And as KXEL Live and Local continues on this Wednesday morning, tomorrow is the start of the great Iowa State Fair, always much to do and much to see.
And I'm joined now on the news line by the Secretary of State of the State of Iowa, the Honorable Paul Pate.
His office has a major presence at the State Fair every year.
Mr. Secretary, thank you for taking the time, sir.
Well, it's great to visit with you and also to talk about a topic.
one that excites me when you talk about the state fair in Iowa.
So your office will have a presence, I assume it's at the Varied Industries building again, but you tell me where will the office be set up this year?
It will be in the Varied Industries building and for those of you trying to get out of the heat, there's a little bit of air conditioning there and a roof over your head so you can get out of the sun and also learn a little bit more about what we are sharing when it comes to getting involved with a straw pole.
all kinds of other exciting things.
Now again, the Iowa Secretary of State has the mandate of handling businesses and also elections, and the elections part gets everybody's attention, including that straw poll.
So tell us about what's going to be on the ballot, how people participate.
Sure.
Well, it's one of my personal favorite traditions.
We've been doing it for a long time, where we let
to get their opinion out there for an early look, if you will, of what the general election might look like.
We have some fun questions, like, you know, your favorite fair foods, just to get into the spirit of the fair.
But we also cover some of the higher profile offices, like the governor's race and the U.S.
Senate and the congressional races, so people can just, you know, have a little fun and also express their opinions on where their feelings are right now towards
who's running for office and clearly the campaigns get fired up about it because it's an early test for them as well.
And again, that's at the Iowa State Fair, which begins tomorrow, which is Thursday the 13th.
As you're hearing this conversation, it runs through the 23rd.
If you have questions or need information broadly about the office of the Secretary of State, it's online, sos.iowa.gov.
And there's another website, voterready.iowa.gov, and you really do focus on education and getting people involved in the voting process during the fair activities.
That's the idea behind it and it's to also update voter registrations for people maybe who might have moved or maybe just came to Iowa getting them registered to vote.
Also, it's an opportunity for them to learn about some of the things we do in our office to help small businesses.
We are partnering up with various groups like the Small Business Administration.
They'll be there one of the days to help answer questions.
And then we're bringing some other groups in.
like the Iowa Veterans Home and the Disability Rights of Iowa and the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, some of our other folks.
And just to put a plug-in on August 22nd, we're going to have the Iowa League of Heroes.
So if you want to stop by and see Batman and feel the other superheroes, they're going to be at our booth between one and three as a way to encourage people to stop by and learn again more about state fair, our office,
to vote in a straw poll, just to have some fun.
Now those superheroes, they're pretty busy.
How do you get them to all get organized and mobilized and show up on that last Saturday of the fair?
That's a pretty big deal.
Well, it is.
I think this year we're going to have up to six of them.
And so it's going to be a big crowd.
So we think it's very special.
And we hope some of our veterans will stop by, too, because we have a program
to help veterans with voting.
We specifically designed that a couple years ago now where we want to make sure that every veteran, some of them are shut in, maybe or some of them have not been as active in years.
We want to make sure that they know what tools they have available so that they can have their voice heard when it comes to voting.
And I like the fact that if someone is not sure about their registration status, or if they need to change it, et cetera, well, there are a variety of ways that they can do that.
But if you're already at the State Fair, no better way to take care of this business than to visit the Secretary of State's booth.
Most certainly, and we're already willing, able to help you out, and we'll try and
guide you to where your polling locations are, if that's a question you're looking at, or maybe you have questions on, like, you know, what are my voting options?
Can I vote early?
And if so, when's the date for that?
Or if I can vote at satellite voting?
Or, you know, again, where my precinct location might be at, we'll be there to try to answer those questions for you.
And again, the business services side, I cannot underscore that enough, Jeff.
We really want to be there for some of those folks.
Who have questions about notaries and questions about their corporate filings and some
of the
nonprofits, you know who church groups etc Who maybe have some issues that they want to make sure they're doing it, right?
