Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here

Rural and urban residents work together for progress.

By Darcy Dougherty Maulsby | Photos by Joseph L. Murphy

Something kept bugging Bob Quinn. The veteran farm broadcaster at 1040 WHO Radio in Des Moines kept hearing about Iowa’s water quality challenges, but he’d also seen firsthand how farmers’ conservation practices are making a positive difference.

“Plenty of farmers are doing great work across the state, but they don’t always get a lot of credit,” says Quinn, who is also the arena announcer for Drake University’s men’s and women’s basketball teams. “I wanted to tell more of these stories of how Iowans are protecting water quality, the results they’re achieving and how others can get involved.”

Quinn connected with rural and urban leaders in his professional network to launch the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign in 2020. The campaign includes the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS), the Iowa Soybean Association, multiple agricultural commodity groups and WHO Radio.

“For more than a year, we’ve been visiting rural and urban conservation projects to highlight the great work farmers, landowners, municipalities and homeowners are doing to improve water quality,” says Quinn, who broadcasts from various sites across the state during The Big Show on WHO Radio.

Cover Crops Sow Seeds of Success

One of the first farmers featured through Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here was Mark Schleisman, whose family raises corn, soybeans, popcorn, cattle and hogs near Lake City. “Water quality is important to us,” says Schleisman, who received the 2018 National Conservation Legacy Award from the American Soybean Association. “I know from living near the Raccoon River that water quality has improved since I was a kid, but I want to do more. That’s why we keep trying new conservation practices to find out what fits our acres.”

Cover crops have been one of his biggest successes. Schleisman seeds cover crops for the benefits they provide after the corn and soybeans are harvested and before the following year’s cash crop is planted. Cover crops reduce erosion (which protects nearby rivers and streams from soil and phosphorus runoff), improve soil health by increasing organic matter and provide a nutritious feed source for cattle. For the past 10 years, Schleisman has expanded to 1,300 acres of cover crops.

Schleisman credits his career in agribusiness for inspiring him to implement more conservation practices after he returned to the family farm full time.

“About 80% of my time in corporate America was spent on the road, which opened my eyes to many different ways of farming,” says Schleisman, who worked as a crop consultant in central Nebraska and later as a popcorn production specialist and plant manager for Conagra. “You not only have to make enough money to pay the bills, but you must focus on continuous improvement. That’s part of sustainability.”

Veteran farm broadcaster Bob Quinn, pictured with his wife Ann adjacent their grain bin home, worked with rural and urban leaders to launch the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign.

Iowa Secretary of Ag Mike Naig (left) discusses the importance of water quality with Quinn.

Locally led efforts like this are essential to improving water quality in Iowa, notes Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig. “We’re putting a face on conservation with the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign and farmers like Mark Schleisman. Conservation doesn’t happen until someone says yes. It’s exciting to see rural and urban Iowans getting involved.”

Cedar Rapids Promotes the Power of Partnerships

The City of Cedar Rapids has said yes to rural-urban conservation partnerships for many years. The city helps provide financial and technical assistance to area farmers who want to add more conservation practices to protect water quality.

“We invest in these partnerships because they help us improve the water our residents consume and the water that our industries rely on,” says Mike Kuntz, utilities environmental manager for the City of Cedar Rapids. “By improving water quality at the source, we prevent or delay the need to invest in expensive infrastructure at our water treatment plants.”

In 2015, the city received funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s and Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program to assist farmers in the Miller Creek and Benton Tama Water Quality Initiative project areas. Efforts focused on technical assistance and cost-sharing to help farmers add conservation practices from cover crops to bioreactors. Bioreactors are buried trenches filled with woodchips that function like large coffee filters. Beneficial microbes that form in the bioreactor help remove impurities from the water.

Mark Schleisman farms near Lake City and actively uses cover crops to reduce erosion and improve soil health.

This Middle Cedar Partnership Project ran for five years, until 2020. “Cedar Rapids is an outstanding model of how a successful ruralurban partnership can work,” Naig says.

In the spring of 2021, NRCS selected Cedar Rapids’ Cedar River Source Water Partnership project to receive approximately $7 million to continue improving water quality.

“By taking a partnership approach, we’ve become more familiar with the economic links between our local industries and agricultural partners upstream,” Kuntz says. “Corn and soybeans produced in the Cedar River watershed – and around Iowa – fuel our local economy and keep a large sector of Cedar Rapids’ industrial base profitable. It’s all connected, and everybody benefits when we partner to protect and improve water quality.”

Cedar Rapids’ leadership has not gone unnoticed. In 2019, the US Water Alliance awarded the City of Cedar Rapids the US Water Prize for Outstanding Work in the Public Sector. “From the start, we envisioned rural and urban Iowans working together to achieve the goals of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy,” Naig says. “This is helping reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in Iowa’s waterways.”

More resources are being directed to conservation and water quality improvement in Iowa, Naig adds. In addition to scaling up programs for farmers, IDALS allocates about $1 million a year to urban conservation demonstration projects in Iowa.

Kuntz is glad the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign is bringing additional attention to projects like this statewide. “Partnerships are critical when you are working on a watershed scale. We strongly believe that partnerships can help solve water quality challenges.”

Get Involved

Momentum for the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign continues to grow. Farmers are forming partnerships with groups like The Nature Conservancy to restore oxbows (curves in streams that have become separated from the flow of water) to control soil erosion and provide habitat for fish and wildlife.

Schleisman favors a systems approach to conservation and water quality rather than a one-anddone mindset. “Instead of saying, ‘We’ve always done it this way,’ we continue to look for ways to do things better throughout our farm.”

“The way Iowans are managing water resources more sustainably is phenomenal,” Quinn says. “All the people I’ve interviewed for Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here say, ‘I’d like to do more.’”

No matter where you live, you have the opportunity to make a positive impact on Iowa’s water quality, Quinn adds. “Each one of us benefits from clean water. We’re extending the invitation to join us.”

Farmers are helping restore oxbows to control soil erosion and provide habitat for fish and wildlife.

3 things you can do to improve water quality

Try these tips from the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign to help protect water quality where you live:

- 1 - Keep your grass clippings in your lawn or compost them. Don’t brush them from the sidewalk or driveway into the street, where they can enter the storm sewer.

- 2 - Redirect the downspouts on your home to drain into the lawn instead of the driveway.

- 3 - Clean up oil, antifreeze and lawn fertilizer spills to prevent them from running into the storm drains.

For more information, visit CleanWaterIowa.org.

To view the full spread, view this magazine in your internet browser on your phone, tablet or desktop. This story is funded by the soybean checkoff.