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If only Lee Enterprises, owner of the Quad City Times and Dispatch/Argus, wasn't $538 million in debt.

It would have had $47 million more in income during the past fiscal year to invest back into its 77 newspapers and news web site markets.

And in the fourth quarter ended Sept. 27, the company would have had $12.4 million less in interest expenses, resulting in an $11.1-million profit rather than a $1.3 million loss.

Iowa will never achieve its goal to reduce nitrate runoff from Iowa farm fields relying only on voluntary actions of farm operators, according to a hydrologist who has done extensive research on the state's waterways and water quality.

The state has not only has failed to achieve its goal to reduce nitrogen runoff by 45 percent over the past eight years, the 5-year average of nitrate flowing into the Mississippi River has increased, up more than 100 percent between 2003 and 2019, according to Larry Weber, Ph.D, a research engineer with the University of Iowa's IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering Department.

After furloughing hundreds of Lee Enterprise employees during the coronavirus economic downturn last quarter, the media company was able to pay billionaire Warren Buffet's finance company $36.7 million under the debt refinancing deal agreed to earlier this year.

Lee – owner of the Quad City Times and Dispatch/Argus and 75 other daily newspapers and online news sites – owes Buffet's BH Finance LLC more than $539 million, which carries an annual interest rate of 9 percent.