Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (https://iowawatch.org/category/environment/page/2/)
In the last decade, natural disasters have displaced nearly 7.3 million Americans leaving them in hotels, trailers, strangers homes, and some — on the streets. This News21 story includes reporting from Iowa.
A News21 analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data shows those smaller disasters accounted for more than 60 percent of all federally declared disasters between 2003 and 2018 but received at least $57.3 billion less in public assistance from FEMA.
A rural water supply main doesn’t run by Jamie and Bradley Stephens’ southwest Iowa home in Mills County. “If it did, I would hook into it in a heartbeat,” said Jamie Stephens, as she battled in late May to get safe drinking water from a well overtopped for a week this spring by Missouri River floodwaters. Contamination of private well water in southwest Iowa from human and natural causes is a problem even in dry times. But in this year of prolonged flooding, well owners have heightened concerns and are keeping county health officials busy testing water for contaminants such as coliform and E. coli bacteria, nitrates and arsenic. More well owners are availing themselves of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources program that pays for private well testing.
Guidelines for what’s safe to eat when it comes to the fish we catch vary in each state. Also, despite fish sampling by the states, knowing where to fish is hard because fish from only a few waterways where people fish are tested each year, an IowaWatch/CedarFalls Tiger Hi-Line/Science in the Media investigation showed.
Glyphosate is the most used pesticide on U.S. agricultural crops, with the nation using an estimated 287 million pounds in 2016, according to an analysis by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. And sales continue to grow, with market researchers predicting the glyphosate market to grow to $8.5 billion to $10 billion annually by 2021 up from $5 billion now. READ ALSO: Controversial Pesticide Use Increases Dramatically Across The Midwest
Of 400 pesticides used on agriculture crops across the U.S, glyphosate is used at least three times more than all others, according to an analysis of data estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey. The second-most used weed killer in the U.S. is atrazine – with 75.4 million pounds used on U.S. agriculture crops in 2016. In 2016, the Midwest used 65 percent of the nation’s total agriculture glyphosate use on crops.
Normally, Story County soybean farmer Kevin Larson said, he would resolve a dispute with a neighbor privately. Instead, he went to the Iowa Pesticide Bureau in 2017, just like a lot of other Iowans did.
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Workloads for eight state investigators who determine whether herbicides are applied properly in Iowa have more than doubled the past two years, with no plans in sight for adding staffers. The workload increase — from 110 misuse reports in the 2016 crop year to 249 in the 2018 crop year — coincides with the introduction by agrochemical companies of dicamba-based herbicides to kill weeds in farm fields. In spite of this, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Pesticide Bureau has not added staff investigators and completing cases is taking longer, spilling over into the next crop year. Cases taken on in the 2018 crop year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept.
A new study has found that bug bombs, which are used by millions of Americans to kill insects such as cockroaches, often fail to eradicate those pests and yet expose consumers to potential health risks.
Many small Iowa communities no longer can afford to maintain their local dumps when faced with increasing regulation and permitting fees by the EPA and Iowa Department of Natural Resources. That has forced new ways of thinking about waste management.
While Iowa takes most of the blame, nutrient loading of Great Plains waterways that flow into the Missouri River, then to the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico are causing a literal dead zone in the Gulf that is steadily increasing in size.