DES MOINES, Iowa — After a historic summer of lawn-watering bans and high nitrate levels, central Iowa officials are taking steps to continue research for keeping water safe.

Polk County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a $200,000 investment to help keep 60 Iowa water quality monitors in operation. Those are all across the state in rivers and streams.

The funding will kick in June 2026 when previous funding is set to run out from the Izaak Walton League. A couple years ago, federal and state funding cuts threatened to pause the research.

IIHR Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa has been monitoring the water and gathering data for over a decade. 

Now, after Polk County released the Central Iowa Source Water Research Assessment this summer, it was even more important to keep this funding for water quality monitoring going. 

$90,000 of the $200,000 investment will come from leftover budgeted money from that research assessment, the other $110,000 is coming from ARPA for water quality.

“Public safety is at the forefront of all of this testing and all of this knowledge that’s being collected,” Polk County Board of Supervisors Chair Matt McCoy said. “The research is indicating that our drinking water impacts our overall health. The changing cancer statistics that have put Iowa in the forefront of the cancer discussion and a lot of people are asking questions that require the types of data that’s being collected.”

Monitoring water quality is not just to check nitrate levels, but also for flooding, fishing and general health of water. 

“We’re investing time, energy and money in all these practices, and we want to make sure that if we’re doing something to make things improve,” Polk County Conservation Director Rich Leopold said. “ Are things improving? To do that, you have to monitor, you have to measure on the opposite side of that. If we’re making land use changes that we believe might be detrimental to public health or ecology, we need to have long periods of data to figure that out.”

“Most recently with this Central Iowa Source Water Research Assessment, it also brought in that we need to use science to our advantage,” Polk County Water Resources Supervisor Johnathan Swanson said. “The one thing that stuck out to me is we need to keep monitoring. We need to keep looking at the data, keep using that data to say, where can we be most efficient with our projects?”

Officials say it costs about $600,000 annually to keep all 60 monitors operating across the state. That means Polk County will need help and they’re hoping other counties will join them in this investment.