Civil Eats: Zach Lahn Doesn’t Have a Plan to Address Iowa’s Water Quality Crisis
DES MOINES – New reporting from Civil Eats details how only one candidate in the governor’s race has a real plan to address Iowa’s rising cancer rates and water quality crisis — and it’s not Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn.
Instead of “issu[ing] an official water quality plan,” Lahn is facing growing scrutiny for having close “ties to Big Ag” and a long career working for “political advocacy groups [that] have long backed agribusiness interests in Iowa.” Despite the last decade of one-party rule that “downplayed the [water quality] problem over the years and offered a lackluster response,” Lahn fully embraced Kim Reynolds’ failed status quo. Lahn has “cast himself as the heir to” Reynolds’ deeply unpopular legacy, including her decision to defund real-time water quality monitors.
Lahn even chose State Rep. Derek Wulf as his running mate — a political insider with close ties to big pesticide companies and special interests. Wulf wrote a bill aimed at “protecting polluters by limiting lawsuits against agriculture operations based on greenhouse gas emissions,” has a cozy relationship with the pesticide lobby, and voted for the worst of Reynolds’ agenda.
From Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Terra Hernandez:
“Iowans deserve a governor who will stand up to special interests, not do their bidding. Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn has no plan to clean up Iowa’s water, just the same agenda that helped create the cancer crisis: siding with corporate polluters and promising more of Kim Reynolds’ failed status quo. It’s just more proof that a Lahn-Wulf administration would protect polluters instead of fixing Iowa’s water quality crisis.”
Read more from Civil Eats here, or key points below:
- For the first time in 15 years, a Democrat running for governor has a shot at winning. It’s not a coincidence that the nominee, current State Auditor Rob Sand, is also the only gubernatorial candidate to ever issue an official water quality plan.
- Up until 2023, the state of Iowa funded real-time water quality monitors, called the Iowa Water Quality Information System (IWQIS), at a price tag of $500,000 annually.
- Iowa lawmakers have downplayed the problem over the years and offered a lackluster response. In her Condition of the State speech in January, for example, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds referenced the state’s cancer rate at length but did not mention the water-quality crisis a single time.
- Republicans introduced their own legislation in February, aimed not at solving any aspects of farming pollution, but instead at protecting polluters by limiting lawsuits against agriculture operations based on greenhouse gas emissions. That bill was introduced in the House by State Rep. Derek Wulf, whom Lahn has chosen as his running mate in the governor’s race. It was signed into law in April.
- However, critics have been quick to point out Lahn’s ties to Big Ag, particularly … political advocacy groups [that] have long backed agribusiness interests in Iowa.
- The difference between him and his opponent, [Sand] said, is that although Lahn has some ideas, he has a fully formed plan.
- Stephani Kilbride lives in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, and last summer bought a countertop reverse osmosis system because she was concerned about the water her family was drinking, and that she was using in her fish tanks, too. She grew up on a farm in Iowa, moved out of state, and then returned in 2001—but questions whether that was the right move. Come November, Rob Sand’s water quality plan and how he addresses problems make him the best choice for governor, she said.
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