United States
Department of
Agriculture
United States
Environmental
Protection
Agency
EPA- 8H-1-R-8J-10O
The Rural Clean Water
Program: A Report
> Vt " 4 *«,!"- V - I !H- •
"^
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About the Author
Charles E. Little is the author of a
half-dozen books on resources and
the environment, a columnist for
Harrowsmitfi and Wilderness maga-
zines, and a frequent contributor of
commentary to the Journal of Soil
and Wbter Conservation. He was
formerly head of natural resources
policy research at the Library of Con-
gress (Congressional Research Serv-
ice) and later founded the American
Land Forum. He lives and works in
Kensington, Maryland.
Note
This report provides an overview of
the Rural Clean Water Program for
the nontechnical reader concerned
with issues of environmental and ag-
ricultural policy. For statistical de-
tails, especially on monitoring, the
reader may wish to consult Status
of Agricultural Nonpoint Source
Projects, prepared annually by the
National Water Quality Evaluation
Project at North Carolina State Uni-
versity. It is available from the proj-
ect's offices at 615 Oberlin Road,
Suite 100, Raleigh, NC 27605-1126.
Telephone (919) 737-3723. The pro-
ject's staff also publishes various
other technical papers on the RCWP
and keeps complete files on individ-
ual projects as well.
"Opinions expressed in this docu-
ment are those of the author and do
not necessarily reflect USDA policy."
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The Rural Clean Water Program: A Report
United States
Department of
Agriculture
Soil
Conservation
Service
Agricultural
Stabilization and
Conservation
Service
Forest
Service
Extension
Service
Agricultural
Research
Service
Economic
Research
Service
Rural
Electrification
Agency
United States
Environmental
- Protection
Agency
All programs and services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture are offered on a nondiscriminatory basis,
without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, marital status, or handicap.
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Page
Part I: The Program 1
"Nonpoint and Agriculture" 1
Best Management Practices 2
Origins and Workings of the Program 3
Part II: The Projects 6
Alabama: The Lake Tholocco Watershed 6
Delaware: The Appoquinimink River Watershed 7
Florida: The Taylor Creek-Nubbin Slough Watershed 7
Idaho: Rock Creek Watershed 8
Illinois: The Highland Silver Lake Watershed 10
Iowa: The Prairie Rose Lake Watershed 10
Louisiana: The Bayou Bonne Idee Watershed 11
Maryland: The Double Pipe Creek Watershed 12
Massachusetts: The Westport River Watershed 12
Michigan: The Saline Valley Watershed 13
Minnesota: The Garvin Brook Watershed 7 14
Nebraska: Long Pine Creek Watershed 15
Oregon: The Tillamook Bay Watershed 16
Pennsylvania: The Conestoga Headwaters Watershed 17
South Dakota: The Oakwood Lakes-Poinsett Watershed 18
Tennessee: The Reelfoot Lake Watershed 19
Utah: The Snake Creek Watershed 20
Vermont: The St. Albans Bay Watershed 20 v
Virginia: The Nansemond-Chuckatuck Watershed 21
Wisconsin: The Lower Manitowoc River Watershed 22
Part III: Policy Options for the Future 23
Surmounting the Difficulties 1... 23
The Choices 24
References and Notes 26
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I
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In
, n Vermont these days,
rmers in the northwestern part
''the State are keeping an eye on
Sgrfront real estate prices along
utifulSt. AlbansBay, an arm of
oe Champlain, even though few
Wthem own property there,
jnjowa, the color of the water—
Brilliant blue—in a 220-acre
regional impoundment called
'iqirie Rose Lake, set in the midst,
''corn and soybean fields, seems to t
" ingjill the difference,
Sts"1 £** ** J IT g
WFlorida, the health of a small
?flturecalled the apple snail,
\ich lives in (he lib) pads of Lake
jechobee and is the favorite food
^Jhe Everglades kite, an endan-
gered species, has claimed the at-
' "" >« of dairy operators who do
,. 'Ink of themselves as ecolo-
jis but as business executives, ",
lich they are,
\ coastal Oregon, the happiness of
•ji diggers and the profitability of
_ Juple of commercial oystering ]
pjrations in Tittamook Bay seem
" Jhe crucial factors for local
ijry operators and their creamery. "
t " I *- I
tumbling waters of Rock
^^ a tributary to the Snake t
yer in Idaho, the return of native *
inbowjrout is the subject of talk
^Jhejcoffee shops where cash-
yam farmers gather.
