Sean Dengler.

After growing up on well water and witnessing it change my white basketball and football jerseys to an off-white color, I thought I would never worry about the impact of water again. Despite having the largest nitrate removal facility in the world, my water provider, Central Iowa Water Works, is making me think about water again. While no white shirts are turning beige, lawn watering is restricted, and I must worry about the water I am drinking.

As of press time, everyone can drink out of their own faucets at their own peril. At these rates, even at the treated level, people are at risk of cancer for drinking water above the 3 mg/L threshold. According to retired water engineer Chris Jones, people living in Polk County are drinking above 3 mg/L. To avoid this high nitrate water, one must rely on bottled or canned water or invest in personal infrastructure like a reverse osmosis device. With the human body being around 60% water, it is important to prevent drinking high nitrate water. The way we treat the water impacts how we treat ourselves. Unfortunately, this wonderful facility is only treating the symptom and not the cold.

This high nitrate water is a public health concern. It is not only happening in Des Moines, but across the state. On June 16, the Iowa Water Quality Information System (WQIS showed nitrates for the two rivers which feed into the Des Moines metro area’s water supply at 12.7 mg/L of nitrate at the Raccoon River sensor in Van Meter and 15.7 for the Des Moines River in Des Moines. The federal standard can be no higher than 10 mg/L, and research dating back 25 years ago shows that nitrate above 3 mg/L is associated with a variety of negative health consequences including cancer and birth defects. At the same time, the Iowa River sensor near Marshalltown is at 17.2, and the West Fork Cedar River near Finchford is at 15.9.

While I do not know which communities pull their water directly from the river outside of Central Iowa Water Works, this problem probably exists in quite a few bodies of water across the state based on personal observations. It might not appear as pressing as the Flint, Mich. water crisis, but this issue matters just as much. We are dealing with a public health concern, and we need to take better action at the source of the problem. It is not enough to demand the public use their taxpayer dollars and their personal finances to protect themselves from monopoly power.

While some people might automatically blame farmers, they are not seeing the big picture. This might be biased based on my experience, but farmers are only playing in a system set up by these large, monopolistic companies. There are some bad actors in the farming bunch, but these bad actors are still playing within the overall system. Despite the rise in water quality issues in Iowa, the reduction of farmers with each generation, and the hollowing out of rural Iowa, who is truly benefiting from this system? Only the big companies. If the system is not working for those up and down stream but only the middlemen getting most of the profits and not the pollution, it is time to change the system. It is time to provide economic liberty for many and to put more farmers on the land.

We have done it before, and we can do it again. It is time to break up these large companies which have too much monopoly power in their industries. I do not want to worry about my drinking water. I only need to worry about whether my white shirt is changing to off-white.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, now-retired beginning farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.