A short on the magic math of Iowa's Department of Natural Resources (or, how doing less monitoring will improve water quality). We went down from 1130 to 1034 stream segments for which data was collected. 1/ https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/iowa-impaired-waters-cedar-river-iowa-river-lake-macbride-20201201

IDNR all proud that “For the first time, there was an overall decrease in the number of combined categories 4 and 5 impairments”, but the fact is that in 2018, 32% of the streams assessed fully or partially met designated use standards, in 2020 it's 27%. 2/

That of course means that impaired waters went from 68% to 73% of the waters assessed.
Correspondingly w/ less monitoring, stream segments for which there was insufficient data went from 1433 to 1546 - an 8% increase in LACK OF data. 3/

No data? No problem! It's the Iowa way! Let's claim the voluntary approach is working in a glossy expensive report (paid for with our tax dollars) that obfuscates the facts. 4/

And do not get me started on how arbitrary the designation and monitoring of these "stream segments" for policy making is. This is the antithesis of a watershed approach to water quality. 5/5