ipics like these may not sound as
.ough they have anything to do
fith modern agricultural practice, ,
u£theydo. The price of waterfront
J&f estate, the blue of a lake, and
lfie_presence of the apple snail and
yejj,atjve trout exemplify the tangi-
ble results of a remarkable 10-year
'rort now near ing its conclusion:
Experimental Rural Clean
ter Program, which was meant "
jlop the means to make the I
l^fmM America clean and t
,iat, while requiring farmer *
Participation, does not threaten the
Delicate economics of farms and
farm districts. -
"Nonpoint" and Agriculture
Historically, water pollution has
been thought of as a phenomenon of
cities and heavy industry. Even today,
people tend to conjure up images of
raw-sewage outfalls, of oily rivers
catching fire, of Lake Erie dead or
dying along its factory-lined shore, of
unspeakable wastes turning stream
water to garish hues in industrial
districts on the outskirts of cities.1
In contrast, there was the "pure"
country, to which all pollution-ridden
urbanites and those who lived near
factory gates in America wished to es-
cape — for a weekend at least, maybe
permanently.
It was only quite recently, during
the 1960's and 1970's—the years of
"environmental awakening" — that
Americans discovered the waters of
the pure countryside to be polluted
too. Far from the big-city sewer pipes
and noxious industrial drainageways,
rural lakes and streams were found to
be laced with pesticides, algae-green
because of excessive nutrients from
animal wastes and fertilizers, clouded
to mud-puddle opacity from sus-
pended solids, and unsafe to drink
because of rising fecal coliforrn bac-
teria counts, not from cities but from
livestock. According to a 1977 study
by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency,2 such pollution affected the
water quality of some 68 percent of -
the drainage basins in the United
States. In the erosion-prone Corn
Belt, 90 percent of the basins were
so affected.
Because of this phenomenon,
a new word had to be invented for
dealing with water pollution—
"nonpoint," meaning pollution that
does not emanate from, say, a sewer
pipe (a point), but rather from diffuse
sources, such as a farmer's field (a
nonpoint). Agriculture is not the only
nonpoint source. Construction, min-
ing, runoff from streets, and forestry,
among others, contribute a share. But
agriculture is the major factor. "By far
the most common nonpoint source
[of pollution] reported by States in
Runoff loaded with dairy wastes causes
unrestrained growth of weeds and algae. This
process, known as eutrophication, lowers
recreation quality, kills fish, and can make the
water unsafe for drinking.
1986," says a recent EPA report, "is
agricultural runoff." The report
points out that agriculture is "the pri-
mary pollutant source for 64 percent
of affected [polluted] river miles, 57
percent of affected lake areas, and 19
percent of affected estuarine areas" in
the United States.3 A study of "non-
point-source loadings" by the Na-
tional Commission on Water Quality
projected that even after all the point
sources are remedied, as many now
have been, nonpoint sources (mainly
agriculture) will still produce 72,500
tons per day of suspended solids (sed-
imentation), 14,150 tons per day of
nitrogen, 965 tons per day of phos-
phorus, and virtually all of the re-
maining fecal coliform pollution.4 A
study by the Association of State and
Interstate Water Pollution Control
Administrators revealed that in 35 of
50 States nonpoint source pollution
from agriculture was identified as a
problem.5 The answer to the crisis of
agriculturally polluted water in rural
areas obviously cannot be the same
as the answer to point source pollu-
tion, such as tertiary sewage plants
for municipalities and waste recycling
for factories. Yet, some of the princi-
ples can be borrowed and joined with
traditional agricultural management
techniques to limit, if not eliminate,
agricultural pollution.
The Program 1
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Best Management Practices
The water pollution control ef-
fort has popularized another vague
term of art—"best management
practices"—that describes a wide
range of techniques to reduce agri-
culturally caused nonpoint source
pollution. The Experimental Rural
Clean Water Program was set up to
test these techniques in some 20 wa-
tershed areas across the country, be-
ginning in 1980. Before describing
the origins and workings of this pro-
gram, however, it is important to ex-
plain its primary unit of work, the
farm-by-farm installation of best
management practices to curb non-
point pollution.
For example, in cash-grain fann-
ing areas of the Midwest, agricultural
runoff from rains and snowmelt can
carry an incredible amount of soil
from the fields, along with nutrients
and pesticides. This is what was hap-
pening to Prairie Rose Lake in Iowa.
The water, a brown so murky not
even algae could bloom, was no
longer swimmable or fishable. Sedi-
ment had consumed nearly a fifth of
the 220-acre lake's volume.