We want to truly be helpful for them as well
So you have staff on site, but obviously not
Every question can be answered but I trust if someone comes up and brings the question at the very least there's going to be a note taken and a referral so that after the day at the fair that person's question gets answered by someone who is an expert in the field back at the office.
Most certainly that's the goal is to get them the accurate answer as quickly as possible and you know we're not shy about sometimes saying that's one we have to check on for you but
We'll be very good about following back up to get you the answer.
We're speaking with the Secretary of State of the State of Iowa, the Honorable Paul Pate.
sos.iowa.gov, the broad website for information about businesses and elections and if you're interested in the election aspect specifically it's voterready.iowa.gov, the secretary kind enough to join us for a few minutes here on KXEL to talk about the presence that they have at the Iowa State Fair which begins tomorrow.
So are there certain components of the fair activities this year that are
new or different.
I know that you have the superheroes there on occasion.
You mentioned SBA.
I don't know if that's something that you've done multiple years, but are there differences as opposed to past years with regard to your booth at the Varied Industries Building?
Not a real big difference, but what we're really trying harder is to broaden our outreach.
So
we partners, our community partners,
that we have joining us in the booth.
We really went out aggressively to try to give a little more variety and to make sure they have an opportunity to perhaps showcase and be visible at a state fair.
And most of these groups have some relationship to things we do in
our
office as well, so it's a nice partnership.
So whether it's the Small Business Development Group or it's the Iowa Disabilities Council or
We've got the University of Northern Iowa coming in to help talk about youth voting.
So it's a partnership and I think that makes it even more special in so many ways.
And I really like that because some of those entities might be able to have a presence at the fair on their own, but
you have the big presence, you have the standard position people know to come there.
And if you're able to bring some of these partners in so that they get a little halo effect, so that they get a little time in the spotlight under the auspices of your booth, that just elevates the experience for those groups as well as those hundreds of thousands of fairgoers.
It certainly does.
And it's beneficial for my own staff, too, working closely with them like that.
We even become better experts, if you will, or knowledgeable at least about some of the things they're doing so that we can pass it on when they're
not
with us at a booth, for example.
And in the past, we've had great experiences with these partnerships, the folks coming through the fair.
In fact, some of them are pleasantly surprised when they get the chance to talk to somebody about some issues that they may not have had otherwise.
Now, I know you to be a person who takes care of himself.
You exercise, you eat right, you keep an aggressive schedule.
State fair is pretty tempting with all that food.
I'm just wondering, do you have some goals or discipline that needs to be employed there?
Do you have a staff member who is keeping you in check?
Well, first off, Jeff, there is no calorie counting at the state fair.
Fair enough, good
enough.
It is a state fair.
And it's an experience one is supposed to fully enjoy and appreciate.
So I have my favorite list that I start with.
And then after that, we can just roll with what they can handle comfortably.
This is the 20th anniversary for the beef sundaes.
So you're going to see me probably in line with the cattlemen several times to make sure I get my beef sundae.
And with so many different foods on a stick, it's pretty hard to consume them all.
But I'll give it a good old college try.
Well, a guy needs protein.
So, I mean, I have no issue with that.
The concept of the fair, and I'll close with this because, again, you're in Iowa and you've held public office at different points in your life.
There's just nothing like the collection that you have on any given day because it is a microcosm of every aspect of the state of Iowa, so much
More than merely the agricultural exhibits that you and I might remember as younger people But it is just grown into true representation of every corner of the state
Oh, most certainly, you know We're very proud of our roots here in Iowa, but you know, let's be honest for a moment There's a lot of islands who probably have not been on a real farm Their ancestors may be in like grandpa might have
for their great-grandparents, but coming
to
the State Fair, they still get a taste, if you will, of our ag base here.
And, you know, walking through those, the horse barns and the cow barns and all the others and seeing the livestock or watching some of those shows and demonstrations that are going on, it still gives them an opportunity to get exposed to our roots and what made Iowa so special.
And in the variety of other educational things and fun, let's not leave out the fun stuff.
