In Your Nature

IWILL but so far, they won't

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In the spring of 2010, I was nearing the end of my term as the President of the Iowa Academy of Science. A constitutional amendment (“IWILL” – Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy) was on the ballot that upcoming fall to establish the “Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund.” In my President’s Address at the annual meeting, I highlighted this upcoming vote, and although I was sternly cautioned to not promote voting in a particular way, I did point out that the Iowa Academy of Science had a long history of supporting the protection of Iowa’s natural resources. Past Presidents, including Louis Pammel and Bohumil Shimek had, for example, helped lead the charge to establish a State Park system in Iowa. Iowans still benefit from their efforts. Regardless of the efficacy, or appropriateness, of my comments, the constitutional amendment passed with 63% of the vote and the Trust Fund was established.

The goals of the Trust Fund were to use the proceeds from a 3/8 of a cent sales tax increase to provide increased funding for the Department of Natural Resources and other state and local agencies to improve water quality in our rivers and lakes, acquire and manage public land for recreation and wildlife habitat, protect soil from erosion, and help attract people to visit and live in Iowa. The current estimate is that $170 to $180 million dollars per year would be generated using this approach. Unfortunately, our legislature, in its great wisdom, concluded that solving these problems did not require any additional resources and never funded the trust. Instead, they established a Voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which focused only on some of these issues. Over the past ten years this approach has accomplished virtually nothing other than creating some demonstration projects scattered around the state. I appreciate those landowners who chose to implement some of these voluntary strategies, but overall, their efforts are woefully inadequate to address the scale of the problem. Now, sixteen years after the Trust Fund was established, we still have seriously impaired water quality in our rivers and lakes, about 2% of our land is available for public recreation, our topsoil continues flowing downstream to the Gulf of Mexico, and we can’t keep many of our own children in the state, let alone attract bright and capable young people from elsewhere. Over those sixteen years the trust fund would have generated over $2.5 BILLION dollars that could have been used to address these substantial and on-going problems. This is a major missed opportunity, and one that we may well continue to miss – even though current polling shows that 69% of Iowa voters support funding the trust. If it sounds as though I’m “angry” about this, it’s only because I am. The people have spoken, and our legislators have not listened.

Approaches such as this ARE possible. Nearby states have used similar approaches to protect natural resources and to acquire and manage land providing outdoor recreation opportunities for the public. Missouri – yes THAT Missouri - the one that some native Iowans “joke” about by claiming that ceding the two southern tiers of Iowa counties to Missouri would “raise the IQ of both states.” THAT Missouri enacted a 1/8 of a cent tax for conservation in 1976 that currently generates about $160 million a year to support natural resources and public lands. Maybe it’s Iowa that needs a higher IQ.

One might ask why the State Legislature has failed for sixteen straight years to fund something that, in these politically polarized days, has a remarkably high level of support amongst those they represent. I’m a biologist, not a political scientist so I can’t claim expertise in this realm, but this is what it looks like to me. Large, wealthy, landowners and big agribusinesses want to continue to mine Iowa’s soils for as much money as they can possibly get as quickly as they can possibly get it. They are growing huge quantities of corn because of a price support driven by the production of ethanol fuel. They cram 33 million hogs a year into confined animal feeding operations and produce immense amounts of manure that gets spread on too little land and ends up in our water.

If the Department of Natural Resources had more funding, they might be able to more effectively enforce regulations already on the books. There might be more land in natural areas for the public to enjoy rather than being used to make wealthy people even wealthier. The public land we do have might be better managed and maintained. The people of Des Moines might be allowed to water their lawns in the summer. These wealthy people and the legislators that they have, apparently, purchased don’t want there to be more funding for natural resources. They don’t care if the public has clean water to swim, canoe, or fish in. They can afford to go somewhere with clean water to recreate. They would rather spend public money to produce safe drinking water from polluted source water to mollify the public, rather than preventing the polluted water in the first place. They certainly don’t want the State Legislature (as far as I can tell, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Farm Bureau), to enact any regulations that would effectively address these issues as that might impede their opportunity to get even more wealthy. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the trust has not been funded. Money for a few and crap for the rest of us.

There is a current effort to finally get the Legislature’s full attention about the Trust Fund. The intent is to remind them that they are supposed to represent US – and that 69% of us want the Trust Fund to be funded. We need to stop missing out on year after year of sustained funding that could be used to protect, maintain, and improve our natural resources here in Iowa. If you’ve read this far, I encourage you to go to Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy and sign up to support this important, and long overdue, effort. Maybe, if enough of us remind them, our legislators will remember who they represent and, finally, do the right thing for Iowa and its people.

If you’ve read this piece, or any other of my pieces, you’re probably asking some version of this question: “How did Jim get to be so weird?”. Now for the low, low price of $15.95 (plus tax and shipping), you can answer that compelling question. Click here. Proceeds (should any ever occur) donated to local environmental groups.