To deal with such a problem, in
Iowa or elsewhere, a "best" manage-
ment practice might be as old-fash-
ioned as contour plowing and strip-
cropping to reduce runoff. Contour
plowing creates, in effect, a series of
tiny check-dams, with the plow fur-
rows running across a slope rather
than up and down it. Stripcropping—
planting alternating strips of different
crops, also along the contour—can,
with contour plowing, reduce runoff
up to 50 percent. Terracing is another
old method, dating back thousands
of years in the Orient and the Medi-
terranean region, and still useful,
though it is a labor-intensive (now
machine-intensive) method. Grassed
waterways to reduce gullying from
runoff, and filter strips—permanent
bands of natural vegetation that can
intercept runoff water and its agri-
cultural pollutants before they enter
Prairie Rose Lake, once polluted with sediment and agricultural chemicals, is again a
major tourist attraction in Iowa.
a stream—are effective practices as
well.
All of these techniques, in vary-
ing combinations, were put into prac-
tice by Prairie Rose Lake fanners, as
was conservation tillage. In conserva-
tion tillage, the soil is not turned, and
crop stubble and other residues are
left on or near the surface to retard
runoff.6
Conservation tillage was also a
best management practice selected to
deal with the pollution problems in
Idaho's Rock Creek project, along
with new ditch irrigation and catch-
ment techniques. The main problem
with ditch irrigation is that the return
flows—the water from irrigation re-
turning to a stream or water body
after coursing through a field—are
laden with silt and nutrients.
A demanding and complicated
set of best management practices is
also needed to reduce the runoff of
animal wastes from dairying and, to
a lesser extent, from cattle ranching
and other stock-raising operations. In
the St. Albans Bay area of Vermont,
for example, an alternative to the
year-round spreading of manure on
This turbulent fountain, or "bubble screen,"
filters from water the debris that could clog
gated irrigation pipes and siphon tubes.
fields had to be found because the
manure would simply accumulate in
great quantities on frozen ground in
the winter, then wash into the bay at
spring thaw. Here, the "best" practice
was the construction of a manure pit,
often with a secondary pond to draw
off and store liquid wastes that could
later be sprayed on the fields. The re-
sult could make a significant differ-
ence in the town's tax rolls, with the
price of waterfront property on the
2 Tlie Program
-------
bay given a boost through reduced
amounts of algae in the bay.
Around Lake Okeechobee in
Florida, where some of the largest
dairies in the world are located
(5,000-head herds), much more elab-
orate waste management systems had
to be constructed. In one watershed
area, computer programs were devel-
oped to help assure that solid and
fluid wastes were not put on fields
when the water table was high (as it
often is in Florida), which would in-
hibit the nutrients being taken up by
the soil. The next rain would simply
move the wastes into the streams and
thence to the extremely eutrophica-
tion-prone Lake Okeechobee. An
associated technique used by the
Okeechobee farmers and ranchers, in
these concentrated dairy livestock op-
erations, was the fencing of streams
in which cattle like to "lounge" on
hot days, of which there are many in
this semitropical climate. To keep
livestock cool, portable cattle shades
were provided.
In the Tillamook Bay area of Or-
egon, the problem was rain—a hun-
dred inches a year that swiftly and
routinely washed animal wastes into
the bay from the dairies providing the
milk for famed Tillamook cheddar
cheese. The high nutrient and bacte-
ria content of the effluent threatened
the local oyster industry and threat-
ened, too, to reduce tourism, a pri-,
mary concern here. In Tillamook, the
best management practices employed
included building covered manure
sheds that would store up to 90 days'
accumulation of wastes. This meant
that farmers would not have to spread
manure during rainy weather, but
could wait till the skies cleared. In ad-
dition, extremely elaborate systems
were devised for separating fresh wa-
ter from contaminated water, using
guttering, curbing, and the like so
that clean water from the rains could
be diverted into the bay. The contam-
inated wastewater was collected for
spraying on pastures via manure-
slurry spray pumps or the traditional
"honey wagons," which each spring
lend the city of Tillamook a distinc-
tive agricultural atmosphere.7
Origins and Workings
of the Program
As a statutory program of the
U.S. Government, the Experimental
Rural Clean Water Program (usually,
"experimental" is dropped and the
initials RCWP used) can trace its ori-
gins to the Federal Water Pollution
Control Act Amendments of 1978,
one of the most far-reaching pieces of
environmental legislation ever en-
acted by the Congress. Not only did it
challenge the idea that a proper use
of virtually all surface water was to
carry away or dilute manmade pollu-
tion, this act, Public Law 92500 (pop-
ularly called the "Clean Water Act"),
demanded for the first time ever in
Federal law that water pollution re-
sulting from the general use of land
be abated, even if it meant modifying
land use. Section 208 of the 1972 act
provided that States prepare statewide
and regional plans, based on water-
sheds, not only for "point sources,"
but also for the prevention of what it
called "nonpoint" source pollution.
A new word then, but no longer.
