Iowa faces a reckoning over water quality and cancer rates in midterm
campaigns
[October 15, 2026]
By HANNAH FINGERHUT
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa is facing a budget deficit, high costs and
economic strain from trade disputes that have squeezed farmers.
But problems that have simmered for decades — water quality and cancer
rates — have been forced to the forefront of state politics this year.
They are the focus of debate questions, roundtable events and campaign
advertisements for candidates from both parties, up and down the ballot.
The issue has historically been politically taboo to avoid pointing
fingers at the powerful agricultural industry in Iowa, one of the
country’s top producers of corn, soybeans and hogs. Chemical fertilizers
and animal waste contain nitrates and phosphorus that can get washed
with rain or snowmelt into the state’s web of rivers.
The problem has long caused tension between Iowa’s more liberal urban
centers, which rely on rivers and lakes for drinking water, and mostly
conservative stewards of its rich farmland. Farmers are increasingly
participating in practices to prevent runoff, although critics say the
lack of regulation forces downstream Iowans to pay for the pollution.
The spotlight has grown — and the political calculus has shifted — after
back-to-back years of restrictions on water use in the Des Moines area
coupled with a burgeoning “Make America Healthy Again” movement in
Iowa's small towns and rural communities.
Cancer rates are a growing problem in Iowa
Iowa has the second highest rate of newly diagnosed cancers in the
country. Specific diagnoses, like prostate, breast and lung cancer, are
increasing in Iowa faster than in the U.S. overall. It's affecting urban
and rural parts of the state.
New state-funded research at the University of Iowa shows most — but not
all — of Iowa’s above-normal rates for five cancers can be explained by
demographic and behavioral factors, such as smoking and binge drinking.
Researchers next assess environmental factors, including nitrate levels.
“The real issue is the water and the nitrates,” said Democrat Josh Turek,
who is running for U.S. Senate, as he talked with cancer patients last
week. “Every Iowan deserves when they turn on the tap to ensure that
their water is clean and not giving them cancer.”
Some studies have found a link between nitrates in drinking water and
certain diseases, but it remains an area of debate. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency does not currently classify nitrates as
a cancer risk. The agency initiated a plan to review that assessment in
2017, but it's been stalled, revived and stalled again under different
White House administrations.
The Republican congresswoman running against Turek, Ashley Hinson,
recently gathered farmers, researchers and local officials to discuss
Iowa's water problems. She said there is an ongoing need for investments
in infrastructure, water quality monitoring and conservation programs to
ensure Iowans have safe drinking water. She also said people can feel
safe because treated tap water meets federal regulations.
“We all know that we have some challenges here in Iowa," she said. “I
don't think water quality is a partisan issue."
Farm runoff is a key contributor to river pollution — and political
tensions
It’s been more than a decade since the Des Moines area’s water utility,
fed up with paying roughly $16,000 per day to remove nitrates from
water, sued counties further upstream to get them to help cover the
cost. The complaint was ultimately dismissed, and Iowa’s Republican
leaders celebrated the ruling.
Last year, Central Iowa Water Works issued its first-ever ban on lawn
watering to reduce demand on its nitrate removal facilities, and state
politicians rejected any suggestion of a “blame game” that would
implicate farmers. Iowa had been investing nearly $100 million annually
in its nutrient reduction strategy in recent years.
In May, though, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and lawmakers committed an
additional $320 million for water infrastructure, conservation
initiative incentives and other projects, including millions to Central
Iowa Water Works to update equipment.
“Water quality isn't a farm issue. It isn't a city issue, and it isn't a
political issue,” Reynolds said. “But it absolutely is non-negotiable.”
Still, criticism of slow progress has continued, including from
candidates running to replace Reynolds.
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A stream cuts through a farm field, May 7, 2026, near Marshalltown,
Iowa. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson, File)
 Governor candidates make the
issue central
Republican Zach Lahn and Democrat Rob Sand both emphasize that the
state needs to better prioritize the water problem, though neither
have called for mandating farming conservation practices that reduce
runoff.
Lahn, who was endorsed early in his primary by political committee
MAHA Action, has diverged from many of his Republican peers in
directly linking polluted water and agrochemicals to Iowa’s cancer
crisis.
At Lahn's agriculture-focused town hall in northeast Iowa in August,
one attendee raised the issue.
“Right now the farmers, I would say, are really getting blamed for
the high cancer rate in Iowa,” she said. “Even our daughter calls
from Des Moines and says: ‘Should we be drinking this water?’”
Lahn said he knows certain agrochemicals are important “tools in the
tool chest.”
“We’re not here to ban products," he said, "but we do have to
address the water quality issue.”
Federal regulations say drinking water is safe with a maximum
nitrate level of 10 milligrams per liter. That threshold was set to
prevent what’s known as blue baby syndrome, a condition when an
infant’s blood doesn’t have enough oxygen, but more scientific
studies are now analyzing the relationship between nitrate-laden
water below that threshold and certain cancers.
Lahn said he tested the nitrate levels from his well water and creek
in rural east-central Iowa, finding both well above the federal
limit.
Central Iowa Water Works ran its nitrate removal treatment for a
record 193 days straight earlier this year, and the treated water's
nitrate levels hovered around eight to nine milligrams per liter in
the heart of summer.
Sand usually references water early in his stump speech, naming one
reason he initially registered as a Democrat is the party’s advocacy
for clean water because he likes to fish. He said Tuesday after
meeting with cancer survivors and parents of children with cancer
that he's seen the topic rise in the public consciousness over the
past few years.
“I hear from people regularly who are so concerned about it that
they wonder whether or not they want to be in Iowa," Sand said.
Iowa’s race for agriculture secretary illustrates the tension
Twenty years ago, research scientist Chris Jones said he’d give his
boss at Des Moines' water utility updates on the rivers' nitrate
levels.
“He’d say to me, ‘Where’s the outrage?’” Jones recalled. “Now, the
outrage has arrived.”
Jones, who later worked on water quality monitors at the University
of Iowa, says it’s a huge failure of the state for Iowans to lose
faith in drinking water.
Jones is a Democrat running in the election to be Iowa’s secretary
of agriculture, trying to unseat incumbent Republican Mike Naig.
Chief among their differences is whether conservation solutions
should be mandatory. In a debate, Naig said Jones is an outlier in
demanding farmers be required to adopt conservation practices.
Iowa’s agricultural industry resists mandates, in part because not
all farmers own the land they farm and some conservation efforts
might lead to profit loss, at least initially.
Naig, who previously worked for chemical manufacturer Monsanto,
highlighted the records that his department has set under Reynolds’
leadership and said conservation work is being scaled up to
accelerate progress.
“It’s been a hot topic on the campaign trail,” Naig said, but “we
have to have a long view of these things, and we’re making
progress.”
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