A Multi-Layered Approach To Water Quality

The Indian Creek Watershed project has become a good example of how a combination of supporters and local farmers can work together to improve the quality of the water leaving the watershed.

The Indian Creek Watershed project has become a good example of how a combination of supporters and local farmers can work together to improve the quality of the water leaving the watershed.

The 2014 Indian Creek Watershed Project Tour held on August 19 continued the tradition of bringing together a wide range of stakeholders to share in field demonstrations of new technologies and practices for crop and soil management systems. The goal: to reduce nutrient loading into the Indian Creek Watershed, which covers about 52,000 acres of prime central Illinois farmland.

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The project is the result of a cooperative program of the Livingston County, IL Soil and Water Conservation District, the local county Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), and the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) in West Lafayette, IN. Funding was provided by an NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant, a demonstration grant to CTIC from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA), with matching funds and in-kind support from a variety of corporate sponsors and non-government agency partners.

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Now in its fourth year, the Indian Creek Watershed project has become a good example of how this combination of supporters and local farmers can work together to improve the quality of the water leaving the watershed. A Steering Committee of local farmers and community stakeholders oversees and guides the project.

This Annual Tour, along with a mid-winter Annual Meeting and various published and Internet reports are major avenues for getting the information from the project to the farmers in the watershed and beyond. The goal of the Indian Creek program is to get 50% or more of the farmers in the watershed to adopt better management practices to improve nutrient management on at least 50% of the acres that they farm.

The 2014 tour started with a discussion and demonstration on soil health by Roger Windhorn of the Illinois NRCS. Using a soil pit of Swygert Silty Clay Loam, Windhorn pressed the importance of farmers learning the soil profile of the soils they farm. Producers must understand how management practices, along with natural forces, work to improve or degrade the health of the soil. Soil properties are highly buffered and resist change, but proper management can impact the long-term suitability for crop production, he said.

The soil health discussion also included using cover crops. Interest in adding cover crops to the management system has been gaining popularity among Indian Creek Watershed farmers. Different seed mixes were compared, and a high-clearance seeding system was demonstrated. The use of the Veris system for measuring soil characteristics such as electrical conductivity and pH was also demonstrated.

New Technologies Demo

The second stop on the tour focused on some of the new technologies coming available to farmers. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) demonstration by a local farmer/dealer showed attendees how aerial imagery could be collected to help monitor crop conditions and effects of different practices being studied in the project.

In early August, some of the Indian Creek demo plots were flown with this UAV system, and the resulting images will be a part of this year’s analysis and reporting. A RowBot robotic seeding system for cover crops was run through its paces in a local corn field. The system autonomously travels down the corn rows using RTK with an on-broad sensor system. It turns on the end rows using RTK guidance and spreads cover crop seed across four rows of corn as it goes. This same RowBot can be configured for applying UAN solution in standing corn.

Chad Watts of CTIC reviewed the progress of the overall Indian Creek project and thanked all of the agency, corporate and national government organization sponsors, as well as local farmers and the Steering Committee, who made the project possible.

Tim Smith, owner of Cropsmith, Inc., presented an update on some of the 15 on-farm demonstration projects, and the utilization of nutrient use efficiency plots and data analysis to provide an estimate of the agronomic, economic and environmental impact of the practices being demonstrated. Cropsmith, in association with Reetz Agronomics, manages most of the field demonstration plots and data analysis for the 15 on-farm nutrient management projects in the Indian Creek Watershed. Some of the systems used to treat and blend fertilizers to help improve nutrient use efficiency were also discussed by J.C. Remsburg of The A.J. Sackett and Sons Co.

There was also a display of the Falcon Automatic Soil Sampler, a new technology for helping improve soil sampling uniformity and efficiency.

Water Quality Overview

The last part of the tour gave a review of the water quality in Indian Creek, which feeds into the Vermilion River, which then becomes a part of the public water supplies for the cities of Pontiac and Streator, and eventually flows into the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Trent Thomas, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, led a fish-shocking demonstration in a section of Indian Creek. They identified 40 different fish species, and proved that Indian Creek is a healthy breeding area and habitat for them. Their data show that the numbers and species have been increasing, indicating that Indian Creek has been improving over recent years.

Trevor Sample of Illinois EPA reported on their water sampling program in Indian Creek, and attempts to measure any impact of the adoption of improved nutrient management practices. The nutrient loading data can be related to weather and cropping season information to help guide farmers’ management decisions. Nitrate levels in 2014 have closely followed rainfall patterns. He reviewed the importance of the Indian Creek efforts to meeting Illinois EPA goals and the value of the cooperation among all parties involved in this project.

Elizabeth Doellman of Illinois American Water Company, the water providers for Pontiac and Streator, reviewed the measures that a public water supply must take to meet quality standards, and the importance of the improved management by farmers in Indian Creek Watershed to helping them maintain water quality and reduce costs to consumers.

The Indian Creek Watershed Project and the cooperative effort among all parties involved continues to be an excellent example for other communities. Building similar programs in other watersheds could go a long way to improving the impact on water quality for other agricultural watersheds across the country.

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