The broad mandate of section
208 notwithstanding, the main activ-
ities taking place with respect to wa-
ter pollution had to do with funding
municipal sewage plants and cleaning
up industrial discharges. Rural water-
shed planning took place, but not
much action ensued.8 Then, in 1977,
when it came time for Congress to
amend the Clean Water Act, Senator
John Culver of Iowa proposed that a
sharply focused program be insti-
tuted to assure that rural nonpoint
source pollution would be addressed
as decisively as urban point source
pollution. The Culver amendment,
so-called, was the Rural Clean Water
Program. The amendment sought to
provide the wherewithal for farmers
to initiate the management practices
needed to reduce the agricultural in-
dustry's substantial contribution to
rural water pollution. It was, in effect,
a public works funding program that
would apply to private farms and
ranches in rural watersheds, as a par-
allel effort complementing the fund-
ing of municipal sewage districts in
towns and cities. The Culver amend-
ment was adopted as part of the 1977
Clean Water Act amendments, and
$600 million was authorized. Later
amendments, enacted in 1980, ex-
tended the authorization for two
more years and brought the grand
total to $800 million.
But the program as originally
conceived remained unimplemented,
the generous authorization
unappropriated.
One of the sticking points was
the amount of money involved. The
Carter administration was trying to
fight inflation and, therefore, kept a
close watch on all funding programs.
Later, an incoming Reagan adminis-
tration would be calling many social
and environmental programs into
question from the standpoint of reor-
dering Federal spending priorities in
favor of national defense.Yet this was
not the whole reason Senator Culver's
program languished. At the most ele-
mentary level, before the program
was enacted, a basic choice had to
be made between the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency, as the tra-
ditional implementer of pollution
control programs, and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, as the
implementer of farm programs. EPA
was already involved with best man-
agement practices that could be ap-
plied to clean up rural water, but
USDA had been working closely with
farmers for 50 years on techniques to
abate soil erosion, the primary cause
of agricultural nonpoint source pol-
lution, and had an elaborate local
administrative structure already in
place. On that basis, USDA got the
nod from Congress.
Within USDA, however, there
was indecision as to which agency
should direct the program—the
Soil Conservation Service, whose
The Program 3
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technical expertise in management
practices was paramount, or the Agri-
cultural Stabilization and Conserva-
tion Service (ASCS), which had al-
ways handled the money for price
supports and for conservation cost-
share programs through the Agricul-
ture Conservation Program, first es-
tablished in 1936.9 Initially, Congress
appointed SCS as the lead agency,
though ultimately changing its mind
in favor of ASCS. The lead-agency
disagreement lasted two years; rules
and regulations for the program were
issued, then withdrawn, then finally
reissued. But by then, the point was
moot. The environmental 1970's were
over. There was no chance that a big-
money allocation would be made by
Congress to clean up rural water.
By that time, 1980, it seemed
to many that the program might be
lost altogether. Then, Representative
Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, long a
major figure in the Congress on agri-
culture policy, stepped in with the
idea of establishing an experimental
rural clean water program, which
could be mounted for only a fraction
of the cost of the original. As chair-
man of the budget subcommittee al-
locating funds, Whitten made the
program part of the 1980 Agriculture
Appropriation Act, rather than wait
for the next go-round on the Clean
Water Act. The 1980 Agriculture
Appropriation Act (now Public Law
96108) provided "for necessary ex-
penses for carrying out an experi-
mental Rural Clean Water Program,
$50,000,000,... to be targeted at
areas with identified and significant
agricultural nonpoint source water
pollution problems."10 One year later,
another $20 million was added
through a supplemental
appropriation.
The program developed with
this total of $70 million was mounted
in (ultimately) 20 watersheds across
the country, most of them drawn
from some 80 early applicants to the
original, unfunded RCWP. The wa-
tersheds, ranging in size from a few
hundred acres to several hundred
A major erosion-control practice is no-till planting, in which new seeds are sown
directly into ground covered with residue from the previous crop.
thousand, were meant to be geo-
graphically distributed and reflective
of various agricultural pollution
problems—sedimentation, pesti-
cides, excessive nutrients, and fecal
bacteria—in irrigated and unirri-
gated cash grain areas and in dairying
and stock-raising areas.
Although the lead agency was
ASCS, the program was to be imple-
mented in the field by SCS, with the
involvement of other agencies as
needed. EPA was to work in close
consultation on the program with the
USDA agencies, particularly on mon-
itoring results in terms of reduced
pollution after the best management
practices had been installed. Others
with a seat on the program's National
Rural Clean Water Coordinating
Committee were to include (and do)
the Extension Service, the Economic
Research Service, the Agricultural
Research Service, the Rural Electri-
fication Agency, and the Forest Serv-
ice, along with SCS. The ASCS was
chair.