We've got a lot of carnival rides and fun things like that.
But it does do a great job of reminding us of our agricultural heritage.
And I think that's very special and one we don't want to forget here in Iowa because that is our economic base for that matter.
The jobs we create in Iowa, the value added,
agriculture that comes out of this great state.
This is a super way to showcase it.
And this year is the 250th anniversary.
There's going to be a lot of those special exhibits there for Iowans to really be able to see and enjoy and appreciate our heritage from the big picture of 250 years.
You have to plan multiple days to see it all.
And when you go, don't forget, varied industries building, the Iowa Secretary of State's booth,
They'll talk to you about business, elections, whatever you need.
And online it's sos.iowa.gov.
Their address will be at the Varied Industries Building for the whole run of the fair.
Well, you still have folks working in the office of Des Moines, but you can come up and see them at the Varied Industries Building when the fair opens tomorrow.
Secretary of State Paul Payne, thanks so much for the time as always and have a great time at the fair.
All right.
That is the Iowa Secretary of State, the Honorable Paul Pate.
Once again, sos.iowa.gov.
They'll be at the fair, as I'm pretty sure you will be too, starting tomorrow.
This is where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.
Pleased to welcome back on the news line of Return Gast, he is Tony Lyons.
Mr. Lyons is president of Sky Horse Publishing.
You find them online, skyhorsepublishing.com.
Mr. Lyons, good morning, and thanks again for the time.
Yeah, great to be back.
Remind people, if you would, because I think it's a tremendous story.
How did Sky Horse Publishing get started?
I mean, as I recall, you were a practicing lawyer, had a pretty good life, and then jumped into this.
Yeah, you know I was practicing law and I thought there's nothing else on earth that I would rather do than be involved in books be involved in free speech be involved in sort of standing up to Questioning the status quo in a world where we're just bombarded with censorship and propaganda and you know brainwashing and You know that that's what we've done over the last 20 years is that we've published
hundreds and hundreds of books that just question everything because that's what people should do in a democracy.
And you've got such wonderfully diverse topics and authors and a variety of imprints now.
This thing has really grown and you and I have talked on this program before about your partnership for Publishing and Beyond with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We have talked about his book, The Real Anthony Fauci.
just seems that everything that has been in the Kennedy books that Sky Horse Publishing put forth, everything in there that was criticized has been proven to be correct, especially through this lack of testimony before Congress.
It's got to be validating in so many ways, but you all knew all along you were right.
Yeah, you know when when Bobby Kennedy's book came out, you know the real Anthony Fauci was published on November 16th You know 2021 and it was the most censored book that I've ever been in you know part of so it came out and You couldn't buy it in virtually any bookstore in the country.
It was not allowed in libraries.
It was kept off that seller list It was shadow banned on Amazon
You know, nobody wanted to interview Bobby.
There were no reviews on it.
Book signings were taken down from YouTube and Instagram and Facebook.
So it's just a comprehensive program.
No doubt Dr. Fauci was was part of that.
And they were doing everything they could to make sure that the American public heard one story and one story only.
And that was that
There was a specific narrative about COVID, and there were specific steps that you were supposed to take.
And if you didn't take them, you were just out of society.
You could not function in this country.
So many people did it anyway.
But this was a book that the government didn't want you to read, that Big Pharma definitely didn't want you to read.
And yet 1.4 million people bought the book.
And when Dr. Fauci wrote his own book, it came out and it was stacked up in every bookstore in America.
It was stacked to the rafters and it got raves in every newspaper and interviews on the Today Show and every place you can think of.
And it sold 100,000 copies.
It sold one 14th of the copies that the real entity Fauci sold because people have begun to understand
and gotten to the point where they're just sick and tired of being lied to and propagandized, and they want somebody who's sincere, somebody who has integrity, somebody who's honest, and that is Bobby Kennedy.
And that's what this book was.
And like you said, looking back on it, everything in that book turns out to be true.
So there were 2,194 citations to this banned book.
and it had a blurb from a guy named Luke Montagnier who won the Nobel Prize in science, right?
