In the most developed county in Iowa and well into the first decade of the 21st century, news that there’s still an incorporated town in Polk County that doesn’t have a modern sewer system is a little unsettling. But that’s the case in Alleman, which has no sewer utility.

The situation in the small town of 440 is a metaphor for how far Iowa still has to go to clean up its water supply, as well as for how difficult the journey will be. Can the state’s rivers, streams and lakes be returned to pristine condition when obsolete systems continue to compound the problem?

Alleman, of course, is not the only offender, nor even the major one. Compared with agriculture, the effect of the town’s septic system on groundwater quality registers barely a blip on the pollution radar screen. Farming and related industries are still a mainstay of the state’s economy and it’s important not to burden them with too many costly regulations, but neither is it in Iowa’s best interest to hold the agricultural industry harmless.

More informal alliances, such as one established by the Iowa Environmental Council that brings farmers and environmentalists together to find areas of agreement, are needed. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources should be allowed to implement water quality standards that will bring the state into compliance with the federal Clean Water Act. Gov. Tom Vilsack’s call to use $50 million in tobacco settlement money to begin the cleanup process should be approved by legislators, even as they recognize it won’t enough to correct the problems that have gone unabated throughout Iowa’s history. And everyone, whether a family farmer tilling a couple thousand acres of fertile North Central Iowa soil or the owner of a few hundred acres of land that could be developed into a new recreational lake, should work toward the same goal.

Not much occurs in a vacuum these days. Legislators have been timid about calling on the agricultural community to the leadership table to respond to a problem that can affect Iowans’ health and safety and limit tourism opportunities, which report after report indicates increase exponentially with the availability of freshwater recreational opportunities. That, too, should change.