This document discusses cultural capital and its role in nutrient reduction efforts in Iowa. It provides context on the nitrate levels found in the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers, which exceed safe drinking water standards. It notes differing perspectives between farmers and the Des Moines Water Works director on the issue. The document emphasizes that cultural capital, like views and values, influence how scientific information is interpreted and whether environmental problems are seen as threats. It examines various policy approaches to improve water quality in Iowa and their relationship to cultural capital.

1. Cultural Capital & Nutrient Reduction:
An example from Iowa
Cornelia Butler Flora
cflora@iastate.edu

2. Political
Capital
Cultural
Capital
Natural
Capital
Human
Capital
Financial
Capital
Social
Capital
Healthy Ecosystem
Economic Security
Social Inclusion
Built
Capital

4. Cultural Capital
• Cosmovisión-
relation of the seen
and unseen
• Ways of knowing
• Food and language
• Ways of being
• Definition of what
can be changed
What we think possible to
change
Acknowledging that nature
has multiple values and that
environmental
deterioration is not
inevitable often requires a
change in cultural capital.
Cultural hegemony can
devalue the importance,
meaning, and uses of
natural resources for non-
financial purposes

5. Cultural capital …
• determines how we see the world
• how the seen is related to the
unseen
• what we value, and what we think
possible to change
Cultural capital impacts and is
impacted by the other capitals

6. Des Moines Water Works N Extraction Plant
• Uses ion exchange to extract Nitrates
• Costs $7,000 per day
• Denitrification of portion of flow
• Zero content effluent backmixed into stream
• Nitrate slurry released downstream of plant
• Extremely precise nitrate monitoring
– 9.5-9.9 mg/L (10mg/L unsafe)

7. March 2013 Historic Nitrate Levels in Des Moines Water
Works’ Source Water
The new nitrate concentration levels found in the Des Moines and
Raccoon River follows the continued upward trend of nitrate
concentrations. Fertilizer is the largest source of nitrogen input in the
Mississippi River Basin and has increased more than six-fold since the
1950s, and thus is a major contributor to Hypoxia in the Gulf of
Mexico.

8. This is the worst we’ve ever seen,” said
Bill Stowe, manager of Des Moines
Water Works, which serves about
500,000 customers in central Iowa. Both
rivers are used as water sources for the
Des Moines plant.
• The Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers above Des Moines were at a
record 24 and 18 mg of nitrates/liter in May.
• The EPA requires nitrate in drinking water be below 10 mgs/liter.
Above that level can be deadly to infants younger than 6 months
because it reduces the oxygen carried in their blood. Pregnant
women and adults with reduced stomach acidity should not to
drink water above the EPA limit.
• Des Moines had to switch on a $4 million nitrate-removal system
for the first time since 2007, raising the cost of providing water to
consumers from 5-10 cents/1000 gallons to an estimated $4-$5.
• Associated Press, June 5, 2013

9. The situation got worse in
2014 and 2015
• In January, 2015, Des Moines Waterworks
threatened to file a lawsuit against three rural
Iowa counties for not regulating farmers’ nitrate
runoff from their fields.
• The Des Moines Water Works files a federal
lawsuit
• Why, with the threat of a lawsuit, did water
monitoring decrease and behavior did not
change?
• The farmers say there is no problem
• Farm Bureau and DNR calls for cooperation, not
alienation

10. Yet there are different responses to the “facts”
and how they are gathered: views of the
situation are completely different
Their cultural capital is different
Iowa farmer
Bill Stowe, Water
Works Director
Snippets from April 18,
2015 New York Times
article “Conflict Over Soil
and Water Quality Puts
‘Iowa Nice’ to a Test”

11. Scientific
Information
about
conditions
and threats
Improved conditions
Old Model of Environmental Research and Policy
Cultural capital determines what scientific information
we accept and how we interpret conditions – inevitable
or threats

12. Facts often do not determine behavior or policy

13. Policies as hypotheses
Policies suggest how one variable (such as
land use) impacts another (such as
water quality) – there is an assumption
about how action and results are linked.

14. PoliticAL Capital includes stated objectives, operating
procedures, laws and legal codes
• Legislation, leading to laws
• Executive decrees that determine how the
laws are interpreted and enforced
• Contracts and agreements, what one party
does that depends on what the other party
does.
• Powerful entities that can influence the
implementation of policies

15. Types of policies
• Reactive – Des Moines constructed the
world’s largest nitrate removal system
• Directive (requires a control mechanism)
• Restrictive (requires a control mechanism)
• Enabling (depends on incentives and
initiative)
–Incentives are both direct and indirect – and
they can be perverse

16. Iowa watershed policy determined
dominant cultural capital
• Voluntary individual choice
• Belief in the efficacy of “sound science”
to convince polluters “to do the right
thing.”
• Taxes must be low
• We feed the world with corn and
soybeans
• Saving the family farm by letting farms
do what they need to do

17. Water is contested as
• Natural capital (drinking and irrigation use to exchange
value)
• Financial capital (input for industrial production, selling of
water rights – exchange value)
• Cultural capital (lifestyle/
use value)
• Human capital (impacts on
health)
• Built capital – ecological
modernization/techno fix
• Political capital (relates
to all of the above)

18. Possible Solutions-Positive Sanctions
• In November 2010, Iowa voters overwhelmingly passed the
Water and Land Legacy Amendment to create a Trust Fund that
will allocate 3/8th ₵ from all new sales tax revenue to invest in
improving water quality (financial, built, & political capital).
• Des Moines Water Works should use creative financing to pay
upstream farmers in Raccoon & Des Moines River watersheds to
adopt practices that reduce runoff – boxes, more complex
rotations, cover crops, buffers, wetlands (financial & built caps).
• Build strong watershed associations. A viable Raccoon River
Watershed Association already exists (social & political capital).
• Continue and strengthen Iowa State University Extension
Education functions, the Iowa Food Systems Council’s policy
work, and other local food and sustainable ag organizations.
• Build a consumer food movement to counter political power of
Farm Bureau and commodity organization.

19. Possible Solutions - Negative sanctions
• Build political support for EPA to enforce the
Clean Water Act – with effective timelines.
• Increase funding of IDALS to properly staff
existing enforcement programs.
• Transform USDA farm programs by
– Requiring all who receive federal farm subsidies to
have a whole-farm conservation plan with teeth.
– Get rid of perverse incentives in crop insurance
program, including reducing federal share.
Increase coverage to greater diversity of crops.
– Strengthen CRP and CSP