Sometimes it is not what the politicians talk about that matters; it is what they don’t talk about that is also important. Take, for example, the Republican response to the President’s State of the Union address by Republican ingenue Sen. Joni Ernst, R-IA, on January 20: “As a mother, a soldier, and a newly-elected senator from the great State of Iowa, I am proud to speak with you tonight.”

Sen. Ernst mentioned the usual issues that one would expect from a newly-elected Republican official: the lagging economy, Washington’s dysfunction, passage of the Keystone pipeline, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the war on terrorism; but what she did not mention is the battle over agricultural run-off that has been going on in her home state of Iowa for many years.

Sen. Ernst stated in her address to the nation that she grew up poor on a small family farm in Red Oak, Iowa. Today, Iowa is home to thousands of corporate factory farms or CAFOs (confined agricultural feeding operations) that harvest millions of farm animals every year for consumption here and abroad. Iowa is a state where many of its waterways are polluted and clogged with the runoff from agricultural waste.

Ultra-conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) led the charge for the failed attempt to add a federal ag-gag amendment to the most recent Farm Bill, whereby whistleblowers that videotape and report abuse of farm animals would be arrested and charged with a crime.

Unfortunately, on March 2, 2012, Gov. Terry Bradstad of the state of Iowa approved the nation’s first state ag-gag law, SF 431 and HF 589, under pressure from the state’s agricultural lobbyists.

According to an article that appeared in the New York Times on June 2, 2011, entitled “Chemicals in Farm Runoff Rattle States on the Mississippi,” “Dead zones are areas of the ocean where low oxygen levels can stress or kill bottom-dwelling organisms that cannot escape and cause fish to leave the area. Excess nutrients transported to the gulf each year during spring floods promote algal growth. As the algae die and decompose, oxygen is consumed, creating the dead zone. The largest dead zone was measured in 2002 at about 8,500 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey. Shrimp fishermen complain of being hurt the most by the dead zones as shrimp are less able to relocate ”“ but the precise impacts on species are still being studied.”

The United States Geological Survey has found that 10 states (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana) along the Mississippi River contribute 75 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus. The survey found that corn and soybean crops were the largest contributors to the nitrogen in the runoff, and manure was a large contributor to the amount of phosphorus. Yet of the 10 key farm states that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.

From an article entitled “Hog Wild: Factory Farms Are Poisoning Iowa’s Drinking Water” in the March 21, 2014 issue of Mother Jones Magazine, “Millions of pigs are crammed into overcrowded barns all across the state, being fattened for slaughter while breeding superbugs ”“ all to feed China’s growing appetite for Spam … but mounting evidence suggests that an unprecedented boom in Iowa’s hog industry has created a glut of manure, which is applied as fertilizer to millions of acres of cropland and runs off into rivers and streams, creating a growing public health threat.”

According to the watchdog group, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, “Iowa’s factory farms now produce well over five billion gallons of liquid manure a year. The laws governing application of manure may mask the problem by reducing the level of harmful gases in the air, but vast quantities of waste are being injected directly into the drought-stricken and highly erodible soil. The ground simply can’t hold all the nitrates and bacteria being produced by so many hogs.”

Between May and July 2013, as downpours sheeted off drought-hardened fields, scientists at the Des Moines Water Works watched manure contamination spike to staggering levels at intake sites on the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. These two major tributaries of the Mississippi are also the usual sources of drinking water for roughly one out of every six Iowans.”

The Business Record of Des Moines, Iowa reported on January 9, 2015, in an article entitled, “Des Moines Water Works moves to sue three N.W. Iowa Counties over Nitrate Pollution,” “The Des Moines Water Works board on Thursday voted to give the required 60-day notice to three Iowa counties that manage drainage districts – Sac, Buena Vista and Calhoun ”“ that the utility intends to sue them under the federal Clean Water Act for allowing high levels of nitrates to pour into the Raccoon River, a key source of drinking water for 500,000 customers in the Des Moines area.”

 William Stowe, CEO, of the utility, stated that he “would like to see the state and/or the counties regulate fertilizer applications, issue permits to control the pollution, or take other action after 15 years of voluntary conservation efforts by farmers have failed to solve the problem. Water Works sampled water in the three counties over most of last year and found levels at times were nearly four times the federal drinking water limit of 10 milligrams per liter. Nitrates both occur naturally and come from crop fertilizers and human and animal wastes. They are associated with a condition that suffocates babies and with a variety of cancers.”

The condition is also known as “blue babies.” All is not well in the farmlands of Iowa and other agricultural states that border the Mississippi River. Run-off from agricultural waste is polluting our nation’s major waterways and the Gulf of Mexico.

— Val Philbrick works in the production department of the Journal Tribune as a pre-press person. She is a member of PETA and the Humane Society of the United States.