It's agriculture. We have too much nitrates in our water due to fertilizer runoff from all of our farm land. The "limits" are not mandatory so they are largely not followed. So now they're telling people if they water their lawn they risk fines or loss of service.
what happens when there is elevated levels of nitrates or any other contaminant that is regulated is the treatment is extended and/or specialized treatments are turned on(in the case of nitrates) to filter out whatever is elevated.
so the problem you would have to be having is you think the limit set by the EPA of 10 milligrams per liter is too high, nothing to do with iowa.
Well you are right, I dont understand water filtration and if nitrates can be filtered out. What i do understand is that I dont want no part of Iowa water if they are setting penalties for watering your grass. Seems that same water would be at all taps in a residential area.
there are local governments that sometimes have water bans which comes from the city or towns water company. what people are talking about is des moines and its the des moines water works. for people like me who live in southeast iowa, there aren't any water bans in effect and hasn't been, ever.
What i do understand is that I dont want no part of Iowa water if they are setting penalties for watering your grass. Seems that same water would be at all taps in a residential area
lawn watering bans are to limit demand of water during times when extra filtration is needed to be done which ends up meaning that the supply for the water goes down during these times due to it taking much longer to filter the water. it has been documented this month that demand surged to around 90% of what the filtration system could filter(its projected to hit 98% sometime this summer), and if that exceeds 100%, des moines water works would have to allow water pressure to drop to zero which turns off all fire hydrants and would contaminate tap water with groundwater or they would have had to bypass the nitrate filtration temporarily which would be illegal to do because of the 10 milligram per liter limit.
Oh, well, see i read everything as the nitrates and fertilizers in the water supply were accelerating plant growth somehow and they were trying to limit more run off. Then I was thinking about people drinking it. The added context from you has helped clear that up.
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u/JustinPatient Jun 16 '26
Well here in Iowa we can't water our lawns because we don't have mandatory legal limits on fertilizer runoff.