But this was supposed to be the most dangerous book you could buy in the country in 2021.
And what's striking about it, and I recall this from the time, the real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
was published in mid-November of five years ago, 480 pages, but as you noted,
every single thing was annotated, footnoted, documented.
They could not question the veracity of the item, so instead, they went after character, they talked about conspiracy, et cetera.
It's too bad that it took five years to have all of this be validated in public, but the fact that, and again, as a lawyer, I understand taking the Fifth Amendment, but
Dr. Fauci did not come off very well here these last few months, in particular in Congress, but all of the things that have come out, have you been surprised at some of the things in his diary, text messages, et cetera?
It's really crazy.
You know, Dr. Fauci said in 2022, and this is not a direct quote, but he said something like he was happy to testify at, you know, any congressional committee
that anybody wanted to convene, that he had nothing to hide, that he would explain and validate every action that he took during the pandemic.
And then that actually happens, and they could play that recording for him, and yet he takes the Fifth Amendment 111 times.
And then, like you said, you know, you read his diary, and you read his text messages and his emails, and you get this picture of a guy who is obsessed
with his own power, with his own fame.
He talks about the fact on a day that thousands of Americans died in hospitals because of faulty treatments that he was recommending and not using the available remedies that would have had better outcomes that were covered in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'
's book.
And he's writing in his journal.
I was on five morning TV shows today.
I think it's fair to say that I'm the most famous person in America.
And then he talks about the fact that he can walk right into the White House without showing his ID.
So he's fixated on his own fame, on his own power, when people are dying and he just doesn't care.
And then he's attacking everybody who disagrees with him, not just saying, you know, we've all heard him say, I am the science.
But he is literally colluding with government officials to take things down from every major platform and to take people like Bobby Kennedy and so many other people and take down their Instagram, their ex, their YouTube, every social media platform just to take their property.
Famous doctors who had been
posting things for years.
Their whole businesses were destroyed.
People's licenses were taken from them.
And this was a program to destroy science in America, because science means that disagreement, that dialogue and debate have to be the order of the day, that you have to win in the marketplace of ideas, not just with more power or more force or more censorship, but by having a better idea.
And we know that Dr. Fauci did not care about the truth.
And we also knew that he was saying things privately, that he knew that if you took the COVID vaccine in the first three months of pregnancy, there was a high likelihood that you would have a miscarriage.
And that that likelihood was much higher than any relative risk from COVID, which was very, very low.
So he is guilty there for withholding that information and lying to the public, and that resulted in people having miscarriages.
And that ought to make everybody in the country angry, whether you're on the right or the left.
But the problem is that the left now, they're just not willing to even read those emails or read that diary or be open to the idea that there's been just such an incredible miscarriage of justice.
Tony Lyons is our guest.
He is the president of Sky Horse Publishing Sky Horse Publishing.com the website.
He joins us live on news talk 1540 kxl.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
I thought the connection had dropped or that you were at the end of a thought and I want to give you the chance to finish that if I stepped on top of you there.
Oh, no, no, no.
So, you know, and then if you think about some of the other people who've been part of the great progress that's been made
So Senator Rand Paul has really been a, been a hero here.
So he's just doggedly gone after Dr. Fauci and just not let go.
So to finally drag him before a congressional hearing, you know, he wrote this book more than two and a half years back was called deception, the great COVID coverup.
Yes.
And he just never quit.
So, you know, it's true that.
Dr. Fauci didn't answer any questions, that we didn't get any real answers.
But what he also did was he was able to work with Secretary Kennedy to get those diaries and those emails and those text messages out to the American public so that anybody who really wants to know the truth can hear it now.
Anyone who really wants to dig deeper, who really cares about science, who really cares about justice, who really cares about the health
of their family now has this level of transparency that they didn't have before.
And if anybody needs a good reason to fight for medical freedom, you get that from this Dr. Fauci story that you know now that you can't trust these captured government agencies and the corrupt people who've been running them.
And you should want your medical freedom.
