(An Iowa News Service report) – Concerned Iowans gathered in Des Moines recently to call for safer drinking water. The state is home to as many as 4,000 concentrated animal feeding operations. Iowa’s rivers and lakes are routinely closed to recreation as a result of high nitrate and phosphorous levels.

Food & Water Watch Iowa Senior Organizer Michaelyn Mankel said residents gathered at a recent Town Hall to ask state lawmakers to continue funding for the state’s water quality monitoring network of 500 sensors that report waterway pollution in real time. “There has been a move by the legislature to defund this program and push us back into the dark,” said Mankel, “at a time where the crisis has never been more severe and rates of pollution are skyrocketing.”

Researchers are investigating the link between water pollution and Iowa’s cancer rate, which has the second-highest occurrence of new cases in the nation. Environmental officials are pushing for lower levels of nitrates, phosphorous and other dangerous chemicals in Iowa’s drinking water – contaminants, Mankel said, are tied to factory farm manure runoff.

“Corporate agriculture operates heavily across Iowa and has effectively been given a free pass to pollute,” said Mankel. “They are laying waste that is ending up in our waterways in addition to having massive spill events on a regular basis.”

Mankel said polluted waterways are driving down the quality of life in Iowa. Corporate ag producers say they are looking for more environmentally friendly ways to operate, and claim that pollutants in their runoff are within legal limits.