Roughly 40 members of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Coralville gathered on Sunday to discuss concerns over water quality and what the local community can do to improve Iowa waters.
Hosted by the church’s Green Team, a group dedicated to promoting environmentally friendly practices, the meeting invited the local community and its church members to learn, “What’s in our water? Where does it come from? And what can we do about it?”
The initiative comes out of the church’s Laudato Si’ mission — a faith-based sustainable initiative based on the late Pope Francis’ calls for climate action in the Laudato Si encyclical, a letter sent out from the pope to all bishops in the Catholic Church.
The letter urges the community to act responsibly through ecological awareness and sustainability practices. The church’s plan has four goals: to learn from the earth, hear the poor, live simply, and help heal the planet.
This summer, Iowa faced elevated nitrate levels, with the Iowa River surpassing the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10 mg/L for water. While Iowa City managed to maintain water due to lower demand and effective treatment strategies, according to the Central Iowa Water Works, Des Moines struggled to keep up. Des Moines imposed lawn watering bans to reduce stress on its system.
Nearly all cited concern of their water quality as the reason they attended, with several specifically mentioning concerns about Iowa’s cancer rate, which is the second-highest in the nation and rising faster than in any other state, according to Iowa Cancer Registry.
Mary Hacker, a member of the parish, said, “I’m particularly concerned about my grandchildren. What’s going to happen [to] them with the environment?”
Hacker’s worries highlight a growing concern about environmental health, a concern echoed by speakers like Mike Stine, an Iowa City resident, who emphasized proactive steps, such as testing Iowa’s water.
He personally tested his water and compared it to water found outdoors at an Iowa City park, and found the water from the tap had nearly as much nitrate as water found outdoors.
“Whatever you pull from the river, that’s probably what you’re drinking,” Stine said.
RELATED: Iowa City water treatment holds steady in face of elevated summer nitrate levels
According to the Environmental Working Group, nitrates are chemical compounds found in fertilizers and animal waste that can seep into groundwater and streams. In high concentrations, they can be harmful to human health, especially for infants and pregnant women.
Jennifer Breon, a speaker at the event and Iowa’s Food and Water Watch organizer, outlined the connection between industrial farming practices and the state’s worsening water quality.
She said that most hogs are raised in confined animal feeding operations, where manure is concentrated in lagoons that can often run off into water ways.
“There is no regulation on the amount of manure or fertilizer that can be applied at the state level,” Breon said, adding that waste is often sprayed on fields where it can easily run off into streams and rivers.
Breon said animals should be put back on pasture, evenly spreading fertilizer, but acknowledged changes would face opposition.
A report commissioned by Polk County found 80 percent of nitrates in the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers were directly linked to agriculture.
“We are up against multiple multibillion dollar industries,” Breon said. “We have a state government that is captured by an industry that is treating Iowa and its landscape like a sacrifice and a place for them to extract profit.”
She also acknowledged the amount of people attending the meeting and the hope for an increasing number of people to speak up and lobby for the legislature.
“We need folks like all of you to speak up about this issue,” Breon said.