You should want to
fight for the health of your own children based on what you know and based on talking to your doctor, not based on blind adherence to rules set by the government, where they say the science is settled and you just do what we tell you to do or else.
So that's what I think a lot of this is about.
And there's just been excellent progress.
Just, you know, this has just been an incredible period where, you know, parents really will have the choice
in states all around the country with the executive order that President Trump just signed.
People will have their religious liberty back, their choice back, their control over what gets put into their children's bodies.
The idea of separating shots is just such a great idea.
The Japanese government looked at the MMR about 10 years ago and they felt that the risk was unreasonable.
So they researched other options and they came up with an MR. And they thought that's safer.
Their science showed that was safer because they were willing to investigate on behalf of their people.
Whereas we had a government over the last 40 years that was working for big pharmaceutical companies, not for American families and American children.
So they were just
Promoting products made by these companies where the science was done by the companies to promote their own products not to protect the safety of the American people and that's what you have now is a is a government that's Dedicated that's fighting day after day and it's a tough fight because these are powerful companies with powerful lobbyists and with deep state people who just can't be can't be easily swayed or
you know, gotten rid of.
But they are fighting day after day to have radical transparency, to have gold standard science in a way that we just haven't had because what we've had is corrupt corporate science.
And that's what these kinds of books, Rand Paul's Deception and Bobby Kennedy's The Real Anthony Fauci, these are books that just question what's been going on and tell a story of corruption that ought to, like I said, make
everybody in America angry and make them want to take better, stronger steps to protect themselves, their families, their children, because we can't just trust people in authority and we know that now.
Our guest, Tony Lyons, is also the director of Maha Action, a national movement dedicated to reversing the chronic disease epidemic.
and you find out more at MahaAction.org.
We've spoken with Mr. Lyons about that in the past as well.
There's probably no better example of narcissistic hubris than to keep a diary on your government computer.
I mean, I understand taking notes.
I understand if somebody wants to have a personal diary.
He did it on a government server.
He hadn't apparently either wanted it all to come out someday because he thought that he would be lauded for it.
But holy cow, you ask for the broadest part and probably given in American history.
And then we find that this is the trail you've left behind.
That tells us a lot about him, doesn't it?
Yeah, you wonder what kind of human being would do that.
But if you look at his whole career,
You see this picture that doesn't make any sense because 50 years ago he's hired and one of his jobs is to protect American children from allergies So when you think about that You know if you're old enough You remember being in school and you remember how rare it was that children had allergies And now you go to a school
And you see how rare it is for any child to have less than two or three allergies.
So almost everybody, almost every child in the country now has an allergy to something or multiple allergies.
So here is a guy who was put in charge of all of these differences and failed at every one of them.
Every one of them is a hockey stick of diabetes, obesity, allergies.
All of these things have gotten to be bigger problems under his watch.
And at the same time, he got more and more powerful, more and more famous, more and more wealthy.
He had better and better connections.
He hobnobbed with the rich and famous.
And, you know, in what world does that happen?
In any kind of business, in any job, in any organization, if the things that you've been put in charge of get worse day after day, year after year,
You're supposed to get fired.
You're supposed to be vilified.
And yet he was in a position to vilify everybody else.
And he shut everybody else down.
He destroyed people's reputations.
He organized hit pieces.
He attacked people in every way.
And he attacked the very idea of science.
The very idea
that you're supposed to question everything because that is fundamental to science and the message that he wanted to tell people is that everything was settled and that your job as a parent your job as a citizen is to obey what you're told is to learn the truth and just do it and not understand what every doctor who's ever studied medicine knows
that if you look back on your medical school books from 20 years ago or 30 years ago, half of it's wrong or three quarters of it's wrong, even though it was the best science maybe at the time.
But everything is supposed to change.
And we're supposed to, you know, we're spending so much money on scientific research, billions and billions of dollars each year.
You're supposed to get better at it when you study that hard.
And what you see is,
Now we've become the laughing stock of the world when it comes to science, because we have the worst health outcomes of any of the 30 industrialized countries, even though we spend two and a half to three times the money that any of those countries spend per capita.
