In downtown Des Moines, the Raccoon flows into the Des Moines River and then immediately runs into an obstacle — the Scott Street dam.
It's a hotspot for fishermen who drop lines over the railing of the bridge above it into the water below, but there are also signs around the area warning people about going in the water because lowhead dams like this create a deadly undertow.
A heavy construction crane on the water is a sign the area is in for a change.
“In central Iowa alone we have 150 miles of waterways, but we're really disconnected because of the lowhead dams,” said Hannah Inman, CEO of the Great Outdoors Foundation which helped launch a project called ICON — or the Iowa Confluence Water Trails.
The $125 million development project will modify three lowhead dams in the downtown area to clear the way for river features such as kayak launches and wading pools. ICON executive director, Stephanie Oppel, explains the plans for Scott Street.
“We will have a whitewater feature here that's going to be really exciting that people will be able to surf, do some of that more intense whitewater activity at this site,” she said.
Oppel says ICON will attract tourists who want to test their skills surfing the Des Moines River, but the vision goes beyond that.
These same sections of river exemplify Iowa’s chronic water quality problems. Nutrients and sediment threaten aquatic life. Runoff from farm fertilizer drives up nitrate levels. The Des Moines Water Works often has to filter nitrate out again to make the water safe to drink.
Oppel believes drawing people to these rivers can lead more of them to consider what’s in the water.
“Once people are engaged with ICON water trails then they have an investment that activates their desire to see more happen in water quality and in activating our rivers and waterways,” she said.
Testing the river
Before ICON invites people to the river, Polk County has been studying what the water quality looks like now.
Water ecologist Amanda Brown says there is always a risk involved when a person goes into the river, but as it relates to water quality the risks for recreation are different than for drinking water.
For instance, nitrate is not a health risk for swimming or paddling the way it is for drinking.
“We all know Des Moines Water Works has to spend tons and tons of money to clean up the nitrates out of our drinking water,” Brown said. “Well, that is not the case with recreation.”
Instead, the risk comes from bacteria or microbes that can make you sick. E. coli. is measured as an indicator for a host of waterborne pathogens from livestock, wildlife, and sewer systems.
High E. coli. readings are a common reason beaches are closed at Iowa lakes, and Brown says high E. coli. levels also appear in Des Moines-area rivers. The trouble is coming up with a system to communicate that in real time because the rivers change so quickly.
“You can go in and you can literally take a sample with a bottle and you can hit that plume and you’re going to have a super-high level,” Brown said. “If you would have gone ten minutes later and you would have gone to the exact same place you could have zero E. coli.”
Brown says the county is working with an infectious disease lab in Wisconsin to study the correlation between E. coli. and turbidity, or the relative clarity or cloudiness of the water, to see if it can serve as a real-time indicator.
Her advice is to enjoy the river while keeping in mind there are risks involved, so it’s a good idea to avoid drinking the water and to wash your hands afterwards.
Looking at the big picture
ICON’s backers say the project is aimed at both at reopening area rivers for recreation and improving water quality at all levels. There are direct and indirect ways that could happen.
The river features themselves include wetlands and pollinator habitat and work to control erosion on the riverbank.
The Great Outdoors Foundation is also fundraising around ICON to better manage runoff from farms upstream.
Inman says the goal is to raise around $20 million in private money which could unlock hundreds of millions more through federal programs to install water-filtering wetlands.
“What we're doing is raising private funds to partner with federal and state funds to be able to leverage more water quality practices for farmers that voluntarily want to do that,” Inman said. “By finding those individual landowners that want to do this, and there's a lot of them out there, we're able to enact change on a much more accelerated basis than the traditional model.”
The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy was adopted in 2013 with the goal of curbing nutrient pollution in the state’s waterways by 45%, and it relies on these kinds of voluntary conservation and incentive programs.
But Polk County administrator John Norris says voluntary measures on their own aren’t causing the systemic change that’s needed.
“Our water quality comes from all the way up the Des Moines and Raccoon River, which is tens of thousands of acres up to the Minnesota border,” Norris said. “We know we have to influence behavior beyond the borders of Polk County to have an impact on our water quality.”
Polk County put $2 million from its federal pandemic relief funding into the water trails project. Norris says one reason he supports ICON is because he believes it could bring more force to the effort by building a sense of ownership.
“Our water supply and drinking water is tied to those rivers being clean and usable. Now, recreation will be tied to those waters being clean and usable,” Norris said. “That, I think, will increase expectations and hopefully public demand that our policymakers do something.”
The water trails are an investment in connecting people with the rivers in their own backyard. Norris hopes what flows from that is a change of perspective that alters the state’s course on water quality.
