I went to the First Annual Environmental Film Festival in Iowa City where the host Citizens for Our Land, Water and Future screened the documentary America's Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie. I am native Iowan. I have lived in Iowa for the last 15 years (from the flood of 1993 to the flood of 2008).
The floods of 1993 and 2008 have made something clear to many people living in the Midwest; things have irreversible changed. It is currently 80 degrees outside in the middle of October. Our climate is warming up. Whether things are for better or worse will depend on what we do with the time given to us.
Things are changing. What will we do? Change? Or be changed? Much of what once was tall-grass prairie in the 18th century is now 21st century farmland. Corn and soybeans! This industrial agriculture we are surviving on is unsustainable, ruining our health with pesticides, fertilizers and creating a dangerous diet of saturated fat filled meat/refined foods. Corn and soybeans are harvested to make sugars and Trans fats our bodies can't process healthily. I am not advocating a plant based diet as much as I am advocating a better diet that comes from grass fed animals. When you eat corn fed beef, you are eating cow's heart disease. The idea of eating another mammal's heart disease grosses me out. I don’t like the idea of doctor playing roto-rooter with my arteries. My blood vessels are not pipes. Blood vessels are flexible living tissue.
My body like my environment can’t be taken for granted. I live next to a river that the organization American Rivers referred to as the 3rd most endangered river in America due to agricultural pollution and lack of enforcement of the Clean Water Act.
I think both my government and myself need to stop taking my body and environment for granted. I am not going to last forever! I am not immortal like a corporation or the U.S. Constitution. It is time we upheld the law and stopped using our bodies as industrial chemical and biological/bacterial crash test dummies. And to think after the water went over the Coralville Dam spillway I wandered home through the bacteria (diluted) filled Iowa River floodwaters. It was not my brightest moment. I have gotten smarter since then and voted "Yes" on the conservation bond to set aside land in the flood plain.
Johnson County, Iowa has a bond referendum on the back of the 2008 ballot. FLIP the ballot over and vote yes to set aside $20 million dollars over 20 years to purchase land to go back into flood plain conservation, recreation and bicycle trails. This is not an issue of raising taxes so much as it is saving money. Prairie ecosystems are unique in the fact they have evolved over millions of years to absorb and utilize water and nutrients in the soil as efficiently as possible. A prairie ecosystem extends as much as ten feet above with plant species like bluestem prairie grass to ten feet below the ground with root systems interconnect and form a web of life as rich and bio-diverse as any rainforest. Many cities are using small patches of tall-grass prairie to catch and absorb storm water runoff. Health wise neighborhoods are better off with grasses than mosquitoes with the West Nile virus.
We are too dependent on fossil fuels. One possible answer to our fuel troubles is celluose based ethanol from switch grass and prairie plants.
It is sustainable and would not require fertilizer or pesticides.
The floods were devastating to both Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. The University of Iowa is spending close to a quarter of a billion dollars on flood restoration efforts. It is a sad waste of money. We built in a 500 year flood plain. We have had two 500 year floods in less than 2 decades. We will likely face another flood within the next twenty years. Eastern Iowa can’t afford it.