So that's what Secretary Kennedy is really all about.
And when he got the position, he said he prayed for 19 years.
to have the opportunity to fight back against this corruption and these captured government agencies.
And Donald Trump gave him that opportunity.
So this period really is a period where we can turn this around, where we can all kind of get together and say, we don't want companies that are in the business of poisoning our children that study
how to addict our children and all of us to products that make us sick.
We don't want those companies to run Washington, to make the decisions for our families because they obviously can't be trusted.
Their goal is to get you to have more ultra-processed food, to take more medicine, to take more vaccines.
You know, we didn't have any vaccine problem, any virus problem.
in 1986, when there was an act of Congress passed that where the pharmaceutical companies went to Congress and they said, vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.
So we're going to stop making them unless you give us liability protection.
And then Congress was afraid that maybe they were going to actually stop making vaccines.
So they signed this law that if the American public actually knew the details of it,
everybody would be angry, but most people don't know it because there's so much censorship in this country.
And if you know it, what it actually says is that any vaccine, any product that you call a vaccine, because the definition of vaccine has changed five times since then.
So any product called a vaccine is automatically declared by the government to be safe and effective.
you don't have to look at any research and no individual can sue the manufacturer of that company of that product.
So what you have is and it's the same kind of thing that they've tried to do with pesticides and with so many other things to give liability protection.
So what this administration is really trying to do and like I said it's hard is to fight back and reverse
that generation of corruption that led us to be the sickest people on the planet while we spend more money.
I have to tell you, I don't pay good enough attention to my own health, but I have inspired by Mr. Kennedy and the concept of eat real food.
I've been much better about it in little ways.
Oh my gosh.
Talk about feeling better.
So the point is that all you have to do is take a little interest and you'll have tremendous benefits.
And if you want to take a lot of interest, go to MahaAction.org for all the information on this.
The real Anthony Fauci was the book written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Deception, the book that was written by
Senator Rand Paul, SkyHorsePublishing.com is the website for all manner of good books of this type.
Tony Lyons is the founder and president of SkyHorse Publishing.
It is always a privilege to talk to you, sir.
I'm so appreciative that you are carrying on this fight.
These books are tremendous, and we'll talk again sooner than later.
Thanks so
much.
All right, take good care, sir.
And Tony Lyons joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540, KXEL.
where Iowa comes to talk.
News Talk, 1540 KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk headlines during the last few weeks have made you stop and take notice.
If you're about to turn on the water tap, word of hacks into water systems in many locations across the country.
Fortunately, none of those in eastern Iowa, but we're going to talk about the concern and the precautions being taken in Waterloo as we connect now with Chad Coon, general manager of Waterloo Waterworks.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
When you hear these stories about to these communities, I know there have been some in Minnesota, some in New Jersey.
What comes to mind first for you as somebody who's in this business?
Just overall the concern of what did happen.
You know, we know the potential of what could happen.
And so then just listening to some of the discussion nationally.
and trying to figure out where we're at, you know, what safety precautions has Waterloo taken to make sure that we can avoid these issues that are going on that have been noted.
Are there some things in those stories?
And again, it's a little different whether you're in one place versus another, I'm sure.
But are there some things in those stories that kind of miss the marker that are going to confuse people as they think about their situation in Waterloo in particular, since that's the area that you're familiar
with?
Yeah.
So I think that there are a variety of things that are concerning.
So what could happen?
So could, as far as...
our aspect in Waterloo, what could happen?
What could a bad actor do?
Could they shut off chlorine?
Could they shut off a pump or increase a pump or they're a variety of things that could happen.
And so you got to play the what if game.
And in Waterloo, we've had Siza come in and run some different testing.
It's a federal agency.
cybersecurity infrastructure, safety administration, I think.
And so under Homeland Security, and try to do some penetration testing, see where we're at, can they breach the network or not, and then look at where we're at.
This summer we also had the EPA come to town.
and do an inspection.
And cybersecurity was part of that inspection.
