(Iowa Capital Dispatch) Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced a water quality funding package Friday that she said will move existing funding and add additional funds to renovate and expand water quality infrastructure across the state.
Reynolds announced the proposal during a news conference, alongside Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, lawmakers and leaders from Iowa State University and Central Iowa Water Works.
The funding package, added as an amendment through Senate File 2487, the agriculture and natural resources appropriation budget, includes multiple changes to Iowa’s system for funding water quality infrastructure and monitoring on the state level. A release from the governor’s office stated the total funding package represents a $319 million investment in water quality over the next 12 years.
“In short, it shifts money to fund the most urgent needs and the most effective programs,” Reynolds said.
The proposal would eliminate the existing Water Quality Financing Program, an $8.5 million program through the Iowa Finance Authority that makes up roughly 45% of the money spent on water quality financial assistance, according to a release from the governor’s office.
Funding from this program would be redistributed to other programs, including the existing Wastewater and Drinking Water Treatment Financial Assistance program through IFA. It would increase funding for this program from $7.7 million to $12.09 million annually, alongside a $8 million one-time investment, to provide grants to Iowa communities for infrastructure projects. Grants awarded through this program would increase from the current maximum of $500,000 to $1 million.
The proposal would also create a Greater Des Moines Watershed Program with $3.72 million annual investment. It would provide funding for projects to preserve and maintain watersheds upstream from the Des Moines metropolitan area, such as implementing cover crop and edge-of field buffers, as well as other wetland and working land conservation programs. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources would also receive a $500,000 annual appropriation for additional water quality monitoring.
Naig said he was proud of the work done by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, landowners, farmers and other partners on water quality, but said “there is no finish line when it comes to conservation.” He said the new department plans to “use these additional dollars to scale up things that are already proven to be effective,” adding additional funding to work that is “already underway.”
While he praised current efforts to improve Iowa water quality, Naig said the funding proposal comes with the understanding “we need to continue to advance.”
“Clean water is non-negotiable, and we stand here today to acknowledge that there is more work that needs to be done to modernize Iowa’s water treatment infrastructure, in our fields, in our communities and in our utilities,” Naig said. “That requires a commitment from all of us to make meaningful improvements, from the farm to the faucet.”
The package would also create a $10 million, one-time revolving loan fund called the Rural Iowa Infrastructure Bank to would provide loans at a rate of 1% or less to finance small and medium-sized communities seeking to upgrade water and wastewater infrastructure. Additionally, a one-time investment of $25 million would go to Central Iowa Water Works to fund projects that will double nitrate removal capacity within three years.
Reynolds said these one-time investments would come from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund. An amendment to the RIIF funding bill, Senate File 2484, had not yet been filed as of early Friday afternoon.
Tami Madsen, executive director of Central Iowa Water Works, said the $25 million would go toward work currently happening to increase nitrate reduction removal capacity at CIWW, which she said is on a timeline of about three years of construction. She said the additional funding will be determined as engineering work continues, looking at “options such as treatment vessels or reverse osmosis, with the goal of substantially increasing removal capacity,” she said.
The overall increase in nitrate removal capacity comes as nitrate levels were significantly elevated in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers — the waters that feed plants in the CIWW system — in 2025, leading to a lawn watering ban in June and July. Madsen said the investment will help build a system where CIWW can better respond to similar situations in the future.
“Expanding treatment capacity will reduce operational strain that can come from variability and weather impacts and improve system performance, particularly during peak demand periods,” Madsen said. “It also positions us to accommodate continued population growth in central Iowa without compromising reliability so we can maintain our impressive rankings as one of the best places to live in the United States.”
Reynolds said the package included input from IDALS, CIWW, lawmakers and others because water quality because all parties are “part of the solution” to addressing problems with Iowa’s water quality.
“Water quality isn’t a farm issue, it isn’t a city issue, and it isn’t a political issue, but it absolutely is non-negotiable,” Reynolds said. “Everyone here has the same goal, and that’s to improve Iowa’s water quality.”
Iowa’s water quality has been brought up by Democrats and other advocates as a potential driver behind Iowa’s high and rising cancer rates in comparison to other states. According to a report released by the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement and the Iowa Environmental Council in March, a majority of the types of cancer associated with exposure to pesticides, PFAS, nitrate or radon have rising instances in Iowa.
Democrats skeptical of scale, timing of program
Democratic lawmakers said they did not believe the governor’s proposed investment would be enough to meaningfully improve water quality in Iowa. Rep. Austin Baeth, D-Des Moines, said, “it’s a drop in the bucket, and that’s better than having a dry bucket — but so much more needs to be done.”
“Republicans have been in control of state government for the last decade, and I suppose, better late than never — here, May 1, 2026, we now see a plan that begins to acknowledge that Iowa has a severe water pollution problem,” Baeth said. “But I will say that there’s a lot more that we should be doing.”
House Democrats released their plan to improve water quality in January as the “Iowa Healthy Water Act.” Baeth said would that be a more effective way to address problems with water quality in the state by providing tax incentives to farmers to implement best water quality and nutrient management practices, and to triple the funding for Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy from $10 million to $30 million.
Baeth said the Republicans’ proposal primarily focuses on improving water quality once it is collected by utilities, but said “the sustainable solution is to prevent that pollution from going into our waterways in the first place.”
“Most serious environmental scientists, health scientists, believe this is going to be a multi-year, multi-multimillion-dollar issue that needs to be addressed with bold, comprehensive action to clean water upstream, to treat water pollution upstream at its source,” Baeth said.
The Democrats’ plan also included establishing a $600,000 statewide water monitoring program, led by Regents institutions including the Iowa Flood Center with information publicly accessible through a statewide dashboard. The governor’s proposal includes a $500,000 for additional water quality monitoring by the DNR, which Rep. Elinor Levin, D-Iowa City, said was not the best way to make needed improvements to monitoring in the state.
“The most efficient way to do that is to give our state entities the resources they’ve told us they need,” Levin said. “This plan instead invests in a more inefficient way of doing water quality monitoring. We don’t know whether it will be intermittent or continuous, whether it will be through the (U.S. Geological Survey) contracts with DNR — which cost between two and 12 times as much as having the Iowa Flood Center do continuous water quality monitoring for us.”