Within the designated project
areas, a local version of the national
group was to carry out the program.
Typically, ASCS was to handle the
contracts with farmers, with SCS
providing the planning and technical
expertise for installing the practices.
Extension agents would provide
agronomic advice (which in some
cases is crucial), and scientists from
cooperating State water or environ-
mental agencies, or a State university,
would handle the monitoring.
The first task for each project
was to identify the "critical areas" of
the watershed because not all of the
land was farmland and not all farm-
land contributed to the pollution
load. After that, farmers could be
identified and asked if they would
like to participate. If the answer was
yes, SCS would then prepare a de-
tailed plan combining the techniques
—the best management practices —
needed to produce the needed pollu-
tion reduction (usually via runoff,
though ground water pollution was at
issue in some areas) at the minimum
possible public cost.
The deal offered to farmers was
this: RCWP would pay up to 75 per-
cent of the cost of installing the best
management practices recommended
in the water quality plan. The farmer
would pick up the rest and promise
to keep the practices installed for a
period of years, usually 10 for expen-
sive practices, such as the construc-
tion of a manure storage facility,
4 Tlie Program
-------
down to a minimum of 3 years for
practices in which there was little
cost involved, such as modifying
crop rotations, tillage techniques, or
pesticide applications. Cost of the
practices ranged from a few hundred
dollars for a fence, a drain, a culvert,
or conversion to conservation
tillage on a small farm, to $100,000
or more for elaborate animal waste
management systems that might in-
clude concrete manure pits, lagoons,
pumping stations, irrigation systems,
and the like. The maximum the pro-
gram would pay to execute a water
quality plan, however, was $50,000
per farmer-cooperator.
It was not always easy to con-
vince farmers to participate. For
many a small operator, a required ex-
penditure of $15,000 or $20,000 was a
major family decision. Moreover, in
many areas, contracts were not of-
fered until the agricultural depression
hit in 1983, making it impossible for
many farmers to cooperate. Never-
theless, as of 1988, farmers had con-
tracted for, if not implemented, best
management practices on some 70
percent of the critical areas in the
RCWP's 20 experimental watershed
areas. A number of areas have
achieved nearly 100 percent coop-
eration from farmers.
Meanwhile, monitoring stations
were established. Some were simply
designated spots where "grab" sam-
ples of surface water would be taken.
Others were permanent monitoring
stations with highly sensitive equip-
ment that, round the clock, would
measure pollutants, rate of flow,
depth of water, temperature, and the
like for the complex analysis that
would take place in the lab later on.
Monitoring was, of course, a
crucial element in a program meant
to be experimental. Accordingly, five
of the projects were designated to re-
ceive greater amounts of funding for
monitoring (in Idaho, Illinois, Penn-
sylvania, South Dakota, and Ver-
mont). In other project areas, such as
Monitoring water quality in Vermont.
Lake Okeechobee in Florida, consid-
erable funding and scientific man-
power for monitoring work were
supplied by the State Government.
The legislation establishing this
experimental program, the 1980
Agriculture Appropriations Act, is
open-ended. Funds for implementa-
tion are "available until expended."
As a practical matter, however, the
experimental program's effective life
is about 10 years, since that is the
term of most of the major manage-
ment practices installed under the
cost-share formula. The monitoring
component, especially in the areas
selected for comprehensive analysis,
will continue well beyond the conclu-
sion of the contracts with farmers for
the installation of management prac-
tices. In a few areas, a change in focus
took place midway through the pro-
ject. For these, monitoring results
will not even begin to come in until
the early 1990's.
Although some monitoring
needs to be completed in many pro-
ject areas, the experimental Rural
Clean Water Program is clearly in its
final phase. Virtually all contracts
with farmers have been let, and most
practices have been installed. Analy-
sis of results is now the primary task,
as the effects on ambient pollution
by the practices installed become
evident.
While relevant passages of the
1987 Clean Water Act will permit ad-
ditional funding for the current pro-
gram, if needed, the essential policy
question is not whether some of the
20 experimental projects need to be
extended (though they probably do),
but whether and how the findings of
the experimental program can be ap-
plied in the Nation's remaining water-
sheds where nonpoint source pollu-
tion from agriculture is a serious
matter. Some analysts believe that
there may be as many as 600 agri-
cultural watershed areas that have
surface water problems requiring the
attention given to the experimental
20.'' What's needed now in order to
revisit the "big" decision on the fu-
ture of rural clean water policy, prob-
ably in 1990 when the Clean Water
Act comes up again for review by
Congress, is a better understanding
of what has been going on in the
experimental project areas over the
last 7 or 8 years.
