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| North central Iowa watershed project becomes U.S. model |
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| By DOUG SCHMITZ
Iowa Correspondent
URBANDALE, Iowa — As part of Iowa Soybean Assoc. (ISA) Watershed Programming, the Boone River Watershed Project in north-central Iowa may have unintentionally become an environmental model for the rest of the country’s watersheds.
“As the Boone River Watershed Association continues to build on initial successes, it may well shape a new direction for water quality treatment strategies, and a model for watershed scale efforts nationwide,” said Mike Tidman, ISA communications manager for environmental programs.
With the ultimate goal of optimizing and documenting the performance of agriculture in achieving local, state and federal water quality objectives in Iowa sub-watersheds, the programming was designed to provide resources to develop local leadership and supply applied environmental evaluation.
“We provide organizational support and outreach, as well as applied research and evaluation tools to both farmers and environmental partners,” Tidman said. “In order to realize gains in water quality within a watershed, it’s necessary to work on an integrated set of solutions with at least the majority of production acres in that watershed.”
The project, which covers 586,139 acres in Hamilton and Wright counties, is part of two research projects at Iowa State University, funded in 2005, as part of more than $14 million in nationwide grants by the USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES) to address water supply and water quality issues. The other USDA-funded project is southeastern Iowa’s Pike Run Watershed.
Led by the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development’s resource and environmental policy division and the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, both headquartered in Ames, the three-year project has been funded by a $590,000 CSREES grant, which includes research, education and extension. In addition, the Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Arlington, Va., has identified the Boone River Watershed swath as one of 50 freshwater conservation priority areas in the Upper Mississippi River Basin; it was also designated as an Iowa Protected Water Area by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
Officials involved in the TNC-ISA joint venture discussed the project at a June 16 meeting at the Hamilton County conservation office, organized to bring the partners together and provide an update of the project’s status, accomplishments and future plans. Webster City resident Arlo Van Diest, 65, one of the area farmers involved in the project, said the work is important both to him and the community.
“As a local farmer, I want to leave my land as good as I can for my kids and my grandkids, so I supported the Boone River Watershed Project and, when I had a chance, I got involved,” he said at the meeting.
“Now I can see how it’s helping me with my bottom line, but I know the work will help the environment, too. And I like seeing the agencies and other organizations [that] are all cooperating to work with farmers and for the good of the environment.”
As one of the major ag stakeholders in the environment voluntarily participating in programs like this project, Van Diest is one of more than 400 farmers across Iowa the ISA now has evaluating their crop production practices, with the goal of improving economic return and lessening environmental impact.
In spring of 2004, the convergence of environmental and ag interests in the watershed project brought Prairie Rivers of Iowa RC&D (PRRCD), the ISA and TNC together to initiate a fresh approach to watershed improvement and management. As a result, the project has turned into a performance-based, watershed-scale effort with a significant focus on local producers, community objectives and the integration of economics to merge environmental and agricultural goals.
Jim Cooper, PRRCD coordinator in Ames and local leader of the project, said local involvement is the philosophy behind the approach and is crucial to making progress.
“Prairie Rivers of Iowa RC&D is working to promote community-based stewardship,” he said. “Our goal is to improve the quality of life here – both economically and environmentally. Raising public awareness about wise use of the environment and promoting our natural resources will improve the vitality of our community.”
Like Tidman, Todd Sutphin, ISA’s state watershed coordinator, said ISA’s primary role in the project is to provide leadership in watershed planning and farm management evaluation.
“One of the things about this project is that there are a lot of partners at the table, and have been for as long as we’ve been working on this project – three years, going on four,” he said. “We’re working to find practices that perform better, and we’re teaching farmers how to evaluate practices for themselves – from the field to the entire farm.
“The Iowa Soybean Association’s watershed programming is centered around the collection of data from the farm field and in the streams and rivers running through the watershed. The goals are to measure, evaluate and investigate farming practices for their potential impacts on production, profitability and water quality.”
In fact, after three years of evaluation, Sutphin said the project is starting to tell a bigger story. “We’re learning what happens to nutrients applied here in this terrain and in this topography, and it’s getting easier for farmers to zero in on better nutrient management on their soil, on their farms,” he said.
Of current and potential projects within the project that the ISA is working on, one includes reducing ag inputs, which could have positive benefits for the producer and public alike, Tidman said.
Other projects include integration of water retention and infiltration strategies at a regional drainage system scale that could have both public and private benefits, as well as the move to bioenergy crops, which have created both concerns and opportunities.
“Corn production for grain ethanol, along with unchecked residue removal for cellulosic ethanol production, can increase nonpoint source pollution problems,” Tidman said. “Nutrient recycling, return of stabilized carbon to the soil after bioenergy processing, use of cover crops and establishment of perennial species for biomass production can all be integrated to have both economic value and environmental benefits.”
In turn, John Askew, Iowa Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional administrator for Region 7, said the emergence of biofuel is going to have an impact on the way land is managed in Iowa.
“Projects like this are a good way to work at the farm level with the help of a trusted ag association like the Iowa Soybean Association,” he said. “Although local in nature, the work being done here is going to have far-reaching implications as well.”
In the end, Askew said the Boone River work has become a great model project. “Efforts like this should be replicated across sites across the entire Midwest,” he said. “The most interesting thing about this approach is that it goes beyond compliance.
“And that’s one of the questions we’ve been pondering: How to get people to move beyond a compliance mentality and into a performance mentality. The EPA is talking to farmers and working to understand what it takes to get to solutions here on the landscape.
“The reality is that if it weren’t for farmers and others doing these evaluations, we couldn’t create a workable solution.” |
| 9/5/2007 |
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