Marty St. Clair spoke about water quality issues at the Voices United of Rural Linn County event Wednesday, Sept. 17.

St. Clair said he has worked in chemistry for the University of Iowa, Coe College and now as part of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa.

One of the items that CHEEC monitors is the level of nitrate sources across the state.

“This summer, there were times when you would look at a map of the state of Iowa, and all of our water sources were indicating heightened nitrate sources across the entire state,” St. Clair said.

A lot of people were made aware of the issue of higher pFABs and nitrate levels in drinking water due to the abnormally high results in the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers this summer. The Des Moines area draws some of its water from those rivers.

One note St. Clair wanted Mount Vernon and Lisbon city water users to know – the aquifers that provide water to both communities are extremely safe.

“Those towns draw on deep water aquifers, which means the level of nitrates and pFABs is extremely low in both communities,” St. Clair said.

For those who are not on a city water line, however, that isn’t necessarily the case. Rural wells, depending how deep they are placed, could be encountering levels of nitrates or pFABs higher than would be recommended. It’s the landowners responsibility to test and know the levels in their well and take corrective actions if they need to. Tests are provided for free from the county..

St. Clair said that the state has come a long way from practices that allowed for dumping raw sewage into water without treatment. That came from regulations on safe drinking water that were enacted.

“One of the things to note in the safe drinking water act is all point sources have to have their water tested,” St. Clair said. “The law very specifically excludes non-point surfaces from being tested.”

All cities in the state have nutrient reduction strategies that are monitored and passed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources that a community has to adhere.

St. Clair explained that 78 percent of our atmosphere is nitrogen gas.

“It just doesn’t do much as a gas,” St. Clair said. “Plants won’t use it when it’s just in our atmosphere alone.”

When it is turned into nitrate or nitrites, however, plants will absorb or utilize that.

The issue is nitrates and nitrites are very water soluble.

“When it’s applied to fields, there are microbes and other things in the soil who will use it and turn it into things that are usable by growing plants,” St. Clair said.

The issue is that most nitrates, be that from anhydrous ammonia or from animals, get applied to fields before farming begins.

The other edge of that sword, however, is what happens when it rains and the applied nitrogen sloughs off the field. Corn as a crop doesn’t like a lot of water, especially near its roots. So farmers have installed drainage tiles underneath the ground surface to drain a lot of water away quickly. Nitrogen, because it is water soluble, will ride along with that water.

“The more fertilizer we’re applying to crops, the more nitrates are making their way into our water systems,” St. Clair said.

And while the Cedar River’s level of nitrates hasn’t spiked as high as the Des Moines or Raccoon Rivers, they have been over the recommended 10 milligrams per million quite a few times.

It’s especially dangerous after it rains, St. Clair said in the question and answer period.

“That’s when we usually see the highest spikes of nitrates across the state is after a good rain,” St. Clair said.

St. Clair explained that high levels of nitrates in drinking water, especially continued exposure to those high levels, can contribute to increased cancer risks, increased birth defects in children and other maladies.

“It’s a tasteless, odorless and colorless item in the water, and so without testing, you don’t know what those levels are,” St. Clair said.

The nitrates also pass through from the Cedar River to the Mississippi River and eventually the Gulf streams, contributing to the dead zone or areas of hypoxia there.

St. Clair said that some farming practices like use of cover crops, buffer strips and bio-reactors are helpful in reducing the increase, but if a field is highly tiled, even some of those practices may be ineffective.

“Every farm is different,” St. Clair said. “The goal of any mitigations is to slow the water down to have a chance to have some of the items water is carrying to be stopped in the field.”

As for an answer on how to stop the amount of nitrates in water sheds, that may be a costly example.

St. Clair said that the mitigation for one watershed near Brandon would amount to a $2.3 million expenditure, including taking a portion of cropland out of production to increase wetlands or other areas to help reduce phosphorus and nitrates by 40 percent.

“Iowa has roughly 2,500 similar watersheds,” St. Clair said.

St. Clair encouraged locals to get to know more about local watersheds and think about how to minimize their own nitrogen contributions (animal waste) or about the farming practices you want to support with your money. That Iowans should recreate with caution in any waterway in the state, noting the high levels of nitrates.

And most importantly is to advocate to any candidates in elections that water quality is an important issue to you and you want to know where they would stand on any changes.

“The most important step for everyone is to do something,” St. Clair said.

When it comes to increase of nitrates alone leading to the increase of cancer rates in the state, St. Clair said that may be jumping causation to correlation, when there are other factors that are at play there as well.