The Program 5
-------
understand how
^'Program actually works and to
grf a Settle of its significance, it is
iecessary to see" it in operation, to
it least glimpse some on-the-
n und specifics. Fallowing, there-
_,., are thumbnail descriptions of
fir 20 existing ^^S.12 Unless
noreo, projecf informa-
is section is based on local
wojeci reports, which are prepared
"malty; analyses of the National
%g£,Quality Evaluation Project
. SraCarolina State University;
fadpersonal interviews by phone
2r in person with local project offi-
J&I/& Time project narratives can
k raw? collectively or selectively.
//fe eac/z of the projects,
its own. Some sketches
red more text than others, but
ftrA'CTz as a /now-
overall signifi-
'yujeetfp the program. Projects are
''zed alphabetically oy State.
_J
Alabama:
Tiie Lake Tholocco Watershed
If any experimental project were
designed to stress-test the concept of
the Rural Clean Water Program, it
would be Lake Tholocco. The lake, a
recreational impoundment in south-
eastern Alabama largely within the
boundary of a U.S. Army reservation
(Fort Rucker), is intensively used for
recreation—100,000 boaters, water
skiers, swimmers, anglers, and pic-
nickers a year. When the project be-
gan it also suffered from dramatic ag-
ricultural pollution, for much of its
watershed lies outside the reserva-
tion. Sediment loads from upstream
farms had already filled in the north-
ern third of the lake. Fecal bacteria
from swine operations in the water-
shed, involving about 4,000 animals,
had required that the lake be closed
to swimming. In 1979, the year before
the RCWP project started here,
swimming was prohibited for a total
of 85 days.
The problem has been the ex-
tremely erosion-prone coastal plain
soils in this part of southern Ala-
bama. Sandy red, lacking in water-
absorbing humus, the land gullies
quickly when heavy spring rains hit
recently plowed and planted fields.
The topography is relatively steep,
and slopes of 4 to 10 percent are rou-
tinely row-cropped. Moreover, the pig
farms, though none of them are large,
are also subject to washout rains,
which deliver animal wastes in great
quantities into the streams and
thence into Lake Tholocco. What
made this situation so difficult to deal
with in terms of installing the man-
agement practices needed to reduce
agricultural pollution in the lake was
that the farms here are small, averag-
ing but 80 acres, and the farmers
poor, operating at or near subsistence
level. Even though the program paid
for 75 percent of the cost of the man-
agement practices required (to a limit
of $50,000 per participant), the 25
percent remaining was hard to come
by for most of the farmers.
The practices called for were la-
goons and other devices to capture
the animal waste runoff from the
swine operations near streams. For
the cropland, a variety of remedies
were introduced to reduce erosion.
Other practices involved repairing
gullies and constructing terraces.
Some of the land was retired from
row-crop agriculture altogether under
the Conservation Reserve Program of
the 1985 Food Security Act, which
compensates farmers for agreeing to
take highly credible land out of pro-
duction for 10 years. Remarkably, al-
most all farmers were willing to coop-
erate with the RCWP; and in the end,
approximately 80 percent of the criti-
cal areas in the watershed had best-
management-practice contracts in
place.
During the early years of the
project, monitoring data on fecal
coliform bacteria was a bit sketchy
because samples were not taken
regularly from the lake. Nevertheless,
according to project officials, the bac-
teria count has "decreased signifi-
cantly" since the beginning of the
project. Officials also believe that the
practices will greatly reduce sedimen-
tation, although to what degree is un-
certain because nitrate and turbidity
studies did not begin until 1986.
There have been important an-
cillary effects of the project as well.
EPA and the State of Alabama have
developed a program to treat the crit-
ical areas of the watershed that lie
within the city limits of Ozark, Ala-
bama, including a $2 million project
to construct new lift stations and
sewer lines. At Fort Rucker, officials
This gully between two row-cropped fields
contributed its share of sediment to Alabama's
Lake Tholocco.
The best management practices included
installing an underground pipe that carries
runoff water to a stilling basin, which slows the
water to a nonerosive velocity.
6 The Projects
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have addressed several critically erod-
ing areas through roadway improve-
ment, tree planting, and the like,
with RCWP project people operating
as consultants. Best of all, Lake
Tholocco has not been closed a sin-
gle day since this rural clean water
project began. In 1988, the lake man-
ager, an officer from Fort Rucker,
reported that the water was cleaner
than ever.
Delaware:
The Appoquinimink River Watershed
For most of its short length, the
Appoquinimink River is a broad tidal
creek, running from Delaware Bay to
Odessa, Delaware. The watershed it-
self extends further inland to the city
of Middletown. Throughout, the Ap-
poquinimink is rich in wildlife and,
along with several large ponds associ-
ated with the river, is a popular sport
fishery.
