DES MOINES, Iowa – Funding to improve Iowa’s water quality will be a top issue this legislative session, and support is widespread in the statehouse.
Earlier this week, the state legislature convened in Des Moines, and at the top of the ag industry’s wish list for the legislative session is an increase in funding for voluntary efforts to improve Iowa’s water quality.
In December, Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey requested $7.5 million for his department’s water quality efforts, collectively called the Iowa Water Quality Initiative (IWQI). The amount was higher than the $4.4 million appropriated for the current fiscal year, and far in excess of the $2.4 million made available in fiscal year 2014, which was accompanied by a one-time injection of $10 million to kick start water quality improvements.
Yesterday, Governor Terry Branstad included Northey’s request in his recommended budget, a move that reduces the uncertainty around water quality funding for the upcoming fiscal year.
?The Governor?s strong support for the Iowa Water Quality Initiative has been critically important and the $7.5 million provided in his budget would help us build on that exciting progress that has already been made,? Northey said in a prepared statement. ?The legislature has also been extremely supportive of voluntary, science based water quality efforts and I look forward to working with legislators on a bipartisan basis in both the House and Senate on this budget request as we go through the appropriations process.?
The $7.5 million that the governor will approve for the IWQI will head toward “cost share statewide to farmers trying new water quality practices, continue work in targeted watersheds to achieve measurable water quality improvements, expand urban conservation efforts, and develop new programs to help engage all Iowans in improving water quality,” according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Northey says not being able to depend on funding is a direct impediment to his department’s attempts to improve Iowa’s water quality.
“Some of the projects we’re trying to do are annual projects,” Northey explains, “so we can figure out how much money we have, and then address those issue with those annual dollars. But some of the projects we need to do are multi-year projects. So we either take the money and spend it over the next several years, of which we’ve done, so that you know you have the money, or you set up some kind of way for the program to roll back if the future funding is not there. Obviously, last year when we had a veto of the one-time funding bill, that changed what could be done; that changed what we had for matching dollars, and so that was kind of the example of how uncertainty can cause a real change in the way you’re setting out the program. But for the most part, we don’t spend the money until we know that it’s coming, and if it needs to be a multi-year project, then we save that money up-front, so that that can generally be spent over the life of that project. So it does probably slow some things down. It does change the predictability, but most of state government has to operate in that realm; certainly our universities and lots of other folks, our road projects, and other kinds of things.
Last year, the governor vetoed $11.2 million in one-time water quality funding, citing a budget shortfall caused in part by late farm tax returns. The veto caused some uncertainty over the dependability of future water quality funding. In the case of 13 watershed demonstration projects under the IWQI, which are intended to introduce water conservation practices to farmers, Northey says funding that’s anything but dependable is hindering participation.
“Those are three-year projects,” says Northey. “In this case, we knew we had the money before we offered those projects. So, in that case, we didn’t really stop anything, but we probably would have done more projects, had we known there was future funding coming. It probably limits our ability to expand as quick as we’d like, to offer some of these folks that are bringing in many cases, these projects are bringing in a lot of other dollars and a lot of volunteers. They’re certainly engaging those farmers and communities in a great way. We’d love to be able to do more of that but we need to be able to walk it along with the availability of dollars, and so we’re going to walk it with understanding that we’re not going to be able to spend it until we know that we have it coming.”
According to IDALS, Branstad also included $6.75 million for conservation cost share in his budget. For over four decades, IDALS says Iowa?s soil conservation cost share program as encouraged the adoption of conservation structures and practices to protect and preserve the state?s natural resources and improve water quality. Last year alone, IDALS calculates that the state?s $9.5 million investment generated $13 million in matching funds from Iowa farmers and land owners to support conservation practices.
Additionally, IDALS reports the governor?s budget also included $1.92 million to support the closure of eight additional agriculture drainage wells in the state to protect groundwater quality.
