Opinion: Iowa’s environment takes hits on the legislative back burner

The outside of the Iowa state capitol constructing is seen in Des Moines on Tuesday, June 8, 2021. (Andy Abeyta/The Gazette)

Whereas the Republican-controlled Legislature has grabbed headlines handing out extra items to the spiritual proper than could be discovered at your native Pastime Foyer, the situation of God’s inexperienced earth in Iowa has been taking some hits.

Iowa’s atmosphere is on the again burner once more amid all this fireplace and brimstone. Nonetheless, dangerous payments stay alive as lawmakers enter the house stretch.

However this previous week, a foul invoice, remarkably, died Beneath the Golden Dome of Knowledge. It’s a miracle.

The invoice, Senate Fill 516, would have required the Division of Pure Sources to deal with the upkeep of present public lands, quite than buying new land to develop or create new public opens areas. Opponents of the invoice, together with environmental safety and outside recreation proponents, noticed the invoice as an effort to discourage the creation of recent parks, trails and conservation areas. They’re proper.

Iowa ranks amongst states with the smallest proportion of public lands, with roughly 3 p.c of the state publicly owned. Evaluate that the greater than 30 million acres of cropland on this 36-million-acre state. Half of the general public lands in Iowa are highway rights of means, comparable to interstate medians.

However farm teams say that’s nonetheless an excessive amount of, claiming farmers are being outbid for land by governments and teams that need to preserve the land for numerous public makes use of.

After all, curbing the enlargement of public lands and the conservation advantages they provide is unhealthy for Iowa’s atmosphere. Extra farming means extra soiled water, for instance. However that’s not an issue for our present Statehouse management. By no means has been.

Backers of the invoice additionally claimed the DNR can’t afford to keep up the land it has. Not stunning, contemplating how the Legislature has been lowballing DNR funding for years. They’ve hobbled the division and now criticize it for limping. Neat trick.

Happily, HF 516 did not obtain consideration within the Home State Authorities Committee forward of a legislative funnel deadline. So it’s thought-about useless for the remainder of the session. Subsequent yr, who is aware of?

To the teams who backed the invoice, together with the Iowa Farm Bureau, which has been on a campaign to cease public land enlargement, I provide ideas and prayers.

However we’re nonetheless not out of the woods but.

One other invoice, Senate File 548, repeals a property tax exemption for landowners with fruit tree or forest reserves on their property. By 2025, below the invoice, solely 50 p.c of the worth of forested land could be property tax exempt. The Legislative Providers Company say the invoice will end in an $8.3 million property tax improve for these landowners by Fiscal 12 months 2027.

And right here we thought Republicans have been decided to chop property taxes. Positive, however not for a bunch of tree-huggers.

Why would the Legislature need to goal forest land? Effectively, it’s the identical pondering that went into the invoice limiting public lands. Some forest reserve landowners may bristle on the concept of paying extra taxes and convert the land to an agricultural use or promote it to somebody who will. So possibly Iowa will get extra farmland or grazing land. Simply what we’d like.

“In case you go forward and tax these, even at 50 p.c, over 40 years you gained’t have any financial achieve,” mentioned Paul Millice, a board member of the Iowa Woodland Homeowners Affiliation who has six acres of timber south of Iowa Metropolis, based on reporting by The Gazette’s Erin Murphy. “It’s going to trigger some landowners to throw within the towel. It’s going to have a profound impact on water high quality and runoff and all these different issues.”

This shady tree tax stays very a lot alive because the Legislature comes down the house stretch.

So does the invoice I wrote about final weekend that might prohibit native ordinances directing builders to revive some topsoil they scrape from development websites. The measure additionally units a low bar for stormwater rules governing new developments. Each items would hurt water high quality, worsen flooding dangers and probably overwhelm present stormwater infrastructure.

However, as standard, these penalties are not any match for the political clout of homebuilders, actual property pursuits, earthmoving corporations and different GOP enterprise buddies.

Final however not least is Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Govt Order 10, which she signed again in January. The order directs state departments, boards and commissions to cease all new rule making and assessment, rewrite or repeal all guidelines presently on the books. The purpose is to search for “out of date, ineffective, excessively burdensome or redundant” guidelines that needs to be repealed.

Sounds affordable. Apart from the truth that state environmental rules already are exceedingly weak. Does anybody consider this guidelines assessment will result in stronger guidelines governing water air pollution? It’s extra probably the revised guidelines shall be even much less “burdensome” so Reynolds can please her large enterprise and agriculture donors on the expense of our pure assets.

Reynolds’ order got here simply because the DNR was revising its guidelines governing animal feeding operations. The division, based on the Iowa Environmental Council, has pledged to make these guidelines a precedence this yr as a part of its broader assessment course of.

The Environmental Council and a coalition of 14 different teams have requested the DNR to make adjustments to the AFO guidelines, together with closing loopholes permitting some feeding operations to keep away from state rules, making a course of for stopping initiatives in environmentally high-risk areas, inserting decrease limits on manure utility on crops and adopting stronger water high quality guidelines for amenities constructed on porous Karst terrain.

These could be good adjustments, to make sure. However will Reynolds’ drive to slash rules go away room for some precise environmental wins? God solely is aware of.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com

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