Tom Vilsack, the nation’s agriculture secretary and a former governor of Iowa, during an official trip here Wednesday, put the onus on state leaders to develop a broad, well-funded plan to improve water quality soon.

 

“There are tremendous opportunities here, but it requires our leaders to step up and say, you know what, regardless of our philosophy, regardless of our ideology, regardless of our differences we are going to figure this out. We’re going to figure this out, and 2017 is going to be the year,” Vilsack said Wednesday on the Iowa State University campus after holding a roundtable discussion with farmers.

 

A robust debate over water quality programs and funding in Iowa has been sparked largely by two recent events: The federal government said the state must remove from its waterways harmful nitrates that are flowing down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, killing marine life there, and a Des Moines water utility company sued a group of northwest Iowa counties over pollutants flowing into the Raccoon River in Des Moines.

 

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