February 11, 2011 Guest opinion: Iowa must invest in state's environmental capital, too MARIAN RIGGS GELB is the executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council. Contact: mrgelb@iaenvironment.org.

This year, when many legislators want to reduce government spending for public services and give tax cuts to big business, we are seeing significant proposed cuts to environmental programs in Iowa. Meanwhile, issues such as the erosion of our precious topsoil, water quality and quantity, air quality and imperiled ecosystems continue to worsen. There are many opportunities for Iowa legislators to invest in Iowa's natural capital without spending a cent of taxpayer money. For starters, they can say "no" to the provision in the "Taxpayers First" bill that eliminates smart planning principles from Iowa Code. These principles were designed to help local governments ensure that Iowa grows in a way that is resilient in the face of natural disasters and that protects our natural resources. Legislators can establish statewide stormwater best-management practices to limit water runoff from urban areas. They can prohibit building new critical facilities such as hospitals and police and fire stations in a 500-year flood plain. Legislators should address the devastating effects of unsustainable farming practices in Iowa. We continue to mine our topsoil at an irreplaceable rate. When we lose our soil to erosion, we also degrade our waterways with sediment, nutrients and bacteria. Not only does this have a profound impact on the health, well-being and economies of local communities, but the ecosystem stops functioning as it should. Continue to degrade the ecosystem and the money that farming and recreation bring to our economy will be gone. Over the long term, our ability to feed ourselves, let alone the world, will also be gone. To reverse this trend, legislators should give landowners incentives to maintain or restore natural vegetation along rivers and streams, improve pasture management and create setbacks for row-crop production. We should encourage the use of cover crops to provide a continuous living cover that will help mitigate flooding, and its associated pollution, downstream. We need to improve our nutrient management for both fertilizer and manure. And, we need to focus on and learn how to stem pollution that passes unseen through subsurface tile lines into our rivers and lakes. With these steps, Iowa as a whole will reap the benefits of cleaner water, improved flood mitigation, better habitat and greater biodiversity. Landowners will be able to preserve the fertility of their soil, support their local economies and leave a productive future to their grandchildren and those that follow. But these goals cannot be accomplished unless legislators also ensure that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship are funded at levels that allow them to provide outreach and technical assistance to local watershed projects and landowners. Now is the time for legislators to take note that 63 percent of Iowans approved the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund last November. Iowans understand the value of our natural resources and expect the Iowa General Assembly to move the environment up the priority list to ensure that Iowa has all of its capital assets intact.