Katelyn Weisbrod | July 6, 2018

The safety of drinking water should be something Iowans don’t have to worry about. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for 20,000 residents in nine Iowa counties for two weeks in June.

The Creston Water Treatment plant experienced a mechanical failure that led to unsafe municipal water. Residents were told to boil their water or use bottled water until the system could be repaired and flushed — not an easy feat.

Professor Neil Hamilton of the Drake Agricultural Law center cautions Iowans not to take for granted the clean water that comes out of the tap. The systems could be vulnerable to floods, algal blooms caused by nutrient runoff, mechanical failures, or any other number of threats to a delicate, precious resource.

Hamilton stresses the importance of dealing with the vulnerabilities of Iowa’s water systems before they become a problem in this week’s episode of Our Water, Our Land.