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After a summer of news about high nitrate levels in rivers that provide drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Iowans, the state has announced a new program that will allocate $3 million for initiatives intended to improve water quality in several watersheds.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig announced this week a pilot project called the Streamside Buffer Initiative . It aims to encourage farmers and landowners in the watersheds upstream from the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids metropolitan areas to add perennial buffers to fields along streams to help prevent nutrients from entering the watersheds.

“I am excited to introduce this new pilot project to accelerate the adoption of stre

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