Art Cullen

Iowa View contributor

Bill Stowe stunned us when he announced last week that he suffers from a form of “aggressive” cancer that has “very few” options for treatment. Stowe, 61, said he will continue to serve as chief executive officer of the Des Moines Water Works as long as he can. Otherwise, he intends to concentrate on family and friends. He wishes that we don’t invade his privacy.

I can appreciate that. Stowe has been in the public eye and ear as the chief critic of corporate agriculture in Iowa. He is uncomfortable with cult status. He was a kid from Nevada who played basketball at Grinnell College, then went out of state to get a law degree and an engineering degree. He found his way back home to run the public works department for Des Moines and then the water works.

I met Stowe at an annual meeting of the Iowa Environmental Council in 2013. I appealed to save our prairie pothole lakes from sedimentation. Stowe sat next to me. He said he was going to sue our county, and others along the Raccoon River, over nitrate infecting his drinking water supply. He was matter-of-fact. He said the tough part was figuring out who should be sued.

Drainage districts deliver nitrate and phosphorous to the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. They are creations of the state overseen by county supervisors. The districts’ underground tile lines in Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties were identified as pollution sources, and the counties were named as defendants.

Since it was a pollution claim, the counties had no insurance to cover defense costs. So they turned to “friends” coordinated by the Agribusiness Association of Iowa and the Farm Bureau, which ran an ad campaign assaulting the water works. Then-Gov. Terry Branstad blamed Stowe for starting a war between rural and urban Iowa. With his wavy, long white hair, wool blazer and blue jeans, Stowe was a perfect figure to caricature, the urban dweller out of touch with rural concerns.

Except Stowe still owns Story County ground farmed by his cousins. He grew up around the farm and the whole rural scene. Grinnell is not exactly an urban area. Des Moines is hardly San Francisco.

His love for Iowa drew him back and kept him, although he always threatened to leave.

It took courage for him to challenge the chemical cabal that controls Iowa agriculture and politics. It took savvy for him to manage his board and competing metro interests. Not everyone would have had the steel.

As it turned out, Stowe’s initial prescience was the lawsuit’s undoing. A federal judge dismissed the case because drainage districts do not have authority to mediate pollution. They lacked legal standing. The Iowa Supreme Court also weighed in against DMWW, stating that damages could not be collected from drainage districts.

The Legislature responded by trying to dissolve the water works, and by defunding the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University — an innocent victim of collateral anger. It should have awakened everyone to what lengths the petrochemical industry will go to protect its vested turf.

Stowe accelerated a conversation that had been taking place in quiet corners. Butting heads with Farm Bureau is not the normal way to get ahead, if that’s what you’re after. The chemical lobby tried to make Stowe the issue. Stowe insisted on facts: that nitrate in the Raccoon River consistently exceeds safety standards, and it is not getting better.

He was not blaming farmers. He is one, by legacy. He was stating the facts about what agriculture was doing to Iowa, and to farmers. He never defamed Branstad or Craig Hill of the Farm Bureau. Stowe sought to meet with Branstad. The governor refused. Stowe sought a meeting with Buena Vista County Attorney Dave Patton; the BV supervisors told Patton to cancel. Stowe stuck to his claim: It is fundamentally unfair that Des Moines has to spend millions cleaning up what Buena Vista County sends downstream.

The case brought acute focus to the conflict between industry and the environment. It highlighted the impacts that climate change and human reactions impose. It drew attention to sustainable agriculture that can reduce surface water pollution. Strong majorities surveyed in the Iowa Poll over two years — including residents of small towns — agreed with the water works’ position. Things must change.

The Legislature reacted by appropriating about $16 million this year for water quality improvement. That would not have happened without the lawsuit.

The water works demanded that chemical agriculture be held accountable. That must be taken up through legislative means, Judge Leonard Strand suggested. The Iowa Legislature is not equipped to deal with a global problem. Congress must, along with a new president.

That’s what the lawsuit demonstrated, essentially.

It took courage to start the conversation with honesty and professional dignity, which was not always reciprocated. It takes courage for Stowe to continue urging for the cause of clean water and healthy agriculture as he considers his own destiny. Each of us should admire that and engage in a vigorous but respectful debate as Bill Stowe has. It can’t be put back in the bottle now.

Art Cullen is editor of The Storm Lake Times and is author of the book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper (Viking, 2018). He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on the Des Moines Water Works lawsuit.