When reporter Yanqi Xu (pronounced yen-chee shu) first started at Flatwater Free Press in 2021, she knew that nitrate pollution would be the first story she was going to cover. Since then, Xu has become nationally recognized for exposing large polluters like Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and highlighting the connection between high nitrate levels in drinking water and increasing rates of pediatric cancer.
“Nitrates impact mainly groundwater in Nebraska, as they mainly come from commercial fertilizer and animal waste,” Xu said. “Around 85% of the state residents rely on groundwater as their primary source of drinking water.”
In this “How I Did It” Xu breaks down her approach to reporting on this topic and offers tips to fellow journalists.
The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What sparked your interest in this story?
We heard a tip about the high nitrate levels in drinking water and Flatwater Free Press wanted to pursue the story with someone who had data skills. We weren’t super familiar with the issue of nitrate when we first heard it.
I reported on and off about nitrate and then came back to it when Investigate Midwest wanted to look into Gov. Pillen’s business, with him being the leader of the state and also being the biggest pork producer in the state. As the governor, he has influence over environmental regulation and we knew that hog farms have a nitrate issue, and that is how I got started on it.
Omaha gets most of its drinking water from the Missouri River, but outside of Omaha, we also learned from the tipster that there are regulatory issues around concentrated large animal operations like hog farms, chicken farms and feedlots. At that point, I knew it was going to be a multipart series because of the complexity of it and we are trying to show the different aspects of the problem.
How did you approach reporting on the connection of nitrates in water to cancer?
There’s a team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center as well as the School of Public Health and some other experts that are looking into this. Nitrates have been an issue in Nebraska for decades, but we also have really high pediatric cancer rates compared to other states.
Those experts suspect that the high cancer rates are related to our drinking water. Pediatric cancer is different from cancer in adults in terms of potential causes, and nitrates are known to cause Blue Baby Syndrome, which can be fatal.
My hope was to include the public health component of this in the first story and explain to people what nitrate is and how it gets into our water and why we need to care about it.
How did you find sources and reliable datasets?
The public health experts and water experts were really helpful. Dan Snow, the lab director at Nebraska Water Center, was really amazing. He explained to me how and why nitrate moves in groundwater and reviewed test results for us. There is an EPA standard of 10 [parts per million] for nitrates in drinking water.
There is no regulation on how much fertilizer can be applied. Many people who use nitrate fertilizer also lack education on best practices and sometimes overapply fertilizer for fear of losing crop yield. There are some initiatives from the state to raise awareness and protect groundwater, but I hope this reporting spurs even more efforts along these lines.
Gary Peters is an advocate for clean drinking water. He lost his son to lymphoma. He has been really vocal about water safety and wanted to figure out why his town had many pediatric cancer cases. In the first piece I wrote, there is a small town called Aurora where there were seven cancer cases, which is a lot for a town of this size. That caused Gary to start looking at the water. He was super valuable in providing diverse perspectives and helped me get in touch with parents of children who have or had pediatric cancer.
Some experts told me more research on this could potentially prompt the EPA to lower the nitrate parts per million standard, which would be huge. Scientists are trying to figure out what is the actual acceptable safe drinking water threshold for nitrate, and this could protect our kids from cancer in Nebraska and beyond.
What was the most challenging part of reporting? What findings stood out to you?
This is a complicated subject. I think we really wanted to report on the inertia regarding regulations on this issue. A lot of people know it’s bad, but when it comes to actually doing something about the root cause of this, there was a lot of resistance.
Of course, you can argue that you need more research, but what really struck me was this interplay and tension between local regulators on natural resources district boards, who are oftentimes local farmers, and these district managers. Some stakeholders think the high nitrate levels are a legacy issue and that the problems date back decades and may not subside soon.
Regulators often want to do something, but often feel hamstrung when it comes to making stricter rules. I requested emails from one of the Natural Resource Districts with one of the highest nitrate levels and highest rates of pediatric cancer, and the natural resources manager expressed a lot of frustration in his emails to other researchers about how things were not changing.
His board voted to not elevate an area to a higher level of protection even though the rules mandated it, and he said at the board meeting that the board needed to follow its own rules. There is the knowledge that something needs to be done, but it can lack the political will to actually move.
Is this a partisan issue?
I don’t think so. I’ve heard some of my sources suggest that solutions could come from the federal government, but that’s yet to materialize. In Nebraska, we have a lot of local control and Natural Resource Districts are supposed to protect water and other natural resources, especially when it comes to nonpoint sources, like farming. But the state legislature has the power to do more. Both Republican and Democratic state legislators have expressed concern about this.
What is your advice to reporters looking at water quality in other states?
It’s really important to make sure you understand what you’re reading, especially when looking at test results. I found it really helpful to work with an expert and have them react to my understanding of the topic and then fact-check it before I publish anything. When I was looking at all of these figures, I was checking with my sources constantly to make sure I was reading everything correctly.
I think it’s good to get people from all sides. I like to use the story as a platform for presenting the opinions of people who are on different sides of the issue and with different roles. and relay their opinions to experts to see if they can make sense of it and then have them react to that argument.
Lastly, it is important to look at local research and to familiarize yourself with the research that has already been done. Get in touch with the experts and talk to the people who have actively worked on the research themselves.
