Published July 16th, 2024 at 6:00 AM in Flatland. Author: Madeline Heim, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
ELBA, Minn. – Jeff Broberg’s well sits inside a wooden shed not too far from a field he rented about a decade ago to a local farmer. One day, Broberg discovered the farmer was fertilizing with hog manure. In doing so, combined with the commercial fertilizer he was already using, the farmer was almost doubling the amount of nitrogen on the field in hopes of producing a better corn yield.
Not all of that nitrogen went to the corn. Some of it seeped into the groundwater and was pumped through the well that supplied the water Broberg drank in the form of nitrate, which is made when nitrogen and oxygen combine.
It’s an alarming local impact of a persistent problem that washes far downstream through the Mississippi River watershed, eventually ending up in the Gulf of Mexico, where nitrates are one cause of a low-oxygen “dead zone” that chokes off plant and aquatic life
In Minnesota, Broberg’s well water tested at 22 parts per million nitrate – more than double what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says is the safe limit for the contaminant. Broberg, a retired geologist who’s now a clean water advocate, had his well tested when he first bought the house in 1986. For the first decade he lived there, it hovered close to 10 parts per million nitrate, the EPA’s limit. When it started to test above that, he began to haul water from a friend’s house in a nearby town.
Finally, he installed a system that reduced nitrate levels in the water he drank, a system that protected him after the incident with the farmer. But he has questions about what he might have been exposed to when he was drinking the water straight out of the tap years before.
Last year, he was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Drinking water with elevated nitrate has been linked in some research to kidney dysfunction. Though it’s nearly impossible to determine the exact cause of such ailments because other lifestyle factors can play a part, he can’t help but wonder what role the water played. Broberg’s home in rural Winona County, Minnesota, is about a dozen miles as the crow flies from the Mississippi River. The nitrate polluting his well water links him directly to the other end of the river, and the dead zone that blooms there every summer.
This year officials have forecast that the area will be about 5,827 square miles – larger than average, roughly the size of Connecticut and more than twice the target size that a task force of scientists and government officials aims to see by 2035. Progress on decreasing it has been slow-going, despite billions of dollars in investment.
Still, a 2023 public opinion survey conducted by the University of Missouri – in partnership with the Ag & Water Desk, the journalism collaborative that reported this series – showed only about 25% of Mississippi basin residents understood the causes of the dead zone.
But upstream communities are starting to recognize there are costs closer to home.
