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Impairment In Iowana Essay

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Currently, Iowa has some of the worst waters in the nation. The Clean Water Act requires states to biannually test surface water to determine impairments. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources defines impairment as “A waterbody is impaired when its water quality does not fully support that waterbody’s designated uses for human contact, aquatic life, or drinking water.” They note that an impairment on one part of a stream or river does not necessarily mean that at other points of the waterbody it is constituted as impaired. The meaning deals with what the waterbody is designated for and whether it meets the standards set for that use. The amount of Iowa water bodies listed as impaired is very high, but there are also many bodies that …show more content…

The options we have available to alleviate this situation are few. One option, considered by many is simply to do nothing. This is advanced by many who believe that since we can treat the water we should not be placing any more burden upon our farmers. Most Republicans in the state legislature believe this is the best idea, because it is better to have the Des Moines Water Works to have to pay to fix the water than to place costly measure upon farmers and hurt out economy. However, this option does not fix our increasingly polluted water, and does not help fix the increasing Dead Zone.
DMWW already tried suing upstream farmers and counties to have their runoff under the Clean Water Act however, the judge declared that the issue should be left to the state legislature. Those listed in the lawsuit were farmers located in the counties of Buena Vista, Calhoun, and Sac, each in Northern Iowa and feeding waters into the Raccoon River. Because this legal action was thrown out, the judicial approach is an unlikely path for any future policy change in this instance. Because of the judge’s ruling that the legislature is the only way to change this, that means a bill is how it will have to be fixed. The best option to alleviate farm runoff would be to impose similar regulations to what the state of Minnesota has done. The

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