The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and Iowa
State University, along with a wide variety of federal, state
and private partners, have been looking at ways to reduce
nutrient loading into our state’s waterways for more than 20
years. As a result of this long-term partnership, a new pilot
project has been developed to further test the effectiveness of
routing tile drainage water from our farm fields through
wetlands that have been shown to reduce the nitrate level in the
water by more than 50 percent. You can read a guest Op-Ed by
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey and Iowa State
University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Wendy
Wintersteen that has more information about the pilot program
here. This pilot program is based on work that has been done
here in Iowa through the Conservation Reserve Enhancement
Program (CREP). Through CREP 72 of these wetlands have been
restored or are under construction or design. Water Quality
testing done by Iowa State University show that