Restore Nature to Improve Water and Mitigate Flooding

Iowa has the most altered, industrialized landscape in America.

For almost four decades, I’ve been exploring planet earth, and especially the polar regions of the globe. My travels occurred during a time of dramatic climate change. I’ve worked with, interviewed and listened to countless scientists who have been speaking in unison about the erratic changes to weather patterns in the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions. To a person, these same scientists also stated these changes would not be staying in remote regions. Instead, extreme changes would manifest in the more temperate and populated regions of the planet causing massive damage in the form of extreme precipitation, flooding and drought cycles in whiplash fashion. As predicted, welcome to Texas, and more locally, Northwest Iowa.

Normal weather patterns are being destabilized by human-caused climate change. Burning massive amounts of fossil fuels have created a heated atmosphere full of greenhouse gases. This warming atmosphere holds more water vapor. This water will be unloaded somewhere, and the Iowa Great Lakes was one of many to receive overwhelming rainfalls last summer.

Saturated ground plus a one-time record rainfall event caused over 70 banks to collapse around the Iowa Great Lakes in June of 2024. David Thoreson Photo

Iowa climate scientists have been predicting wetter, cooler springs with greater chances of extreme, one-time rainfall events for decades in the state. Those are the exact conditions that happened during a saturated late spring, followed by the record rainfall overnight on June 21, 2024. In 2018, the Iowa Great Lakes also flooded. Dr. Larry Weber, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Edwin B. Green Chair in Hydraulics at the University of Iowa, was hired to do a hydrology study of our lakes system and watershed.

Dr. Weber’s findings were enlightening then, just as they are now. He stated we could spend millions on engineering the outflow of the lakes in Milford but it would only allow for a few inches of relief. What he also said in 2018, and again at a recent Dickinson County Supervisors meeting, did not register enough with media or the public. “We cannot engineer our way out of this troubling situation; we will be overwhelmed with record rain events fueled by a changing climate. The only solution to this problem is to change land practices.”

Iowa is the most altered and developed state in the USA. These changes have been taking place over a long period of time as “modern” industrial scale agriculture developed. The modification to our natural landscape and hydrology systems have come at tremendous cost to the environment, especially in the realm of water pollution. If we are to start correcting the damage we have caused, we first must recognize the errors and work together as urban and rural residents to partner on solutions.

The citizens of Iowa have tried this approach by passing a Constitutional Amendment by referendum in 2010 called the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund. It passed with a super majority and now has 80% approval across the state. Our elected representatives and the Iowa Governor refuse to act on the will of the people and are responsible for the environmental disaster that is Iowa. We must stand up and demand action.

What would some of the solutions look like? They would look a lot like the Iowa Great Lakes, only with more funding and partnerships. While we are not perfect in Dickinson County, we have been implementing a more “resilient” natural vision of the Iowa landscape which helps slow down, contain and filter excess water and nutrients before they cause excessive damage. Did this work in the summer of 2024? Yes, most certainly the damage would have been worse without our actions, but data proves our conservation efforts have worked to create positive outcomes on water quality. We all just need to double down on our efforts.

A wetland is restored in Haywards Bay near West Lake Okoboji. Wetlands are important to holding excess water while also filtering out impurities before they enter our drinking water and recreational resources. Photos by David Thoreson

The voluntary approach to conservation is a failure in Iowa. Regulation will take time to implement in a state that has pushed nature to the point of failure. With this in mind, we must do what we can locally, in our own watersheds. With whiplash weather cycles of drought and flooding, some of the practices which need to be rapidly implemented are more cover crops, less fertilizer, no farming/development in floodplains, wetland restorations, edge of stream buffering, edge of field practices i.e. prairie strips, saturated buffers and identifying where best these investments need to be installed for success.

We must have an honest discussion about field tiling directly into our streams, rivers and lakes. Our communities need the same approach. We are building with too much impervious material and are not slowing and filtering water running directly into our waters. We need to strengthen local ordinances in a coordinated manner.

Farm tiles can drain fields quickly into other natural water resources pumping them full of nutrients causing toxic algae blooms. David Thoreson Photo

Finally, we have a great debate going on with energy production in Iowa and Dickinson County. To effectively combat climate change, which is creating the conditions for these tremendous rain events, we need to be a leader in the transition to real, clean energy, and this includes wind, which we have in abundance. Wind, solar and battery storage are the future of clean energy production in Iowa, not ethanol. Farmers will make more money diversifying their operations to capitalize on energy entrepreneurship. Many new revenue streams and methods of farming, including agrivoltaics, will become the norms of the future. The demand for corn acres for ethanol production, CAFO feed and land to apply manure, are the major drivers of the water pollution crisis in the state. Period.

Dickinson County provides a reasonable model, and a balanced approach, Iowa needs to implement. We once had a vast wilderness of tallgrass prairie, wetlands and woodlands. This natural system slowed and filtered excess water before releasing it into streams, rivers and lakes. By bringing a portion of nature back in critical watersheds throughout the county, and state, we can create a new resilient landscape which solves our water crisis, addresses climate change, adds new recreation and energy corridors at this important time in history.

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