Chris Jones
From our inbox: A message from Democratic candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Chris Jones. Check out his campaign website
Do you remember a cleaner Iowa?
I imagine a day when a miracle has happened.
On that day our streams run clear, our air smells of nature and not the moldered waste of a swine legion. Children play in our lakes while parents look on unconcerned about infection. From our faucet flows water we can know is safe to drink.
The work of prosperous farmers enhances the quality of life for all and not just a tiny fraction. Iowa remains a working landscape but one that fosters the well-being of native plants and animals, which have returned in abundance to co-mingle with a crop and livestock production system designed for human nutrition and environmental outcomes. The commerce from this system has rekindled rural life and reversed the migration of young people to big cities and distant states.
Many say these are impossible goals—the world has changed too much. Why do we let those that benefit most from the status quo define what is and isn’t possible? Shouldn’t we the people define the possible? – Chris Jones
Dear Friend of Clean Water,
It’s official — my name, Chris Jones, — will appear on the Iowa ballot this November as the Democratic candidate for the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Last month I submitted more than 5,638 ballot signatures from Iowans fed up with the status quo on Iowa’s water quality and Mike Naig’s failure to improve it.
Although I’m appreciative of this support, I’m still coming to grips with it because this is an endeavor I never thought I’d pursue. But after 3 years of retirement, I realized I couldn’t sit on the sidelines while my fellow Iowans are clamoring for clean lakes and safe drinking water.
After more than 40 years working on water quality issues, and much of that time spent studying the drivers of degredation, I hoped that I would spend my retirement years reading, writing, and fishing in the rivers and streams of Iowa as I have done across the state since childhood.
But then fate and the suggestion of a few good friends intervened—friends who share my view that we are at a water quality crisis point.
Why I’m running:
Iowa is a proud agricultural state. It boasts some of the most fertile soil on the planet and some of most the productive and innovative farmers in America.
The problem is that for the past 30 years Iowa’s politicians and Big Ag lobbyists have intentionally pushed for fencerow to fencerow 2-crop farming and the creation of huge livestock warehouses producing mountains of manure and waste— while abandoning reasonable and common-sense regulations of water pollution in our state’s waterways.
For me, and a growing number of Iowans, our state’s polluted water is no longer acceptable.
- Iowa is not only is #1 in corn producing state, #1 in factory farm hogs, eggs, and ethanol, but we also have a major problem with polluted rivers and streams.
- Our state produces so much animl waste that Iowa has become #1 in #2 if you know what I mean.
- As a result, Iowa has over 723 impaired waterways across the state.
- Last year, scientists found that pollutants like nitrates have doubled in the past 50 years in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers.
- Sadly, the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers are the main sources of drinking water for more than 600,000 central Iowa residents.
- Agricultural runoff contributes more than 80% of the nitrates in the Des Moines and Raccoon river.
- The nitrate levels found in the state’s drinking water sources are above the federal government’s nitrate limit for safe drinking water.
- In the past 12 years, Iowans have spent over $5.6 billion dollars on alleged conservation practices to improve Iowa’s water quality, but the problem has only gotten worse!
This is an outrage — and the status quo isn’t working. If you want someone in elected office in Iowa to finally take water quality seriously – please consider donating to my campaign. Every dollar counts!
If this weren’t bad enough:
Iowa has 2nd Highest Rates of Cancer in the U.S.
- In 2023, the Iowa Cancer Registry announced that Iowa has the 2nd highest rates of cancer in the U.S.
- The Iowa Cancer Registry annual reports that find that 2 in 5 Iowans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes.
- This year, an estimated 21,700 Iowans will be diagnosed with cancer, and roughly 6,400 Iowans will die from the disease.
- About a million Iowans drink water that contains nitrate levels above a level (3 ppm) associated with a whole host of cancers, including colorectal, ovarian, thyroid, stomach and bladder, and pediatric cancer.
- Iowa has 1% of the U.S. population, but 14% of the U.S. population drinking high nitrate water.
Iowa’s water quality is a serious and growing problem, and voters across the political spectrum agree it must be addressed. After more than a decade, the voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy, aministered by incumbent Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, has failed to produce meaningful results. Meanwhile, our waterways remain polluted, and communities are paying the price.
My qualifications:
- I spent 10 years managing a commercial environmental testing laboratory.
- 5 years consulting for water and wastewater utilities.
- 8 years running the testing laboratory at the Des Moines Water Works.
- 4 years working as an environmental scientist at the Iowa Soybean Association.
- And the last 8 years as a research scientist in the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa, where I studied contaminant hydrology in agricultural landscapes.
In 2023, I published a chronicle of some of my observations about clean water or the lack thereof in Iowa, called The Swine Republic: Struggles With the Truth About Agriculture and Water Quality.
Writing this book helped me realize the extent to which for the past 30 years Iowa’s public officials have been effectively silenced about the water crisis that Iowans are facing and it’s time to do something about it.
This is going to be an expensive race. Big Ag and Mike Naig’s former employers at Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, and all other ungovernable multinational agribusiness corporations, will not sit idly by.
Will you chip in $5, $10, or $25 to help elect me, Chris Jones as the next Iowa Secretary of Agriculture? With your support We can defeat Big Ag’s polluting agenda and help send Monsanto Mike back to the lobbying world where he belongs.
Iowans deserve honest data about water pollution and safe rivers and lakes, not partisan politics.
Sincerely,
Chris Jones
Candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture
Clean water is not partisan. It’s common sense. Elect Chris Jones to be Iowa’s next Secretary of Agriculture and Land Stewardship so he can make clean water a priority from day one!
Paid for by Chris Jones for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture
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