by Cami Koons, Iowa Capital Dispatch
February 19, 2026
Amanda Winkelmann held up a baby bottle filled with tap water as she spoke at the Iowa Capitol Thursday about the need for greater attention to Iowa’s water quality.
“If we could see it,” Winkelmann said and used a paintbrush to put a drop of pink paint into the water. “Would we solve it?”
Winkelmann, who lives in Des Moines, said she and her husband choose to refill water jugs with filtered water due to their concerns about drinking tap water that has consistently high nitrate concentrations.
She was one of more than 150 Iowans gathered in the Iowa Capitol Rotunda Thursday afternoon urging lawmakers to support bills that would improve Iowa’s rivers, lakes, streams and drinking water.
“I believe that once and for all, we, as all Iowans, really need to come together to solve this,” Winkelmann said.
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The rally, put on by Food & Water Watch and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, celebrated the groups’ work to oppose a pesticide labeling bill that advanced from the Senate in 2025 but was not taken up by the House. The rally also focused on a call for legislators to fund a water quality sensor network in the state.
Michaelyn Mankel, an organizer with Food & Water Watch, said legislators have “passed numerous pro-polluter bills” in recent years that have contributed to the “poison in our water.”
One such action, Mankel said, was the Legislature’s 2023 decision to shift funding away from the Iowa Water Quality Information System, or IWQIS, that provides real-time measures of pH, nitrate, dissolved oxygen, discharge rates and temperature in streams across the state.
The system, which is monitored by scientists at the University of Iowa, has been temporarily propped up by funding from the Walton Family Foundation, but is set to go offline this summer if $600,000 is not raised, or allocated by the state. Nonprofit organizations and Polk County have already contributed to try and keep the sensors on.
“Our legislative priority of restoring this public water monitoring … is one of the lowest bars that we can set for action on the water crisis,” Mankel said. “But we’re here to build power so that we can win more, so that we can restore water quality across the state.”
Two bills were introduced in the House this session to try and fund IWQIS. Neither House File 2408 nor House File 2425, the latter of which would allocate $250,000 rather than $600,000 to the system, advanced past the necessary legislative steps to remain active bills past the Legislature’s “funnel” deadline Thursday evening.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers spoke at the rally Thursday, including Sen. Art Staed, D-Cedar Rapids, who has worked to introduce water quality legislation.
Staed said that rather than file a big “Iowa Clean Water Act” as he has in the past, he decided to file several, smaller bills related to water quality in the hopes of getting some action through the Legislature.
Staed introduced more than a dozen bills this year related to water quality. Some of these bills would have added steeper restrictions on confined animal feeding operations and manure management in the state. Environmental groups, including Food & Water Watch, hold that the mass production of livestock manure in Iowa contributes to poor water quality.
“The polluters need to be held accountable,” Staed said. “The condition of our waterways needs to be transparent. Protecting our water and supporting our farming agriculture are not opposing goals, they go hand in hand.”
None of Staed’s bills had scheduled subcommittee meetings, which means they will not be eligible for consideration past the legislative “funnel” deadline on Thursday.
Rep. Austin Baeth, D-Des Moines, said during the rally that many of his colleagues seem to have the “acquired loss of backbone” as he alleged most of them are “scared about talking about clean water.”
Baeth referenced a recent poll, commissioned by Food & Water Action and conducted by Global Strategy Group, that found that 82% of Iowa voters would vote for an elected official who made clean water a top priority.
“This is not a tiny little issue of a vocal minority,” Baeth said. “This is the overwhelming majority of Iowans demanding that we drink clean water.”
The poll also found that rising cancer rates were a “very serious problem” for 72% of Iowans. The cancer issue in the state was more important to Iowans, per the poll, than cost of living.
Baeth noted that Iowa has high concentrations of nitrate in its waters and the second-highest rate of cancer in the country, the two of which, he said, are linked.
The rally also included a vigil for Iowans who have lost their lives to cancer.
Baeth, who is an internal medicine physician, referenced the vigil at the center of the gathering and said he is “tired of diagnosing (his) patients with cancer.”
“Not a day goes by in my clinic, in my hospital, that my physician colleagues are (not) very worried that our water is killing our fellow Iowans,” Baeth said.
Alison Barnhill, a cancer survivor and veterinarian from Huxley, spoke at the vigil and said she represented the people “ravaged by chemotherapy and radiation” that are “too immunosuppressed to be here” and by the pets she has seen die from rare tumors.
“Cancer is just too prevalent in this state,” Barnhill said.
“So I’m here to give a message to the legislators: Do your job,” Barnhill said with a fist raised toward the House and Senate.
This article has been updated to correct that Food & Water Action, the political and lobbying arm of Food & Water Watch, commissioned the poll on Iowa voters.
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Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.
