Osterberg believes drainage district managers “have the power and the obligation” to take action on their own. Existing statutory authority gives drainage districts the power to level fees and to use eminent domain, powers that could be used to clean up Iowa waters and the Mississippi River.

If they don’t, Garvin said, they could be vulnerable to legal action.

“Just because this last case failed, it still leaves the door open for another group or another entity to come and approach it from another direction,” she said.

Referring to drainage pipes emptying into open ditches that run into streams, rivers and lakes, Osterberg said if those pipes “were any other entity doing any other kind of business, they would be regulated.”

Burkart argued the convergence of low commodity prices, an emerging plant breeding and seeding industry and the “perennialization” of commodity crops makes the timing right for new approaches by drainage districts.

One of the causes of nitrate pollution is that seasonal crops such as corn and beans go dormant in the winter. The use of perennial cover crops that would continue to draw water and nitrates out of the ground year-round would help alleviate the problem, Burkart said.

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