Blog – Iowa Environmental Voice

posted by Kean Roberts on Friday, September 4, 2026 Cherry Glen Learning Farm is a living classroom where the next generation can see that agriculture does not have to be a choice between producing food and caring for the land. Instead of talking abstractly about soil health, biodiversity, conservation, sustainable food systems, etc., people can put their hands in the soil, observe how plants grow, work with the land, and see ecological principles operating in a farm setting.

posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, August 28, 2026 Kevin Eicher took his 10-year-old grandson out to find somewhere to fish and found dead fish as far as he could see in either direction. It was another week before he learned why. Two years later, 44 of his neighbors are testing the river every month.

posted by Kean Roberts on Friday, August 28, 2026 The Iowa DNR has a fish kill database that extends back to 1981. This unique resource provides useful insight into not only fish kill events, but also Iowa's ongoing water quality challenges. Overall, human-caused fish kills account for nearly 91% of all fish deaths recorded in this database.

posted by Guest Blogger on Monday, August 17, 2026 Mike Delaney has been testing Iowa's water for 20 years with a strip and a vial. A mussel bed, he learned, does the same job but over 50 years. Here's what mussels are telling us about the Raccoon River - and why one species of fish can mean the difference between a working ecosystem and a dead zone.

posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, August 14, 2026 For 10 years, Iowans could access data about nitrate levels and other water quality indicators in real time, via monitors that automatically updated a public dashboard every 15 minutes. Then the legislature voted to cut the funding. Here's how local money kept the sensor network operational - and why it can't last without state support.

posted by Kean Roberts on Friday, August 7, 2026 "One word drives me as a person: accountability." A Linn County farmer on cover crops, cost-shares, and why he wanted his edge-of-field practices somewhere the neighbors would have to drive past them.

posted by Kean Roberts on Friday, August 7, 2026 One acre of Iowa wetland removes roughly 1,340 pounds of nitrate-nitrogen a year, and it can do that while occupying less than one percent of the land draining into it. Here's how - and why Iowa needs to revitalize this once-lost ecosystem.

posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, July 31, 2026 Today, Iowa considers a stream unsafe for swimming at 235 E. coli CFU per 100 milliliters. In the late 1920s, the water downstream of Des Moines measured 135,000. Before you wish for the water quality of a century ago, it's worth knowing what that water was actually like. The challenges we face today are daunting - but different from those a century ago.

posted by Guest Blogger on Friday, July 24, 2026 What if the solution to Iowa's flooding problem has been practiced for centuries - just not here? Kate Giannini, Program Manager at IIHR - Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa, traveled to Delft, Netherlands on a Fulbright Specialist grant to find out. What she brought back is already changing how Iowa communities like Columbus Junction prepare for the next flood.

posted by Guest Blogger on Thursday, July 23, 2026 Most people think Iowa's water quality problem begins and ends on the farm. The Iowa Stormwater Education Partnership (ISWEP) is here to complicate that story. When rain falls on a rooftop, parking lot, or street, it picks up oil, fertilizer, road salt, and debris before flowing untreated directly into the nearest waterway. ISWEP helps more than 75 Iowa cities, counties, and universities tackle this overlooked source of pollution through a variety of methods.