Central Iowa Water Works and water quality efforts around the state are getting a funding boost under a bill Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Monday.
The annual state agriculture and natural resources budget, House File 2771, includes $25 million in one-time money for Central Iowa Water Works to upgrade its nitrate removal facility with the goal of doubling capacity in three years.
“We all want the same solution on water quality,” Reynolds said at a June 1 bill signing event at the governor’s formal office in the Iowa Capitol. “And this is how we get there.”
The central Iowa organization recently asked customers to voluntarily cut outdoor water use by 50% to help ease the load on the nitrate removal facility as it works to clean the drinking water used by roughly 600,000 customers.
Last year, Central Iowa Water Works implemented an unprecedented lawn-watering ban because nitrate levels in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers that exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 10 milligrams per liter limit.
The legislation also creates a $10 million low-interest revolving loan program for small and medium-sized communities to upgrade drinking water and wastewater facilities.
And it provides $8 million to the Iowa Finance Authority’s Water Quality Financial Assistance Fund, which gives grants for upgrading water treatment facilities.
Reynolds announced the water quality funding package on May 1, and it passed in the final days of Iowa’s legislative session.
Much of the money for water quality initiatives comes from redirecting funding to programs Reynolds says will have a bigger impact.
“It follows through on a promise we made to the people of Iowa earlier this year — shifting water quality resources to the most effective programs and urgent needs,” Reynolds said.
The $25 million investment in Central Iowa Water Works comes from repurposing most of the roughly $30 million fund that had accumulated for Iowa’s Water Quality Financing Program, which Reynolds said had received few applications since it began in 2018.
The law directs $300,000 for water quality monitoring to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources through its groundwater protection fund. A Senate amendment shifted money that would have originally gone toward the Iowa Water Quality Information System administered by the University of Iowa’s Hydroscience and Engineering research center.
The DNR will also receive a new $500,000 standing appropriation from the Water Quality Financial Assistance Fund for ongoing water quality monitoring, which can include continuous monitoring.
These sums are in addition to the $3 million already appropriated annually for water quality monitoring stations operated through DNR contracts with the U.S. Geological Survey and Iowa’s state universities.
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig praised Reynolds for her work on water quality, noting that the first bill she signed as governor in 2018 was a water quality funding package. The new plan he said, “will have a tremendous impact.”
“The package recognizes that improving water quality requires us to work upstream and downstream, from the farm to the faucet,” he said.
Iowa Farm Bill boosts local food purchasing programs
Reynolds also signed Senate File 2465, a state-level Farm Bill, which boosts local food purchasing programs and provides new tax breaks and zoning protections for agriculture-related operations.
The Iowa Farm Act restructures the Choose Iowa program by renaming it the Choose Iowa Food Bank Purchasing Program and making it permanent, as well as creating a new Choose Iowa School Purchasing Program.
The programs partner Iowa farmers and food producers with schools and food banks to provide locally-grown foods, providing a dollar for dollar match from the state. The state’s agriculture budget also increases funding for the programs by $500,000.
The bill moves Iowa’s Butchery Innovation and Revitalization Program from the Iowa Economic Development Authority to the Department of Agriculture. The program awards grants and other financial assistance to expand, refurbish or open new meat lockers, meat processing businesses, slaughter units or refrigeration facilities.
It expands Iowa’s agricultural tourism law to include any events on a farm open to the public for the purpose of educating people about agriculture or agricultural practices.
And it expands the definition of farms and farm crops covered under the agricultural tourism law to include tree farms, nuts, maple syrup, mushrooms, Christmas trees and honey.
Honeybee sales are also exempted from Iowa’s sales tax, under the law.
Naig said every item in the bill can be traced back to feedback he received from farmers, businesses and community roundtable discussions he’s held around the state.
“It expands opportunities for Iowa’s agriculture, reduces unnecessary regulatory burdens, strengthens rural communities, supports beginning farmers and our ag workforce and gives farmers greater certainty and more tools to prepare and plan for the future,” he said.
Standing on the steps of the Iowa Capitol in front of a John Deere tractor, Reynolds also signed legislation, Senate File 2493, creating a sales tax exemption for gasoline blended with 85% ethanol when the fuel is used for agricultural equipment.
Stephen Gruber-Miller is the Capitol bureau chief for the Des Moines Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com, by phone at 515-284-8169 or on X at @sgrubermiller.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Gov. Kim Reynolds signs Iowa water quality funding overhaul into law
Reporting by Stephen Gruber-Miller, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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