The water that flows from taps here in Chariton has for some years been supplied by the Rathbun Rural Water Association, drawn into its treatment plant just beyond Rathbun dam from the lake itself and distributed across a huge chunk of southeast Iowa and northwest Missouri. Other water sources supply association customers in far southeast Iowa.
Rathbun water has been available in Lucas County for as long as there's been a Lake Rathbun --- and that dam was completed, closed and dedicated with President Nixon at the wheel while I was in Vietnam. So it's been a while.
But Chariton joined the network fairly recently --- after the city finally gave up on the herculean task of providing reliably sufficient and safe water from its own treatment plant, fed by the small and relatively shallow lakes Ellis and Morris.
I don't drink the tap water, however --- preferring to buy gallons of filtered "Hy-Vee water" (also drawn from Rathbun) --- and was reminded why during the night when the bedside bottle ran dry and I decided to drink a glass from a bathroom tap rather than trekking downstairs to the refrigerator. Lots of chemical aftertaste there.
Which brings me to an article in today's Kansas City Star by Knoxville's Robert Leonard headlined, "The Iowa GOP is dismantling water protections. Kansas and Missouri, you’re downstream." I was able to access this without encountering a pay wall; hopefully, you'll be able to, too.
Leonard is an anthropologist who blogs as "Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture," frequently is featured on the progressive news site "Iowa Capital Dispatch" and until his recent retirement was a special news editor for KNIA/KRLS Radio.
One of Iowa's dirty little secrets, for many years, has been the state of its surface water --- heavily polluted by runoff from farm fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides as well as under-regulated livestock confinement operations.
One recent strategy adopted by some in the livestock industry and their Republican legislative allies has been to dismantle the state's water testing infrastructure and that's a part of what Mr. Leonard's piece is about. It's worth a read.
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