pollution from the factory farm industry head on as well as collecting and responding to reliable data through robust water quality monitoring.”

The push for state action comes as federal agencies turn their back on Iowa. The EPA rescinded its impaired waters designation for the state’s major urban drinking water sources, including segments of the Cedar, Des Moines, Iowa, Raccoon, and South Skunk rivers, despite finding that each was acutely contaminated with toxic nitrate levels in excess of federal limits.