Where Iowa’s Gubernatorial Candidates Stand on Water Quality

Iowans will soon elect their next governor, and the state’s water quality has become a top issue in the campaign. Democrat Rob Sand and Republican Zach Lahn have both said that something needs to be done to make Iowa’s water safer, and have linked its notoriously polluted water to the state’s elevated cancer rates. But they’ve proposed different approaches to solving the problem.

In the Republican primary, Lahn narrowly defeated a Trump-endorsed candidate in an upset. Sand is currently leading in the polls, and if he wins, he’ll be the first Democratic governor of Iowa in 20 years.

Both have spoken on the campaign trail about the need to address the state’s water crisis; much of the state’s water is badly polluted with agricultural runoff, and its residents are facing the consequences. But the two candidates bring different backgrounds, levels of experience and policy proposals to the race. Whoever is elected will have a tall order in front of them.

Here’s where each of them stand.

Rob Sand (Democratic Candidate)

Iowa Democrats have nominated lawyer and State Auditor Rob Sand to run for governor. The only Democrat to hold an elected statewide executive position in Iowa, Sand was previously an Iowa assistant attorney general, where he specialized in prosecuting white-collar crime.

Sand has spoken frequently about the urgency of bringing down Iowa’s cancer rate and has pledged to tackle the issue by addressing the state’s water quality problems.

“Biggest thing, I hear it everywhere I go: Iowans are concerned about our sky-high cancer rate,” Sand said in a recent campaign video. “It’s one of the top issues in people’s minds, and rightfully so.”

Sand’s campaign website includes a long section on water quality, with many policy proposals.

• Sand wants to invest in funding for water quality monitors. “Iowans are facing the very real consequences of the defunding of water quality monitors across the state,” his campaign website states. In 2023, the state legislature defunded the Iowa Water Quality Information System, which provides real-time data on nitrates and water quality every 15 minutes. Sand’s website continues, “We need to increase funding for aggressive water quality monitoring and farmer-led water quality programs.”

• He also wants to implement a dirty water notification system to alert Iowans when nitrates approach or exceed federal limits in drinking water or when E. coli bacteria approach or exceed safe levels in recreational bodies of water.

• Regarding Iowa’s farms, Sand wants to overhaul the state’s policies on manure management plans. He’s called for a repeal of the state law that keeps these documents confidential, and wants to have the documents posted online for more public transparency regarding what farms are doing with their manure. “Manure management plans and their implementation should be available to every Iowan to allow us to not only see how, when, and where the manure is spread on Iowa farmland,” Sand says on his campaign website. “A single, free, online form will replace handwritten records.”

• Sand wants to expand Iowa’s existing conservation programs for farmers, noting, “there are farmers who have been on waitlists for years to get into conservation programs.” He proposes new tax credits for farmers who want to upgrade their facilities and implement conservation practices, explaining that farmers are “an ally in getting clean water.” This would include a property tax credit for farmers using approved nutrient plans, and an income tax credit to help farmers pay for the costs of conservation practices.

• Sand calls for the creation of a Cancer Task Force at the cabinet level to “lead the charge on implementing policies at the state and local level to combat the cancer crisis.”

• Sand also has a plan for increasing the number of wetlands in the state. Wetlands filter water, removing nitrates and phosphorus and slowing down flow rates to reduce soil erosion and runoff. Under Sand’s proposal, the state would purchase unused land from farmers and convert it into wetlands.

• Sand opposes SSB 1051, a state bill that would ban Iowans from filing certain health-related lawsuits against pesticide companies. The bill would have blocked the many lawsuits alleging that the popular pesticide Roundup, and its active ingredient glyphosate, have caused cancer. Although SSB 1051 passed the state Senate in 2025, it failed to advance in the House, and has not been revived in the current legislative session.

• Sand has pledged increased funding for methane digesters. Methane digesters are a technology aimed at reducing methane and nitrate emissions, but some research suggests they are not as effective as proponents claim.

• On the topic of funding, Sand has also said that he supports funding the IWILL program. This refers to Iowa’s Natural Resources And Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund, a public fund for water quality improvement programs and some other environmental initiatives. Although that fund was approved by voters via a ballot initiative in 2010, it has not yet been funded by the state legislature, and as a result is inactive. Sand says that, if IWILL is funded, he will use some of that money for his wetland expansion project.

Many of the policies Sand proposes, such as reforming the manure management plan law and restoring funding to state water quality monitors, would require approval from the state legislature. Republicans currently control Iowa’s legislature, and will almost certainly continue to control it after the November election, but the Democratic candidate says he is prepared for that.

“Iowa has a tradition, actually, of divided government, because it forces the two parties to work together,” Sand said in an interview with KCCI. “And I know that’s what we’re going to have if I win this race. I think that’s our recipe for getting Iowa back to being Iowa.”