And so very thankful to have Chris Youngblood at the city that is helping build a robust network and making sure that security matters are top of mind.
Yeah, we need to get through the day operationally, but also knowing that on the security side that we are very much proactive, not reactive in this arena.
We're talking with Chad Kuhn, general manager of Waterloo Water Works, about security and particularly cyber security around water infrastructure in the community, especially in the wake of cyber attacks on water systems in other locations.
Could you talk a little bit more about the safeguards?
You talked about some of the testing, cyber testing, and preventative measures.
What sort of safeguards are there that would prevent someone from turning the dials and changing the mixture that would come out of the tap?
So for us, we've got a remote network that we've got to have passwords to get into.
And we've also got staff that are visiting sites daily.
So we've got a variety of wells that may or may not be running, trying to make sure that we're getting the water to town that everyone needs in the quantities that they need.
So we've got different things in place as far as security systems.
And I think that reading about some of the attacks that happened and some of the equipment that was involved, there was a very specific pathway that was taken.
We've gone back and done double checking on our end.
We don't have those pathways open.
And so there's very much a sense of comfort with that, but we know that every day the bad actors are getting smarter.
And so we've got to constantly evolve what we're doing in the arena of safety and security.
on cyber side.
And with that too, artificial intelligence, that's been another trend this summer that we've heard about in stories where artificial intelligence has been able to hack into things that it shouldn't have had access to.
Is there anything of concern in particular when it comes to that for a water system operator or another
infrastructure operator?
Yeah, I think that absolutely is.
The artificial intelligence is getting is getting smarter.
And even though we were told it won't happen.
I think the reality is that there will come a day where that is going to be a very easy path for those that don't take steps to lock down their systems and make sure that security and protocols are in place.
And so just, again, for us, we've, again, we're very much proactive in this arena and not sitting back and waiting to see what could happen because it could be bad.
Any any water system in the US is has got to meet certain standards for the EPA and within that arena then We've got a disinfect and so the the biggest thing we would potentially look at is They turn off the disinfectant and they they can spoof the The analyzers to make it look like there is disinfectant in the system and so you're actually pumping out water that has no disinfectant normally
Might not be horrible, but there's always the but right is is the The disinfection happens for a reason and you know, we're killing pathogens and so if there's a pathogen present And that would more likely be a surface water source than a groundwater, but it could be contaminated groundwater You could make a lot of people sick and depending on that sickness and people can die
And so you look at a water system 200 years ago, disinfection wasn't a thing.
And so typhoid and dysentery and a lot of those illnesses were waterborne.
And once disinfection started happening 100 years ago or so, and it became known what the benefits were, and that was instituted throughout the US, then those waterborne illnesses
largely disappeared.
Again, in other countries across the world that don't have some of those systems in place, water, the safety of it and drinking it is a concern.
You know, if we went south of the border, I've heard it, I don't know how many times that you don't drink the water.
And that's because there isn't disinfection.
Those systems aren't in place.
So looking at the safety side of a cyber attack and what could they do.
There's one of the big things.
And some of the little things that could happen as far as, you know, they mess up chemical feed systems.
And your water balance is then completely out of whack.
And that has a long-term effect within the pipeline as well.
We're talking with Chad Kuhn, general manager of Waterloo.
Water works about safety and security around water in the wake of cyber attacks in other parts of the country on water systems.
And this isn't a new threat.
I remember a story it's been several years ago and I don't know how precise the
reporting sticks in my mind, but it seemed to suggest that the water operator at a municipal system, I think it may have been in Florida, was sitting there and watching somebody in real time mess around with the levels for the system remotely.
How long has this been something that you've been thinking about that other utility operators have been thinking about?
I think easily 15 years.
that it's it's been a top of mind concern as far as that and seeing again the bad actors get smarter with how they're they're doing that.
And yeah, I don't remember exactly where it happened.
You're right.
But that's how that got caught.
And and a lot of this stuff is, you know, they they didn't just break in today and make something happen.
They broke in and they had their program and they just sat and watched.
