Clean Water & Healthy Soil

Clean water. Clear accountability.

Clean water shouldn’t depend on your ZIP code, your income, or whether you can afford a filtration system. Iowans deserve safe drinking water, healthy rivers, and a government that protects both. Farmers deserve practical support for conservation. Communities deserve infrastructure they can afford. And taxpayers deserve proof that public money is working.

We support a statewide cleanup plan built around prevention: keep pollution out of rivers and groundwater, treat polluted drainage before it reaches streams, and protect people’s drinking water while those upstream changes take hold. It should be a funded, enforceable program, not just asking farmers to volunteer more and asking downstream households to pay for bigger treatment plants. We measure success by cleaner water, not press releases.

1. Start with the watersheds that supply drinking water

Iowa DNR’s 2026 water-quality assessment reports that portions of both the Iowa and Raccoon Rivers are now impaired for nitrates.¹ That makes protecting drinking-water sources a concrete priority, not an abstract goal.

We advocate for funded watershed cleanup teams, starting with the areas upstream of public drinking-water intakes and communities that rely on vulnerable private wells. These teams should:

Find the streams and drainage outlets sending the most pollution downstream.
Fund projects where they catch the most pollution, not just wherever someone happens to apply for a grant.
Monitor upstream and downstream, and publish the results.
Coordinate neighboring farms, drainage districts, towns, and utilities, instead of treating each property as a separate project.

Iowa already identifies impaired waters and writes Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), which are pollution budgets for a stream.² We want those budgets turned into funded cleanup plans with deadlines and clear responsibility.

2. Treat farm drainage, not just runoff you can see

Much of the pollution travels through underground drainage tile, so we advocate for catching that drainage before it enters streams. Iowa’s nutrient-reduction research already lists the tools, and finds that combining in-field and drainage-treatment practices is how to reach large reductions across a landscape.³

Practice	How it should be used
Treatment wetlands	Placed where they can take in drainage from many farms
Woodchip bioreactors	Treat suitable tile-drain outlets before the water reaches a stream
Saturated buffers	Send suitable tile drainage through streamside soil instead of letting it bypass the buffer
Cover crops and diverse rotations	Keep nutrients in the field, alongside treatment downstream

Placement matters. On average, saturated buffers remove about 42% of nitrate, but individual sites range from 7% to 92%, depending on soil, water movement, temperature, and design.⁴ So funding should cover site assessment, maintenance, and measured performance, not just installation counts.

Our rule: a project succeeds when it measurably reduces pollution, not when construction is finished.

3. Pair financial help with minimum requirements

Farmers and landowners should be paid to make changes that serve the public. But basic water protection should be an obligation, not a favor. We advocate for:

Multiyear payments for verified cover crops and other suitable conservation practices.
Public funding for shared wetlands and drainage treatment, including upkeep.
Fair payment for turning well-placed, repeatedly flooded or problem acres into perennial plants or wetlands.
Required nutrient plans that count both commercial fertilizer and manure.
Enforceable limits on spreading when runoff risk is high.
In priority watersheds, a phased requirement for an approved pollution-reduction plan, with money and technical help available before any deadline.

Help people comply, give them workable options, then enforce. No single practice fits every farm; the research supports combining approaches that suit local conditions.^3,4

4. More than nitrate, and more than farms

Nitrate is an urgent starting point, not the whole definition of clean water. Iowa assesses waters separately for drinking-water sources, recreation, aquatic life, and fish consumption, and fixing one doesn’t prove the others are safe.¹ Each watershed plan should name its real problems (nutrients, sediment, bacteria, or other contaminants) and assign a response:

Livestock operations: manure-management compliance, storage inspections, and fast investigation of spills.
Cities and towns: wastewater upgrades where needed, sewer repairs, and stormwater controls.
Industrial facilities: enforceable discharge limits and monitoring for their pollutants.
Rural homes: help repairing failing septic systems.
State agencies: targeted testing for pesticides, PFAS, and other contaminants where evidence or local conditions call for it.

City wastewater treatment is part of Iowa’s nutrient strategy too.⁵ Farming shouldn’t be an excuse to ignore other sources, and other sources shouldn’t be an excuse to ignore farm pollution.

5. Protect people while the cleanup happens

Drinking-water protection should run alongside watershed restoration. Nobody should have to wait years for safe water. We advocate for:

Free, easy private-well testing, with more testing where local risks call for it.⁷
Safe drinking water right away when a test finds an unsafe supply.
Help paying for home treatment, well repair, or connection to a safer supply.
Support for public utilities facing necessary treatment costs.
Clear public reporting that separates pollution in a river from the quality of treated tap water.

That last point matters. Iowa DNR’s drinking-water assessment asks whether a river is a safe source for drinking-water treatment.¹ A river impairment alone doesn’t prove your treated tap water breaks a standard.

6. Lasting funding and real accountability

We advocate for a long-term water-restoration fund supported by state money, federal conservation funding, and a contribution from pollution-generating activities set by the Legislature. Landowners and related businesses should share responsibility, so a tenant farmer doesn’t carry the whole cost of permanent improvements.

A public dashboard should report:

Pollution levels and total loads.
Weather-adjusted trends, so wet and dry years don’t hide the real direction.
Acres and drainage areas actually being treated.
Whether installed projects still work.
Spending compared with measured pollution reduction.
Progress at drinking-water intakes and for each water use.

Iowa’s strategy already sets a goal of cutting nitrogen and phosphorus loads by 45%.⁶ We support keeping a meaningful statewide target and adding enforceable watershed milestones, independent review, and automatic corrective action when progress falls short.

A realistic timeline

Year one: set baseline monitoring, expand drinking-water protection, name priority watersheds, and fund ready-to-build projects.
Years 2–5: build drainage treatment at scale, expand conservation contracts, and phase in minimum requirements.
Years 5–10: measure results, strengthen requirements where needed, and keep funding upkeep instead of abandoning projects.

These are deadlines for the work, not promises that every river and aquifer will recover on that schedule. Iowa already has the research. What’s missing is organizing the money, requirements, and monitoring around putting those practices where they measurably clean the water.

Volunteer: Clean Water & Healthy Soil

Our newest program turns this plan into action in your community. Volunteers:

Share free well-testing information with neighbors who use private wells
Teach water-friendly gardening in Iowa Victory Gardens: cover crops, mulch, and smart watering
Join river and stream cleanups with local partners
Learn and teach how hemp is being studied for cleaning polluted soil (our hemp history)
Speak up at the Capitol for clean-water policy with our Legislative team

Sources and resources

The Iowa Cannabis Action Network is a nonpartisan 501(c)(4). We advocate for policies, not candidates or parties. This page is for education and is not legal, medical, or engineering advice.