The ponds are ringed by houses
whose residents began with increas-
ing frequency during the 1970's to
complain of algal growth and of dead
fish in the pond reeds and around
the docks. They believed that runoff
from nearby cropland was the prob-
lem, for scientists at the University of
Delaware had discovered atrazine, a
herbicide, in the water. In addition,
nitrates and phosphorus from
chemical fertilizers were causing
eutrophication.
Despite the fact that increasing
amounts of land in the watershed
were being developed for residential
use, which has its own nonpoint pol-
lution effects; and despite the fact
that there were several potential in-
dustrial polluters, including a plastics
factory and a battery factory, local ag-
ricultural officials felt that a signifi-
cant effort should be made to reduce
agriculture's own contribution to the
problem.
The management practice em-
phasized was the conversion of row
crop cultivation to no-till. Under the
project, no-till acreage was increased
from about 50 percent of the crop-
land to the current 90 percent. In
addition, farmers reduced pesticide
use, planted cover crops in the fall to
reduce winter runoff, and installed
grassed waterways, filter strips, and
other facilities. Participation resulted
in 85 percent of the critical land in
the watershed being under some kind
of best management practice.
Almost all the work has been
completed in the watershed, and the
results are impressive. Erosion has
been reduced by 7 tons per acre per
year, which along with improved fer-
tilizer and pesticide management
techniques has lowered the level of
This waterway in Delaware was smoothed and stone was placed over it to reduce
erosion and runoff.
suspended solids in the river by 60
percent. In one of the ponds, mon-
itoring results show that sediment
levels have declined by 90 percent
and total phosphorus by 65 percent.
The benefits of the project have
spilled over into other parts of New
Castle County as well, in that most
farmers in the county have volun-
tarily adopted no-till as their primary
tillage practice.
Florida:
The Taylor Creek-Nubbin Slough
Watershed
This watershed drains into the
ecologically fragile Lake Okeechobee,
second largest lake in the United
States excluding the Great Lakes, a
water source for south Florida and
essential for maintaining the water
flows through the Everglades. Okee-
chobee provides, moreover, an im-
portant recreational and commercial
fishery.
Though contributing only 4 per-
cent of the total inflow to the lake, the
watershed project area nevertheless
contributes nearly 30 percent of the
total phosphorus loading. An excess
of phosphorus can lead to disastrous
"hypereutrophication" affecting the
manifold economic and ecological
benefits the lake provides. An indica-
tor of eutrophication status is the ap-
ple snail, principal diet for the Ever-
glades kite, an endangered species.
When heavy algae blooms appear,
the snail disappears and so does the
kite.
The source of this pollution is an
extremely concentrated dairy indus-
try that during the 1960's moved in-
land from Miami and other rapidly
growing coastal cities to establish
new, large-scale dairies on the
cheaper land around the north end
of Lake Okeechobee, an area that al-
ready had a number of cattle ranches.
The dairy herd overall is approx-
imately 25,000 head, with an equal
The Projects 7
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Sliaeles were provided to protect dairy cat tie from Florida's hot sun after streams
were fenced to keep animal wastes away from waterways.
number of beef cattle. Principal man-
agement practices under the RCWP
have included fine-tuning existing
waste management systems, such
as recycling the water used to wash
down barns and other places where
manure accumulates. In some cases,
irrigation systems were added to
use dairy wastewater. In addition,
streams were fenced off to keep live-
stock from lounging in the streams
during hot weather. Portable cattle
shades were provided instead, which
keep the livestock cool and the ani-
mal wastes away from the waterways.
Fanner participation is nearly
100 percent. According to local offi-
cials, phosphorus levels in lake water,
as measured at the point of entry
from the watershed, have declined
since the beginning of the project
from 1 part per million to 0.55 part
per million, a reduction of 45 per-
cent. Statistically, scientists of the
South Florida Water Management
District, which handles the monitor-
ing, have assigned a 67 percent confi-
dence level to this finding, which is
more conservative than some project
officials believe is called for.
Based on the operational success
of the project, the State of Florida has
established a similar effort in a large,
adjoining watershed, the Kissimmee
River, in which the RCWP has a
minor administrative role, though
serving as a model. The purpose of
the Kissimmee project is to assess
how Florida dairies can meet the
State's new "dairy rule," which re-
quires "mass nutrient balance" for
every farm. All nutrients created by a
dairy must be retained on the land
owned by the dairy, rather than ex-
ported in waterways. Any excess may
lead to an enforced reduction in herd
size. In addition, milking herds are
congregated so that the runoff of
wastes can be captured more effi-
ciently, with sophisticated drainage
and recycling systems installed so
that the land can take up the maxi-
mum amount of phosphorus from
manure spreading and wastewater
irrigation.
