(Gillett Grove)– Iowa’s Ag Secretary made a stop Thursday in Clay county.
Mike Naig toured a recently completed wetland restoration on a farm near Gillett Grove. He says projects like that are vital to improving the quality of run-off before it reaches streams, rivers and lakes and eventually, water treatment facilities…
“You have to keep increasing and improving and investing in water treatment infrastructure because that’s the way you provide safe drinking water. But also let’s be preventing pollutants from ever making it into our streams to begin with. And if you work on both ends of that spectrum, upstream and downstream, that’s how you’ll achieve the goals we need to see.”
Naig also emphasized the importance wetlands play during extreme rain events…
“Wetlands can help take, absorb, some of that shock to the system if you will. They don’t solve it but if you have a series of wetlands that you can knit together throughout a watershed, then you can actually have a flood driven flood reduction benefit in addition to the nitrate reduction that you’re looking for and the habitat.”
Naig is currently in the process of visiting each of Iowa’s 99 counties.
(With help from news partner KTIV in Sioux City)
