BV is losing the public
Des Moines Water Works is suing three counties in Iowa for dumping polluted water into the river. Everyone knows that it isn’t the sewer plant polluting the waters it is the state of Iowa as a whole over-farming the soil. Instead of doing something to prevent this Iowa politics are just trying to throw money at it instead of coming to a real solution. This has been going on for decades and the problem has only been getting worse and will continue to until Iowan agribusiness does something to combat it.
I thought Art’s writing style is somewhat difficult to understand, but I thought it was done very well. He argues that if nothing is done about the over farming of the soil then it will keep happening, and that politicians of Iowa can’t just throw money at it and expect it to be fixed.
Wrong assumptions
Governor Terry Branstad proposed a plan to spend $4.7 billion from school sales taxes to remedy the water quality in Iowa, but Cullen has some objections about it. He suggests instead of taking the money away from the schools and spending it on water treatment, we keep it towards the schools. He also argues that there was no problem with water quality when they didn’t over-farm the soil. Cullen argues some different farming practices, and points out that one of the proposals to remedy the water situation is to manage the inflow and outflow, but trying to engineer the water flow is what started the whole mess in the first place. He finishes with saying that the best way to actually fix the problem is to agree to the Clean Water Act lawsuit because it will shift the blame onto the people who destroyed the land and water.
Cullen argues his points very well in this piece but I do not fully agree on some. I agree that the blame should be on the farmers who hurt the land, but a lot of the times agriculture is to produce food for the state and the nation and without farmers many people in the midwest wouldn’t eat. Overall though Cullen does a fantastic job of arguing what he believes should be done.
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