Sand’s campaign did not respond to Sentient’s request for comment for this article.

Zach Lahn (Republican Candidate)

On the Republican ticket, businessman Zach Lahn is running to be Iowa’s next governor. Lahn’s background is in business and political campaigns and he has never held political office. After founding and investing in a number of companies, Lahn worked for a string of Republican candidates and politicians around the country, including Iowa Rep. David Young, Montana Sen. Steve Daines and former Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner.

Lahn also served as the Montana director for Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political advocacy group funded largely by Koch Industries. Among Koch Industries’ many companies is Koch Ag & Energy Solutions, one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers in the world.

Lahn comes from a farming family. The Des Moines Register reports that Lahn owns a home in Kansas and frequently flies there in his privately owned plane.

Lahn doesn’t have an extensive list of water-related policies on his campaign website. His site contains one sentence that directly concerns water quality: “Give incentives to our farmers to use proven solutions that address agricultural runoff and water contamination.”

In response to Sentient’s request for comment, the Lahn campaign writes in an email: “Cleaning up Iowa’s water quality and stopping the cancer crisis are [Lahn]’s number one issues in this race. High nitrate load in water is one of the top causes of cancer.”

• Lahn is “committed to funding the IWILL program to improve Iowa’s water quality,” his campaign writes.

• Lahn’s campaign mentions “saturated buffers,” writing that he “will provide incentives for farmers to use these, as to not hurt their bottom line, and to actually put more money into their pockets.” Saturated buffers are a filtration technology that are meant to reduce nitrate runoff from fertilized fields into waterways. A 2024 study of saturated buffers in Iowa found that the majority of them captured less than 5% of polluted water from the farms they were installed in.

• Lahn’s campaign writes that he “believes there should be much more water quality monitoring around the state, and would support providing necessary resources to do so.” The campaign did not give specifics about what resources he would provide or how. During the campaign, Lahn has highlighted how expensive these monitors are; for example, he said at a campaign stop, “as I look at the costs associated with this, there’s gotta be more innovative solutions to bring the cost down.” He has also suggested that farmers could install their own systems to assess water quality, saying, “I would like to have water quality monitoring all over the state. Not just in the tributaries, but also up into some of these streams, if farmers would like to put some of these things in themselves.”

• Though Lahn supports water quality monitoring in a general sense, it’s unclear whether he supports restoring funding to the specific water monitoring program that was cut, the Iowa Water Quality Information System, and his campaign did not provide clarification on this point when asked by Sentient.

On the campaign trail, Lahn has also spoken about water quality and what he would do to address the issue.

• Lahn wants to offer refundable tax credits to farmers to incentivize deep banding nitrogen fertilizer on farms. This is a practice in which fertilizer is applied deeper in the soil than usual, thus limiting its susceptibility to runoff, and studies suggest that it works.

• Lahn has said that “no product should have immunity from liability” and that if any law shielding glyphosate manufacturers from lawsuits landed on his desk, he’d veto it. This puts him at odds with President Trump, who supports immunity for glyphosate manufacturers.

Some have questioned Lahn’s position on this, however, due to his selection of State Rep. Derek Wulf as his running mate for Lieutenant Governor.

Iowa reporter Laura Belin has reported that Wulf supported a bill that would grant immunity to pesticide manufacturers. In 2024, an agricultural lobbying group founded by Bayer ran an ad thanking 28 Iowa legislators, including Wulf, for supporting Senate File 2412, a bill that would have shielded glyphosate manufacturers from lawsuits. (That bill did not pass.)

In response to Belin’s reporting, Lahn’s campaign emailed her. “Wulf has never stated that he supported this legislation,” Lahn spokesperson Meg Deneen told Belin in an email. “Derek Wulf does not support Senate File 2412.”

Lahn supports the Make America Healthy Again movement and has been endorsed by MAHA Action, a non-profit aimed at implementing the movement’s preferred policies. However, he’s also said that he does not support an outright ban of glyphosate, which many people in the MAHA movement have called for.

The Bottom Line

Lahn and Sand have put forth different sets of proposals to deal with water quality. Although both want to make it easier for farmers to implement practices that clean up Iowa’s water, Sand also wants to increase funding for water quality monitoring systems, build a dirty water notification system, purchase unused land to convert to pollutant-filtering wetlands, implement new conservation tax credits for farmers, and create a cancer task force.

The two candidates agree on several policies as well. Neither have proposed raising taxes or implementing new regulations to clean up Iowa’s water. Both support funding the IWILL program, and both oppose granting immunity to glyphosate manufacturers.

It’s notable that Sand and Lahn agree that the state is in the midst of a water crisis and that Iowa must increase its water quality monitoring for the sake of its residents.

In a sense, it’s a sign of how urgent Iowa’s water situation has become.