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The Rock County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Land Management Office have for decades been working with farmers to protect drinking water.
Today those efforts are making a difference, according to Doug Bos with the Land Management Office.
“The work we have done and the changes the farmers have made in the Rock County Rural Water wellhead area have stabilized the nitrogen peaks in the aquifer,” he said.
Bos took the helm of a June 15 meeting of Southwest Minnesota Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts where local successes were on display.
He showed a group of nearly 50 SWCD officials a map of the Rock County Rural Water wellhead area which identified various conservation methods that had been implemented in the past 20 years.
Cover crops, no-till and strip till planting and converting some row crops to long-term grassland have all reduced the levels of nitrates in the drinking water wellhead area.
“Instead of 20 to 30 parts per million during crop growing season, we’ve seen nitrates moderate to levels of 14 or 15 in some wells and even some under 10,” Bos told the group at the June 15 meeting.
“For the first time in 15 years we’ve seen that change. So, we’re making a difference. We’re still not fully successful, but we’re making a difference.”
Success on display
Thursday’s meeting included a tour of the Jim and Sherri Ladd farm atop the Rock County Rural Water wellhead south of Luverne along County Road 9.
“The best thing we can do in the wellhead is like the Ladds did and grow a perennial crop, whether it be alfalfa or grass, and have it be a grazed, managed pasture,” Bos said, acknowledging that taking crops out of production is a big decision.
“When it’s their living for farming and you’re asking them to make that kind of change, it’s quite an ask,” Bos said. “That’s why we applaud Jim and Sherri for what they have done.”
(See the Ladd story)
Keeping nitrogen out of drinking water
Nitrogen, a necessary component of corn growing, is the primary pollutant in the wellhead area of Rock County Rural Water, which supplies drinking water to more than 30 percent of local residents.
There are 3,680 acres in the Rock County Rural Water drinking water supply management area. “Basically, all the raindrops that flow to the well area are included in that,” he said.
Of those, 1,400 acres are in the “very sensitive” area, which is the draw zone for the wells.
“Whatever’s put on the surface of those soils above that area we can see in two months,” Bos said.
“The area is also prone to flooding. When farmers put nitrogen on the corn and then it floods, it goes right on through to the aquifer. It’s very course-textured soil, which means it doesn’t hang on to the nitrates, so it gets to the aquifer pretty fast. Sometimes within two weeks we can see a change.”
He said his office started working with farmers on nitrogen management in 2014 with Clean Water Legacy funds through incentives.
“And that helped,” Bos said. “With any farming practice change there are costs and risks. By offering incentives, we can help that transition and help find a way to improve ground water or surface water.”
The Land Management Office is still working with several landowners on nearly 500 acres of row crops in the sensitive draw zone to lower the nitrogen levels below the 10 ppm drinking water standard.
“It does come down to a few landowners, but I don’t want to point fingers, because all of the farmers have made changes,” Bos said.
“Corn has to have nitrogen, but the problem is that corn utilizes only at best 60 percent of the nitrogen we put on it, and the rest leaches away into our aquifer.”
He said farmers are improving their nitrogen management and implementing other conservation measures, but in the draw zone more work is needed.
Incentivizing change
He said local agencies are learning that successful programs require coordination among many agencies at various levels of government.
For example, programs affecting the Rock County drinking water management area involved the Board of Soil and Water Resources, and Natural Resources Conservation Service along with the Minnesota Rural Water, Minnesota Department of Ag, Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
“It came down to partnerships,” Bos said. “It’s important to work not only with other state agencies, but with private consultants and agronomists.”
The Ladds were able to participate in two separate programs, one state and one federal, to transition their crop ground to a managed grazing system and pollinator planting.
Local and regional technicians worked with the Ladds to tailor a program that suited them.
Funding and technical support came from the Board of Water and Soil Resources Partner Program and the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s EQIP Grazing Management Program.
“It’s basically ‘working lands’ through managed grazing,” Bos said.
“It’s a 30-year easement and the Ladds get 90 percent of what a RIM agreement would have been.”
Without those long conversations and connections across agencies, Bos said the Ladd success story wouldn’t have happened.
“It takes everybody coming together to make this work,” Bos said. “To sit down and figure out what practices a farmer is willing to use, what they need to make it work (equipment or incentives) and what it will take to move it further.”
Funding shifts will contribute to success
Recent funding through the Minnesota Legislature will go a long way toward securing effective change.
“Before, it came out of the Clean Water Legacy Fund dollars. You have to apply every two years and every year there can be different board members,” Bos said.
“Now, the state approved SWCD State Aid Funding for additional capacity funding that pays our staff. It’s more stable coming through the general fund, similar to city-county funding.”
He said it will help his office hire and retain professional technicians, in addition to an agronomist that will work as a liaison with watershed experts.
“The dollars coming from state and federal are a fantastic opportunity to make some good changes in farming toward conservation, but we want to make sure it’s done right,” Bos said.
“We need to provide the technical resources for farmers, whether it’s us or agronomists, to do it right, to help them make that shift … And there are a ton of opportunities coming up for farmers.”
Producers and landowners should watch for information about these opportunities or call the Land Management Office directly at 507-283-8862.