True fact: Just recently, Iowa Sen. Charles “Chuck” Grassley got the government to toss in $50 million for a project to build a tropical rainforest under a giant dome in Coralville, Iowa.

Q. How will they heat it in the winter?

A. We are guessing pig flatulence.

— Dave Barry, March 7

Until recently, the words “rainforest” and “Iowa” have never been placed in the same sentence, much like “pop” and “nutritious” or “Microsoft” and “innovation.” But just over five years ago, in January 1999, businessman Ted Townsend founded the Iowa CHILD Institute with a starter donation of $10 million. According to a Jan. 23 Cedar Rapids Gazette article, Townsend expected the project to be completed in three years.

Since then, the project has gone from bad-name-good-acronym “Center for Health In a Loving Democracy” to the good-name-bad-acronym “Iowa Environmental/Education Project.” Groundbreaking is scheduled for this fall. That was made possible by the inclusion of $50 million in an omnibus congressional spending bill.

This $50 million has become a lightning rod for congressional pork watchdogs. Reader’s Digest led off its April 2004 article “Hog Wild” with this subhead: “Your tax money for a rain forest in Iowa? Yep, Congress is at it again.” The story added: “Sound ridiculous to construct a rain forest in the middle of the country? It gets funnier: You’re paying for a good part of it, to the tune of $50 million.” Dave Barry covered the humorous aspect of it in early March — namely, that spending money on things like this and shoving the federal deficit onto the descendants of baby boomers is a laugh riot.

While the pork alert and jokes are not without their reasons, other factors are being overlooked.

The public does have a right to wonder just what proponents were thinking when deciding to create a facility that looks like the top half of the cover of Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

The attendance proposals seem overly optimistic. According to a March 22 Associated Press article, planners expect attendance of 1.5 million visitors the first year (2008), down to 1.3 million in the fifth. That’s right — they expect a million and a half people to come to a rainforest in Iowa in one year.

A cold splash of reality can be found 425 miles to the west. The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, in Kearney, Neb., is a $60 million attraction that depicts the importance of transportation in the American experience (and does so very well, I might add). Attendance has fallen far from the original estimate of 900,000 a year; the Omaha World-Herald reported 2002 attendance at 165,000 in a May 23, 2003 article. Factors like lack of advertising and especially lack of direct interstate access may partially explain it, but if people aren’t going to stop for a history display, will they visit a rainforest?

The rainforest project has interstate access, but it comes at a price. KCRG-TV reported March 22 on proposed construction in the area. Stores along First Avenue in Coralville have “just about reached their limit” for traffic, a problem they hope will be eased with expansion of both First Avenue and I-80. At least this construction is near the already-developed area and not sprawling out.

Those arguments aside, the rainforest project does not necessarily deserve the high visibility it has been getting in arguments about congressional pork. Iowa has traditionally been far behind such states as Pennsylvania, where former Rep. Bud Shuster earmarked tons of cash for an absurdity of an interstate (I-99), and West Virginia, which is home to the Robert Byrd Highway, Robert Byrd Locks and Dam, Robert Byrd Federal Building and about 30 other projects named after the West Virginia senator.

The Web site taxpayer.net lists all the states’ funds included in the fiscal 2004 omnibus spending bill. Iowa doesn’t rank in the top 10 — although West Virginia and Alaska do —nor in the top 20, falling behind Colorado and South Carolina. In fact, Iowa is 24th out of 51, with just less than $167 million for 159 projects, meaning the other 158 projects have $117 million split among them. Yet instead of focusing on the $965 million being given to California — enough to fund 19 rainforests — or the 664 projects being funded in Pennsylvania, the easy punchline is “Your money is going to build a rainforest in Iowa!”

It is up to the project’s advocates and the public, in the next 15 years, to convince everyone the $50 million was a sound investment and not a pork-barrel boondoggle. But it is not entirely deserving of all the potshots being taken at it now, even if “rainforest” and “Iowa” should never have been put together in the first place.