And they sat and watched and they sat and watched and they tried to figure stuff out and they waited for an opportunity.
It very easily could have been in their years before they moved forward with taking any action on a system in that hack.
There's someone out there this morning who's having second thoughts about opening up their tap.
So Chad, give us give us some cause for optimism about the situation.
Absolutely.
Uh, so in, in Waterloo and we run a groundwater system and, uh, we're pulling water from different wells throughout the community all, all the time.
Uh, our operators, uh, we're staff 24 seven, first of all.
Uh, and so we've got operators that are, that are watching different disinfectant levels, pumping levels, how many gallons a minute are we putting out?
What's the system pressure?
We don't want to overpressure the system.
And then also.
Every day those operators are on shift and they're stopping into those sites and we're checking the disinfectant levels.
We're checking the different chemicals to make sure that the pumps are pumping or they're off if they need to be off.
And just the overall safety of what we do is very much as a plant operator.
And that's how I came into this whole thing was in my hometown working at the local water plant.
very much know that what we do may be invisible to most, but it is very, very important, right?
Um, safety and security of our drinking water is very important because we have become so accustomed to, Hey, I just opened the tap and I take a drink and it's good to go.
It's not a concern.
Um, and so watching those levels and having a very well trained staff are very important to us.
Well,
Obviously, from what we've talked about over the last 10 minutes, water quality is not just as simple as turning on the faucet.
There's a lot that goes into it.
Just generally, Chad, could you talk about water lose, water quality, where it is, and how it compares?
Sure.
So again, so we're a groundwater system where we've got wells that were
we're pulling water out of different aquifers.
And within that, then we're dealing with the constituents that are there.
And for us, we have water that is very hard.
And so water hardness is an issue.
Either have a water softener or you don't.
And you're treating some of that stuff in your own home.
But then we look at some of the constituents we're looking at are fluoride.
That's one of the health wonders of the 20th century was
fluoridation, right?
So we have some that's naturally occurring.
So we have some wells we don't add any.
We've got other wells that it's 0.2.
And so we're adding a little bit to get it up to the EPA's recommended level.
But then we've also got nitrates.
And, you know, nitrates come from fertilizer runoff and such.
Iowa is a farming state.
I don't think that they're going away anytime soon.
And so we have to deal with that.
But we blend
our water and we're looking at what wells are lower in nitrates, what wells are higher in nitrates as they're located throughout Waterloo.
And again, I've seen some of the chatter on the different social media sites that our water is super high in nitrates.
It's not.
We are prohibited from putting a water into the system that is over 10 parts per million.
on nitrates.
And so we've had over in our history, we've had two wells that had high nitrates and they were shut off.
And we would eventually run those to waste until the nitrate levels dropped, and then we could put them back on the system.
And so today, those wells, I've got one that runs a seven five or so and the other one that's six, five to seven in that neighborhood.
And that's the most.
But we get to see some of the
Again, on social media, some of the things that we've got water with 50 parts per million in nitrates, that's not true.
All of our testing is done through a variety of sources.
We've got testing onsite in our wells with certified instruments.
And then we do testing in our pump station with lab equipment.
And then we also send it to a certified lab.
The results that we get from that certified lab are what are reported to the DNR and the EPA.
And so those are the things that we're very much paying attention to.
We're doing our own testing, but we're also using the certified lab for those numbers.
It's not like we went out to Monards and bought a bottle of test strips.
It's very much we are looking out for the safety of the drinking water and someone drinking water over 10 parts per million of nitrate is not good.
That's not healthy.
It causes problems within the bloodstream.
So we're cognizant of that and we're not putting out high nitrate water.
But yeah, just being a groundwater system is challenges, but it's nothing like if we were pulling it out of the cedar like we were 100 years ago.
Chad, thanks for your insights.
We appreciate your knowledge and willingness to talk about this topic and really several topics when it comes to the quality of water in Waterloo.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
I appreciate the opportunity.
Chad Kuhn, General Manager of Waterloo Water Works.
This is the station where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540 KXEL.