In a “toxic terrain,” journalism exposes Iowa’s farm pollution problem

Real change occurs in America when civic pressures from outside the centers of influence force insiders to retreat. A compelling example of that type of systemic change is now unfolding in Iowa.

Severe water contamination from crop and livestock production linked to rising high rates of cancer has developed into a key election year issue in Iowa, one of the country’s most important farm states. Never before has industrial agriculture and its mammoth toxic discharges been subject in Iowa or any other state to such intense public scrutiny and condemnation.

One critical reason for that is environmental journalism, including the penetrating reporting in Toxic Terrain, a two-year project by The New Lede and Circle of Blue.

The articles were also widely republished by regional and national news organizations. In 28 deeply reported articles, Toxic Terrain played a huge role in elevating Iowa’s worst-in-the-nation water contamination and its nation-leading cancer rate to public examination.

Our work to fully explore the scandal of farm pollution and its health consequences, and our publishing partners in addition to Circle of Blue – Investigate Midwest, MinnPost, Iowa Capital Dispatch, The Guardian – also proved the influence of non-profit environmental journalism and collaboration in advancing the public interest.

Certainly Zach Lahn and Rob Sand, the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor, paid attention. Both are offering substantive ideas about how to deal with the danger to their constituents’ health, as well as the state’s reputation: Its nitrate-polluted water imperils a huge swath of the nation’s watershed downstream.

I broke the story of how Chris Jones, a Ph.D. chemist and water quality administrator, was pushed out of his University of Iowa post for eloquently critiquing the causes and condition of state’s miserable water quality. Jones is now the Democratic candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture. He’s put farm-related water pollution and cancer at the center of a campaign that is attracting big crowds to hear his insurgent message.

Reporting that matters

Just as in any other big transition in public opinion and civic well-being, change of this magnitude requires an accumulation of preceding events, like the bullying and danger and insensitivity that can lead to a prison riot. Well, it’s been a long time coming, but a political and civic jail break is occurring now in Iowa on water quality and cancer.

For decades it was common knowledge in academia and government that supersize farms and livestock operations are the largest water polluters in Iowa, and almost every other state. In 2015, for instance, the Des Moines-area regional drinking water utility filed a federal lawsuit to regulate nitrogen discharges from farms upstream of its Raccoon River treatment plant. High concentrations of nitrates, which form when nitrogen unites with oxygen, were contaminating the drinking water of 500,000 residents, the utility said.

The case, though, occurred in an era when the Iowa Farm Bureau and its allies in the grain, hog, chemical, equipment, and seed companies and associations had built an intimidating political empire. Former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad assailed the case as a “war on Iowa farmers” and it was dismissed in 2017 by US District Court Judge Leonard Terry Strand.

But Art Cullen, the editor of The Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa, made sure Iowans wouldn’t forget. He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for a series of tenacious editorials that challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa over nitrogen runoff and water pollution. It was the second Pulitzer awarded f0r investigations into agriculture’s toll on Iowa’s environment. James Risser of the Des Moines Register won the award in 1979 for a series of articles on damage caused by industrial farm practices.

Evidence of a crisis

The links between farm pollution and cancer, while newer, also were known in academia and government. A growing body of literature indicated potential associations that include an increased risk of cancer. Exposure to elevated levels of nitrates in drinking water has been linked by researchers to cancers of the blood, brain, breast, bladder and ovaries.

Cancer also was quietly discussed in countless neighborhoods where alarming numbers of people were being treated or dying of cancer. School administrators set aside seats at Friday night football games to recognize clusters of kids with malignancies. Wives near Decorah recorded the number of husbands killed by glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer. Homeowners knew who was sick or dying in their neighborhoods. Families counted the dead from cancer, especially among young adults.

In 2023, the Iowa Cancer Registry confirmed that the lives of Iowa’s 3.2 million residents could be injured or cut short by the nation’s second highest cancer rate. Iowa is one of only three US states where cancer is rising, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Toxic Terrain recognized there was more to the story. Much more. Our contributions were two-fold.

First was the project’s deep understanding of the cancer crisis in the Corn Belt. In 2022, just a year before, Brett Walton of Circle of Blue broke the story of Nebraska’s high juvenile cancer rate in counties that have elevated levels of nitrate and herbicides in the water.

And second, Circle of Blue had already developed expertise in the national scandal of agricultural pollution. Late in 2022 it published a series of reports on how phosphorus pollution from farm fields and big livestock and poultry operations were producing toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie and other iconic American waters. That project, supported by the Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation and the Joyce Foundation, made Circle of Blue aware of an even more dire emergency in the Corn Belt states from nitrate contamination.

With support from The New Lede, as well as the Fund For Investigative Journalism and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, Toxic Terrain dug deeper into the health and environmental damage caused by industrial farm practices, the source of the worst water pollution in the nation’s history.

Keeping after an important story

The depth of the reporting, its persistence, and its widespread publication by our non-profit partners validated public concern, and informed and aroused interest from other regional and national media, including recent reports by Politico and PBS.

Independent authorities also have gotten involved. Last year, Polk County, where Des Moines is located, published a 227-page study that found agricultural operations across Iowa are a leading cause of water pollution in the state, posing dire risks to public and environmental health.

Earlier this year The Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement and the Iowa Environmental Council released a study that found exposure to nitrates and pesticides from agriculture were critical factors in Iowa’s rising cancer incidence.

The veil of intimidation raised by the Farm Bureau and its farm sector allies is being shredded.

“Media coverage into cancer rates played a role in how the public engages with the issue,” said Audrey Tran Lam, who directs the Environmental Health Program at the University of Northern Iowa’s Center for Energy and Environmental Education.

A final point is in order here. Of the 14 states with the highest cancer incidence, Iowa and three others are in the Midwest Corn Belt, according to newest federal figures. Chemicals and manure pouring off farm fields and out of livestock and poultry production sites represent an intolerable and dangerous menace to water and human health. Farm industries are largely exempt from regulating their discharges. And though government has helped them concentrate their wealth in huge crop and livestock operations that generate millions of dollars in revenue, leaders have displayed scant interest in responsibly managing farm industry wastes.

That must change. Iowans this year are displaying the power of public activism, opinion, and accountability to compel agriculture to clean up its act. If they succeed, residents of other big and polluted farm states could follow Iowa’s lead.

Talk about big stories. There’s none more important in American environmental journalism.

A version of this article first appeared in Circle of Blue.

Featured image of an Iowa farm field by Carey Gillam.

(Opinion columns published in The New Lede represent the views of the individual(s) authoring the columns and not necessarily the perspectives of TNL editors.)