BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — An innovative collaboration led by the Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of Greater Chicago is celebrating five years of success, while looking forward to continuing their work in developing strategies to improve the nation’s water quality. 

An example of the IFB-MWRD partnership is the nutrient recovery technology research currently being conducted on a reclaimed 13,500-acre MWRD-owned property in downstate Fulton County. This work will continue thanks in part to a recent $1 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The grant will fund development of a bioreactor and treatment system to effectively capture nutrients from subsurface drainage water and recycle nutrient-captured biochars as a slow-release fertilizer, while keeping nutrients — or fertilizers — in a closed agricultural loop.

“This partnership brings together a powerful mix of collaborators that helps bridge the gap between rural and urban communities,” said Lauren Lurkins, IFB director of environmental policy. “The real strength here is that we have the whole spectrum – researchers, farmers and clean water professionals – working together to move the needle on the state’s Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy.” 

The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS) was established in 2015 to reduce total phosphorus (25 percent) and total nitrogen (15 percent) loads by 2025, with the long-term goal of a 45-percent reduction of the loss of these nutrients to the Mississippi River. Along with municipal wastewater and industry, agriculture is a leading source for the nutrient loss credited with contributing to the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. 

“With seven wastewater plants alone in Greater Chicago and their ownership of the 13,000-acre property in Fulton County, our partnership with MWRD makes sense,” said Lurkins. “Historically the MWRD would bring biosolids out on the Illinois River to this site outside of Cuba, Ill., and would use those biosolids to reclaim strip mine land and bring back soil fertility. They are now partnering with the ag community to utilize 4,000 acres of the tillable land on that space where there are now corn and soybean rotations and horses grazing for research to be done on agricultural best management practices.”

Research and demonstration projects have been established at the site in collaboration with many partners such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Crop Science Department, UIUC Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, Illinois Central College, Ecosystem Exchange, IFB, and Fulton County Farm Bureau. Water and nutrient reduction trials have included interseeded cover cropping, riparian grass buffers, denitrifying bioreactors, runoff irrigation, subirrigation, drainage water managements, designer biochar, and watershed-scale nutrient reduction demonstration. 

Some of the projects conducted in Fulton County are paid for with farmers’ dollars, via the nominal fee assigned to bulk fertilizer to fund Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council initiatives. Findings from these projects are reaching local and regional agricultural communities, through annual field days and workshops, and publications, according to Lurkins. 

“I am hopeful we will be able to host outdoor events at some point this year that are safe and socially distant. It is the goal of our partners to host another field day in Fulton County in 2021, so we can share what our research is showing and our plans as we move forward,” said Lurkins. “We would like an opportunity for Cook County farmers to come down here and see what their own stakeholders locally are doing, some peer-to-peer sharing as well as cross-sector information sharing with the public.”

Visitors to the Fulton County site in 2021 would see riparian buffers composed of various grasses, various prototypes of woodchip bioreactors, and biochar filters that are placed after woodchip bioreactors. A closed-loop drip irrigation system demonstrates how water can be treated and recirculated from a nearby pond.

“We have a couple of different projects underway and we will be able to report our additional findings (soon),” Lurkins said. 

In addition to hosting field days, the partners showcased Illinois’ efforts on the national stage at the Annual Water Resources Conference of the Universities Council on Water Resources and the National Institutes for Water Resources held last year in Utah. MWRD has hosted IFB farmer leadership on several occasions for tours and discussions of their operations in the Chicagoland area. During the pandemic, regularly-held virtual meetings have ensured the continuity of steady dialogue and constant collaboration.

“This partnership proves to be a win-win as farmers and fellow state water quality stakeholders share their goals and struggles and engage in that conversation, especially during face-to-face tours and sit-down discussions that we’ve had over the past few years,” said Jeff Kirwan, Mercer County farmer and IFB district 3 director, who joined a MWRD facilities tour with the IFB Strength With Advisory Team in 2019.

To learn more about the IFB-MWRD partnership in Fulton County, visit www.mwrd.org/fulton-county.