POLK COUNTY, Iowa ( KCCI ) - Polk County Board Chair Matt McCoy says accurate water quality data isn’t just important; it’s essential.

That’s why Polk County pledged to allocate $200,000 to Iowa’s Water Quality Information System (IWQIS) Tuesday morning.

“To interrupt that data would be detrimental to the center for the research and for the science,” McCoy said.

IWQIS lost a large amount of funding in 2023 when Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law diverting $500,000 from the system. Since then, it’s survived on grassroots funding that’s set to expire next year. Polk County’s contribution isn’t coming from the county’s general fund, however.

$90,000 is coming from leftover funding from the Central Iowa Source Water Resource Assessment from earlier this year. The other $110,000 comes from

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