The Des Moines Water Works announced plans to voluntarily stop releasing excess nitrates into the Raccoon River — a key water source for the city’s 500,000 people — even though Iowa law permits the utility to do so, reports KCCI Des Moines.
DMWW will instead divert 300,000 gallons of water a day through pipes to a sewage treatment plant, where 40 percent of the nitrates will be turned into an energy-rich sludge for fertilizer and bio-gas. Water containing the remaining 60 percent is sent into the Des Moines River. Infrastructure changes this will require will cost $1.25 million to build and up to $250,000 each year to operate. But the utility claims that the price-tag is minimal compared to the long-term effects of water pollution.
“Thinking downstream is very important. We wish producers upstream from us on the Raccoon River would think more about the environmental impacts of what they’re doing downstream,” said Water Works CEO Bill Stowe, who has been in the news ever since the utility sued three rural counties last year to curtail agricultural runoff draining into the Raccoon River from their districts. The case could land in the U.S. Supreme Court later this year.