The White House recently finalized rules to clarify jurisdiction for the Clean Water Act. But it won’t resolve the fights boiling over between urban and rural interests in places like Iowa and elsewhere over how to clean it up.

Des Moines, Iowa has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to filter nitrate from the Raccoon River, where it gets its drinking water. The situation has grown so dire that the local water utility says it will soon need to build a new facility to comply with federal pollution laws, at a cost of somewhere between $76 million and $184 million.

To hear those who manage the area’s water utility tell it, the dirty water isn’t really Des Moines’ problem at all — it’s the problem of outlying rural counties, where farmers apply nitrogen-heavy fertilizers to boost crop production. And they are tired of waiting for farmers to voluntarily reduce the amounts of nitrate they allow to seep into groundwater, and tired of waiting for someone to police the farmers.

Read Farmers and Cities Play the Water Pollution Blame Game via http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/gov-pollution-des-moines.html