Des Moines Water Works spends $16,000 per day running its nitrate removal system because Iowa farm runoff makes the Raccoon River undrinkable for months at a time

Des Moines Water Works, which serves over 600,000 people in central Iowa, draws its source water from the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers. Both rivers run through Iowa's agricultural heartland, where 87,000 farms apply nitrogen fertilizers to corn and soybean fields. Every spring and summer, that nitrogen washes into the rivers as nitrate. In 2025, nitrate levels exceeded the EPA's safe drinking water standard of 10 mg/L for 40 more days than in 2024, and the utility's nitrate removal facility — the world's largest — ran for over 110 consecutive days during the summer. Operating it costs $16,000 per day. The utility imposed lawn-watering bans on the entire metro area because it simply couldn't treat water fast enough to keep up with demand. The downstream consequences are severe and concrete. When nitrate levels spike, Des Moines Water Works faces a binary choice: run the expensive removal system or violate federal safe drinking water standards. Nitrate above 10 mg/L causes methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome) in infants, and epidemiological studies link chronic exposure to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and birth defects. The cost of treatment is passed directly to ratepayers. Des Moines residents are effectively subsidizing the externalized pollution costs of upstream agriculture — paying higher water bills so that farm operations can continue applying cheap nitrogen without accountability. This problem persists because Iowa's agricultural lobby has successfully blocked meaningful regulation of farm runoff for decades. Iowa relies on a voluntary nutrient reduction strategy rather than enforceable limits on fertilizer application or mandatory buffer strips along waterways. Des Moines Water Works sued three upstream drainage districts in 2015, arguing they were point-source polluters, but a federal judge dismissed the case. In August 2025, the EPA rescinded impaired water designations for Iowa waterways — a move Des Moines Water Works publicly opposed — further reducing regulatory pressure on polluters. The result is a city of 600,000 people trapped in an annual cycle: farm runoff poisons the source water, the utility spends millions treating it, ratepayers foot the bill, and nothing changes upstream because the political power of agriculture overwhelms the interests of municipal water consumers.