GOP plan guts research on floods, water pollution.
Apparently, we haven’t been giving the Iowa Legislature enough credit.
While we’ve all been focused on legislation that solves non-existent problems in Iowa, lawmakers must have been quietly solving some major problems that have plagued the state for decades.
“We can just declare victory and go home,” dead-panned Mark Rasmussen, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
The bill also zeroes out state funding of about $1.5 million for the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa.
Even if they somehow can’t tally up the economic benefit of the flood center, they should be able to do the political math.
The next time there’s a damaging flood in Iowa — and there will be one — every lawmaker who voted to foolishly eliminate an effective resource for early warning and prevention will be held accountable.
The center’s research includes organic crop production, water quality, cover crops, nutrient management and many other topics aimed at soil and water preservation.
And yet, there has been something close to bipartisan agreement in the Legislature for over a year that water quality is a problem in this state and that more needs to be done to prevent agricultural runoff.
Lawmakers and the governor have been looking for more resources to put into voluntary farm projects that the Leopold Center helped develop.