For the past three years, I’ve been following Des Moines Water Works’s (DMWW) struggle to deal with the elevated nitrate levels in their source water. DMWW is a public utility chartered with providing clean drinking water to the City of Des Moines and its surrounding communities. Like most communities with riparian water rights, DMWW’s source is the surface water adjacent to the City.
One of DMWW’s treatment plants is located on the Raccoon River, a tributary of the Des Moines River that flows into the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Like many rivers in the Midwest, the Raccoon is surrounded by farmland on all sides for over 200 miles as it flows from its source in Marathon, Iowa down to the City of Des Moines. Along the way it provides a critical ecosystem service, draining the land of excess water that allows crops and grasses to flourish. However, through this process, the Raccoon not only drains excess water but everything that the water collects in its path. Because this water flows through the surrounding farmland, the primary transports are byproducts of agriculture.
In particular, one of the byproducts is nitrate, formed by the dissolution of the common fertilizer, ammonium nitrate. While good for boosting crop production, like corn and soybeans, elevated levels of nitrate exposure pose a health risk to humans. The most common risk is methemoglobinemia, where nitrates interfere with your blood’s ability to absorb oxygen. Instead of absorbing oxygen and turning a healthy red, nitrate interference prevents this, resulting in blood that remains blue and without oxygen. This can most notably impact infants causing Blue Baby Syndrome.
DMWW HAS TO MAKE A CHOICE
Facing increasingly elevated nitrate levels in the Racoon River, DMWW saw that it wouldn’t be able to keep up with proper treatment and was faced with having to pay $80MM to upgrade its plant - specifically adding additional nitrate treatment capacity. DMWW knew that the increasing levels of nitrate were not natural and certainly caused by increasing fertilizer usage on the farms upstream. And like anyone who lives downstream, they were frustrated that they kept having to foot the bill for a problem that they didn’t cause.
Facing an $80MM bill to pay for someone else’s pollution, out of what can only be described as desperation, DMWW voted to sue the upstream drainage districts. (Drainage districts are responsible for promoting the productive use of farmland by draining excess water from the groundwater table.) The nature of this lawsuit was unprecedented as it was a direct claim against agriculture - an industry that, by and large, is protected and unregulated.
After two years of legal proceedings in federal court, DMWW lost the suit, mostly on technical grounds (more on this later). Thus the question of agriculture-based nitrate runoff was never directly addressed. However, it was a bold move that prompted many to reconsider the protections and lack of regulation given to agriculture.
COULD THEY HAVE MADE ANOTHER CHOICE?
The move to file a lawsuit was a last-ditch effort intended to place the cost of nitrate runoff back onto the producers of that runoff. Because it was not upheld, DMWW will likely end up spending the $80MM to construct additional denitrification capacity and passing this cost along to local taxpayers. At the end of the day, DMWW is still mandated to provide clean drinking water.
But was there another way? Could DMWW have done something differently or made another choice to address the source of the problem rather than treating the symptom?
DMWW: A SERIES ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL INCENTIVES
Over the next few posts, I will take a deeper dive into the history of the DMWW lawsuit - the conditions leading up to it, how the suit played out in court, and the final decision by a federal judge. Armed with this case study, I’ll explore alternative solutions and choices that DMWW could have made - more creative means to resolving negative externalities in the environment. The solutions will cover technology, finance, insurance, and policy with the aim of supporting innovative solutions for managing agriculture and water.
To support this series, and create solutions that benefit both agriculture and water, donate to Odd’s Creek.
References:
Wikipedia - Des Moines Water Works
Wikipedia - Riparian Water Rights
Wikipedia - Raccoon River
Wikipedia - Ammonium Nitrate
Center for Disease Control - Nitrate/Nitrite Toxicity
Wikipedia - Drainage District