The state Environmental Protection Commission has approved a federal EPA grant to address potential algae problems in the Clarinda and Panora public water supplies.
The DNR’s Steve Konrady says working with the State Ag Department, they are for the first time teaming up with what’s called the Ecosystem Services Marketing Consortium that includes private companies who pay farmers to use conservation practices. “These payments would come in the form of incentives from private industry, largely for carbon credits, which is still something that these companies want to have,” he says. “And so some of the players in ESMC include General Mills, and others. And so there’s a lot of interest in kind of that regenerative ag focus.”
They pay a credit or an incentive to farmers based on how much carbon they’re able to sequester. Konrady says the companies involved can then sell their products saying they invested in carbon capture. “And so that’s the benefit they’re getting. If you’re at maximum cynic, you might call it greenwashing. I like to say that we can utilize greenwashing if these companies want to do it to benefit Iowans and make our environment better here too,” Konrady says.
He says the goal is to target cyanotoxins in the water that come from blue-green algae. “They release that toxin into the water when they’re stressed or when they’re in suboptimal conditions for their growth, or more particularly when they die and burst,” he says. Konrady says it’s called an emerging issue by EPA and first gained a lot of attention when it became a big problem in the Toledo, Ohio drinking water in 2014
Clarinda puts water from the Nodaway River into settling ponds to reduce sediment so they can process it easier in their drinking water plant. The developed an algae problem in the settling ponds. “They have seen a few incidents of cyanotoxin presence in their raw water or the water that they draw to treat in their drinking water system, but not at levels that are yet indicating a concern,” he says.
Panora gets their water from nearby Lake Panorama and there’s also the potential for algae blooms. “Lakes frequently grow these types of algae blooms around this time of year, August through September, sometimes earlier, depending on the conditions. It really likes heat and stagnant water. So the longer it’s been sitting there in the heat and less wind pressure on it, tends to dominate the other species of algae in the lake and can cause these problems,” Konrady says.
Konrady says the’re using $500,000 for this program to start. The contract is only one year, which he says allows them to actively edit it to address the needs of each year kind and can do so for at least five years.