March 18, 2024

Newton’s water flows free of controversy

Clean water. It is something that most people in the Newton area don’t think twice about. Grab a glass, turn on the faucet and get a drink.

For years, Newton WaterWorks has worked to maintain clean, affordable water for not only the City of Newton but for communities in 18 counties as a major provider of water to the Central Iowa Water Association. It has won the Best Tasting Water in Iowa Award from the American Water Works Association twice in the last 11 years, the most recent in 2014.

Water quality and safety remain the top priorities of the Waterworks, with multiple tests and checks conducted daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to ensure premium water is produced for the city and surrounding communities.

The municipality is also working with customers to ensure the pipes and lines used to transport the water into homes are safe and the final product is the same quality that leaves the treatment plant. Lead and copper agents leaching into the water due to limited corrosion control was a major issue recently for the city of Detroit, leading to large groups of residents getting sick and a government investigation of the situation.

The Waterworks has also worked to keep water affordable with the city’s average charge of $0.0032 per gallon well below the national average of $0.0048 per gallon. That alone is an accomplishment when the entire operation is 100 percent funded from water sales.

Compared to its embattled neighbor 30 miles to the west — Des Moines Water Works — Newton has few leaks to plug. The Des Moines metro area’s water utility is not city-run. It’s an independently operated public utility which serves about 500,000 people in the greater Des Moines area.

DMWW’s problems are not because of quality. Like Newton, it’s also been recognized for its product, acknowledged by Forbes.com in 2008 as the highest quality drinking water in the USA over the 2004 to 2006 time period. The metro’s water utility wows are political.

Although it stalled in the Iowa House Thursday, a bill which aimed to dismantle the independent water utility in favor of a regional system controlled by the cities it serves, had traction in the General Assembly this session.

House File 484 directed central Iowa mayors and city managers to research the creation of a regional water utility controlled. An executive committee would consist of representatives from the cities of Des Moines, West Des Monies, Ankeny and Urbandale to develop operational structures, and a 30-member board would control the regional utility.

The architects of the bill said it puts control of the water utility back in the hands of the citizens. But DMWW’s director Bill Stowe claimed its a retaliatory move by Ag industry interests for a now-failed lawsuit, which charged three upstream rural Iowa counties for ignoring nitrate discharge from farm fields, increasing water treatment costs downstream at the waterworks.

Water quality is difficult and pressing crisis in the state and every community, rural and urban, will have to play a role in reducing nitrate contaminates and pollutants in our water supplies.

But for now, when Newtonian’s fill up a cup at the tap, they can rest assured Newton’s water keeps flowing clean and clear without backup from a legislative dam.