Iowa Ag secretary touts wetlands as key to cleaner drinking water
CLAY COUNTY, Iowa (KTIV) — Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig toured a water quality wetland northeast of Webb on Thursday, calling farm-based conservation the most effective way to protect drinking water.
The wetland, built by farmer Carl Simons on chronically wet, unproductive farmland, uses a gravity-flow system to filter water through an existing tile line before it reaches nearby streams. Naig said wetlands like this one can reduce nitrogen in the water by up to 90 percent.
“You have to keep increasing and improving and investing in water treatment infrastructure because that is a way that you can provide safe drinking water but also let’s be preventing pollutants from ever making it into our streams to begin with,” Naig said. “If you work on both ends of the spectrum, up stream and down stream, that is how you achieve the goals we need to see.”
Naig said Iowa has set a new conservation adoption record every year for the past five years.
Conservation practices such as wetlands and cover crops can also help buffer communities during extreme rain events, Naig said.
“Wetlands can help absorb some of that shock to the system if you will,” he said. “They don’t solve it, but if you have a series of wetlands, you can knit together through a watershed, you can actually have a flood reduction benefit in addition to the nitrate reduction and the habitat.”
Thursday’s stop in Clay County is part of Naig’s annual tour of every Iowa county.
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