Weekly editor in Iowa laments that 'nothing has changed' with his Pulitzer-winning topic, water pollution from farming

Weekly newspaper editor Art Cullen won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his campaign supporting the Des Moines Water Works' lawsuit to clean up the Raccoon River, overloaded with nitrates from over-fertilization and other poor conservation practices by farmers in his area. When he and his brother John bought the Cherokee Chronicle-Times in an adjoining county, he asked Editor Paul Struck if their Storm Lake Times Pilot could republish his sports column. "He countered that the Cherokee paper should publish samples of our 2016 editorials," Cullen writes. "I wasn’t certain at first that they should be dredged up. We already spoke our piece. Then I went back and reread them. It struck me that nothing has changed in seven years but talk."

Editor Art Cullen

Nitrate levels are not declining in the Raccoon or other rivers, and the reservoir that supplies Des Moines' drinking water "is routinely threatened by toxic algae blooms fed by phosphorous runoff," Cullen writes. "More than a decade after voters approved a fractional increase in the state sales tax for water quality improvement, among other conservation enhancements, the legislature has refused to abide by the amended state constitution by enacting the sales tax increase." He cites other failures at the state level, and moves up the totem pole:

"We hoped, and still hope, that something could be done at the federal level to clean up Iowa’s surface water. There are promising small steps: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack authorized a pilot project to expand cover crops in Buena Vista County. Even with that, about 1% of our county’s acreage will be covered over winter. Vilsack says he wants to double the amount of Iowa cover crops in the next decade. So that might get BV County to 2%? Cover crops, along with buffers and grass strips, can almost wipe out surface water pollution. It can pay off if the government would take swift and bold action. But it doesn’t. Doubling nothing doesn’t get you something."

Des Moines' water boss, the late Bill Stowe, "started a conversation in Iowa about how we approach our gentle land," Cullen writes. "It helped steer people’s attention toward more sustainable ag practices that help farmers. The Practical Farmers of Iowa are showing us a different way forward to growing legions of land stewards. Yet it’s not nearly enough. . . . Industrial ag interests have a grip on our politics and minds. . . . The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is fine with 11,000 steers laid in next to one of Iowa’s rare trout streams. Meanwhile, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico persists, killing the fishing industry at the mouth of the Mississippi. It’s hard to say that farmers or rural communities have benefitted much from this chemical paradigm over the past half-century. Nitrogen and methane from agriculture are feeding extreme weather that lead to epic drought and winter tornadoes. Those editorials reminded me how much work we have to do in Iowa, if we actually intend to 'feed the world'."