We are the inchworm
Let's make the most of it
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Inch by inch, row by row. Gonna make this garden grow.
I could hear ol’ Pete Seeger in my mind as Paul and I watched an inchworm work its way across our patio table. It had appeared on my hand after weeding, so I gave it a lift. So much work to go so little distance, each step raising its little head to test the next step.
What a pleasant song for such tedious, difficult, often painful progress.
We call legislators who ignore us. Inch.
We drive to their offices to suffer the smug looks of their staffers. By inch.
We rally and people honk at our signs. Inch.
The Big Bad Bill takes longer to pass than expected. By inch.
It passes anyway.
Gonna mulch it deep and low
Gonna make it fertile ground…
In 2015, a brave and brilliant man named Bill Stowe sued his own watershed for nitrate pollution. As the CEO of the Des Moines Waterworks, Bill had watched costs skyrocket for scrubbing the pollution from the rivers feeding those waterworks.
Bill had placed monitors hundreds of miles upstream near farm drainage outlets. Despite the Farm Bureau trying to muddy the water with golf courses and front yards, the data proved that the primary culprit was farmers.
Please bless these seeds I sow
Please keep them safe below
Till the rain comes tumbling down
Bill Stowe elevated the debate about Iowa’s water pollution to unprecedented heights. Glacial rocks were lifted. Agribusiness worms exposed. For three years, “water quality” was at the top of the agenda from the kitchen table to the senate floor.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Koch Brothers and Farm Bureau hid behind corporate lawyers who used good ol’ boy corn farmers as window dressing for their defense. The weight of the fight landed with a deadening thud on the roof of the Des Moines Waterworks, threatening to collapse it. Bill was ready. His board had dedicated $1.35 million in advance.
But in 2017, a federal judge punted it back to the legislators whose political cowardice created the problem in the first place. Bill Stowe died two years later. Of cancer.
Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones
We are made of dreams and bones
Need a spot to call my own
For the time is close at hand
To permanently dilute the Des Moines Waterworks’ power, (can you say “retaliation?”) state legislators forced the creation of an expanded Central Iowa Water Works. Des Moines will never go rogue ever again.
This week, the Iowa Capital Dispatch exposed a Polk County-funded “Currents of Change” report meant to determine the root causes of Des Moines’ water pollution problems. It seems the report was commissioned in aid of the new water trails being developed in Central Iowa.
Four thousand hours of research, decades of data analyzed, 16 researchers from across multiple disciplines from Iowa State University to Argonne National Laboratories resulted in a report 200 pages long.
The punchline? It’s the agriculture, Stupid.
Plant your rows straight and long
Season them with a prayer and song
Mother earth will keep you strong
If you give her love and care
I saw one of the first presentations of the water trails years ago. Canoeing, whitewater kayaking, fishing, swimming. I thought these people were bazzacko.
Who would knowingly swim, get immersed in and end up drinking untreated Iowa river water for recreation? Then I realized how ingenious it was.
If enough people got sick, something might change. I admit it was grim, but why else would anyone raise millions for such a project?
I was right! Here it is on their website:
“Synergy from ICON Water Trails kindles excitement and collaboration around water quality and environmental conservation... What started as a small ripple will soon evolve into a wave of champions advocating on behalf of our natural resources.”
Champions? Sure, after their kid dies from leukemia or their husband gets diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
So my heart sank when, in the Dispatch article, the woman running that project took a note from our beloved US Senator Joni Ernst. You know, the one who declared “we’re all going to die” recently.
“All recreation is not without risk,” [Stephanie] Oppel said. “There is some sort of risk.”
OK, whitewater kayaking has its risks. Among them are getting a concussion, breaking a bone, maybe drowning. I doubt anyone jumping into a canoe thinks cancer is high on the risk list.
Old crow watching from a tree
Has his hungry eyes on me
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there
Our inch worm is gone. It found its way off the table. Maybe a dog licked it up. Maybe we stepped on it. Maybe it’s already become a moth.
But for the brief moment that was its life, it got a lift, worked hard and made deliberate progress.
Not a bad use of the time.
This week at Draco Hill Nature Farm
The inspiration for Postcards from the Heartland
SAVE THE DATE: Summer Evening Stroll, Friday, July 18th, 6 pm. Hike with County Naturalist Sarah Subbert, sit by the river, bring your own s’mores! Details here.
Very little could possibly lift my spirits following events of the last few hours and days. When my head and heart were heaviest, I receive the necessary slap of energy and wit needed for relief. Damn, your writing is just the inches I required. Thanks for knocking the funk out of me!
yep, from the heart. I really love this and you! Interesting history this state and this state's water has. Thanks for writing it!