Woke on water? Iowa AG Brenna Bird sees a leftist plot to clean up dirty water

You probably missed it amid all the election hubbub, but Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is leading the charge to deny citizens the power to file lawsuits for violations of the Clean Water Act.

Also, efforts to clean up water are now “woke.”

“We must not allow unelected, green activists to weaponize lawsuits to force woke mandates, hurt farmers, or threaten cities that are working hard to keep drinking water clean,” Bird said in a statement.

Well, as we all know, the only people who care about water are militant environmental groups hell bent to “weaponize” our courts. There’s the Aquifer Underground, the Precipitation Liberation Army and the Dead Zone Defense Militia, to name a few.

OK, I made those up. In my defense, lying has become very fashionable.

The case at issue involves Puget Sound, which is in Washington state, not West Lake Okoboji. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in favor of a group called the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, which argued the Port of Tacoma must follow stormwater pollution prevention rules.

The Port of Tacoma, according to the Tacoma News Tribune, argued the rules don’t apply to its entire operation. And if they do apply, citizens can’t sue to enforce them under the Clean Water Act.

“We reject both arguments,” Judge Eric Miller wrote in the court’s June ruling.

That doesn’t sit well with Bird and 23 other attorneys general who filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in favor of the Port of Tacoma.

Bird and her allies worry that the 9th Circuit ruling would damage states’ authority over waterways and state environmental programs. How can states create regulations crafted to meet unique local needs with all of these woke, “politically charged” lawsuits by citizens getting in the way?

“State and federal governments are already enforcing laws to keep people healthy, and waters clean,” Bird said in her statement. What a relief.

Iowa, for example, has a unique environmental commitment allowing agriculture to do, basically, whatever it wants. So, nitrates from cropland and large livestock operations flow into our waterways and on to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Also, Iowa has a high cancer rate. Long-term exposure to nitrates could be a contributing factor according to research.

But the last thing we need is a bunch of woke activists pointing out this sad truth in a federal courtroom. Taxpayers would have to pay for the state’s defense, Bird argues. But what’s the cost of doing next to nothing to clean up dirty water? It’s estimated at a whole lot.

More frequent heavy precipitation events sparked by climate change will make matters worse. But Republicans who control the Statehouse and its Golden Dome of Wisdom, now redder than a Doppler deluge, insist it’s all good.

This is not Bird’s first environmental rodeo. In 2023, she joined 23 red state attorneys general pushing to bury protections made possible by an expanded definition of what constitutes the Waters of the U.S. The propaganda came by the metric ton. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the states and narrowed the definition, exposing thousands of wetlands to development.

All of this will probably be moot in a couple of months anyway. The first Trump administration’s environmental protection record was beyond dismal. It promises to be even worse this time around. The conflict between a healthy environment and the power of profit will be a rout. The bulldozers will roar to life.

Under the Project 2025 blueprint, which surely will be recognized more and more after Tuesday’s election, the Environmental Protection Agency would be gutted, and pink slips would be handed to scores of regulators and scientists who might become irritating to the new regime.

Heck, the plan even calls for scrapping NOAA, including the National Weather Service. Are we going to be hit by flooding? You can pay a private forecaster to find out.

As for protecting Puget Sound, the Supreme Court will likely see it the states’ way.

And any attempt to change things now will be labeled “woke.” Efforts to just clean up the damn dirty water in this state will be swiftly dismissed as the work of green activists defying state power.

And what has state authority given us? Polluted waterways, polluted wells and polluted politics. And most of those wells are pumping in reddest regions of rural Iowa.

So, the culture war has reached the shores of our lakes, rivers and streams. The goal is to make sure environmental issues die off like a big patch of malignant algae.

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