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Iowa buries report linking water pollution to state’s "extensive corn and soybean production" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-01
The internet credits Benito Mussolini with saying, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." There is no record that he said it. But considering how enthusiastic Republican governments are to promote corporate profits over people, whoever did say it was on to something.
Case in point: An analysis commissioned by Polk County, IA, on the amount of water pollution and its cause in the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers.
This 226-page report is not beach reading. Even in the best of circumstances, it will never appear on anyone's bestseller list. However, it caused enough concern that someone zeroed out the $147,000 allocated in the report's budget for "Communication and Public Awareness."
Every other budget item is still on schedule to be performed and paid for. This raises the question, what is so dangerous in the report that some person or agency has determined the public should not be aware of it?
The answer is predictable. On page 90, under the heading Nutrient Enrichment – Nitrogen and Phosphorus, the analysis stated:
The topic that receives the most attention regarding the chemical integrity of Iowa's surface waters is elevated levels of nitrogen and phosphorus - essential plant nutrients that are transported from the state's extensive corn and soybean production. The primary concern regarding ecological health and integrity is that when nitrogen and phosphorus are applied to the soil to increase corn and soybean yields, they are also effective at enhancing plant and algal growth in lakes, rivers, and streams.
From Florida's Red Tides to algae blooms in Montana's Upper and Lower Goat Creeks, America is awash in agricultural pollution. Unchecked nitrogen or phosphorus runoff from factory farms leads to contaminated drinking water and other health issues,
However, rather than taking steps to protect the health of the average American, industrial agriculture is bribing politicians and concealing unfavorable news. It is significantly cheaper to pretend a problem doesn't exist than to do the right thing and deal with it.
MAGA takes it one step further. The EPA, which for 55 years has been the citizens' watchdog, is now staffed with industry shills. And this Supreme Court has eviscerated the autonomy of executive agencies to set pollution standards.
Iowa is especially at risk. The state's economy is the fourth most dependent on agriculture. And Iowans are the third most likely to get cancer. Nitrogen runoff creates nitrates. And those cause cancers of the stomach, esophagus, bladder, brain, colon, rectum, pancreas, and kidney.
Industrial food is hardly the only corporate power that wants to merge with government. Every American industry that pollutes the environment, poisons the populace, or gouges its customers is throwing big bucks at politicians, local and national.
Abraham Lincoln may have highly resolved that America should have a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." But he lived in a time before corporate behemoths thought that was an inconvenient state of affairs.
Now we live in a country better described by the political philosopher and poet, George Carlin.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/1/2341352/-Iowa-buries-report-linking-water-pollution-to-state-s-extensive-corn-and-soybean-production?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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