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CEDAR RAPIDS | Suggestions that drainage districts could be on the frontline of efforts to mitigate nitrate pollution overstate their authority and likely would spur legal battles, according to the Iowa Drainage District Association.

Under Iowa law, drainage district funds only can be used for “the benefit of the district,” according to the association’s Executive Director John Tolbert. The term is not defined in law, making a case that nitrate mitigation benefits the district would be a stretch “and would be open to legal challenge.”

Tolbert was responding to a report earlier this week from the Iowa Policy Project that drainage districts “probably have the power and the obligation” to address ag-sourced nitrate pollution that threatens Iowa waters and is the primary cause for the hypoxic zone, or “Dead Zone,” at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Mitigating nitrate pollution would be a “public good,” according to the think tank’s researchers.

“If we’re going to start somewhere, we might as well start somewhere where we have the infrastructure in place to do something about it,” said IPP researcher Sarah Garvin. “We’re past the tipping point.”