Idaho: :
The Rock Creek Watershed
Idaho boasts some of the great-
est trout streams in America and one
of the great western rivers, the Snake,
which meanders from the Rockies to
join the Columbia on its way to the
Pacific. One of the trout streams,
Rock Creek, runs northward through
irrigated farmland, into and out of
the city of Twin Falls, and joins the
Snake after a journey of 40 miles.
Until recently, there were no wild
trout in this trout stream. The water,
carrying silt washed from the irri-
gated farm furrows upstream, looked
like "cocoa-mud," in the phrase of
one local official. Trout can neither
live in mud nor spawn when the
clean gravel they need is covered with
silt. The agricultural nonpoint pollu-
tion, together with municipal and
industrial wastes, made Rock Creek
notorious as one of the most severely
degraded waterways in Idaho. In 1971,
it was listed in the "Wildlife Habitat
Obituary" of the Idaho Wildlife
Review, a publication of the State's
Department of Fish and Game.
The agricultural part of this
problem, which had the greatest ef-
fect on trout population and which
made the creek so ugly to tourists
and to the citizens of Twin Falls,
arose because of the cost of irrigation
water (cheap) and the nature of its de-
livery onto the land (bare-earth fur-
rows). Since it cost but $14 per acre
per year to irrigate land from water
supplied to farms through common
irrigation district ditches, farmers
used plenty of it. As it coursed down
the furrows, set 2 or 2'/2 feet apart
and plowed anew each year, it picked
up the fine silt particles of the Ipessal
soil so that extremely turbid water
flowed back into the creek through
the irrigation district's return flows.
The management practices in-
stalled, covering some 75 percent of
8 Tlie Projects
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Fine, silty loess panicles loaded Rock Creek with sediment in this 1979 photo taken
at the mouth of the stream.
By 1986, the sediment load had been reduced by an average of 70 percent, and trout
once again were able to spawn in Rock Creek.
the critical area cropland in the wa-
tershed, were designed to reduce the
erosion caused by high velocity water
running down long furrows. These
have included use of gated pipes in
the field instead of ditches and si-
phon tubes to get the water into the
furrows. Each pipe section has clos-
able perforations that can be individ-
ually manipulated, reducing velocity
and delivering water selectively down
a furrow rather than indiscriminately.
Less expensive remedies are filter
strips and sediment ponds installed
at the lower ends of fields to permit
some of the silt to settle out before
being returned to the creek. The un-
lined delivery ditches were replaced
by concrete channels, and some re-
turn flows were piped back into the
creek rather than sent through
earthen canals.
The effectiveness of most of
these practices has been excellent.
Field studies indicate average sedi-
ment load reductions of 70 percent,
as well as similar declines in phos-
phorus and other chemicals carried
off the field with the silt. The diffi-
culty is the high cost of the new irri-
gation equipment and structures. For
this reason, project officials are now
pushing hard to get conservation
tillage adopted in the watershed. This
could dramatically reduce erosion
and thus sediment, as well as the
farmer's costs because conservation
tillage, especially no-till, requires
fewer machine- and man-hours on
the field. The effort has met with lim-
ited success so far—about 10 percent
adoption—owing to the types of
crops raised, some of which are not
amenable to conservation tillage (pri-
marily sugar beets), and to farmer
resistance to adopting difficult new
methods. There is some public resis-
tance to no-till as well because of in-
creased herbicide use. However, were
the cost of water higher in the water-
shed, farmers likely would convert to
conservation tillage more readily be-
cause it conserves soil moisture as
well as soil.
In any event, the trout are back.
A stable wild trout population is now
able to spawn in the clear gravel mar-
gins of Rock Creek.
The Projects 9
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Illinois:
Tlie Highland Silver Lake Watershed
The 600-acre Silver Lake is the
source of drinking water for the city
of Highland, Illinois, a rapidly devel-
oping community within the metro-
politan area boundaries of St. Louis.
The lake itself, a long, narrow im-
poundment, lies on either side of In-
terstate 70, which delivers commuters
to the city and surrounding employ-
ment centers in its immediate sub-
urbs, a half-hour's drive away.
Despite increasing suburbaniza-
tion, the watershed of the lake has re-
mained in cash-grain farming—corn,
soybeans, and wheat. And the farms
along Little Silver Creek and other
tributaries, about 100 of them, have
been steadily sending sediment
downstream into the lake. In the late
1970^3, the lake became so polluted
from the combination of suburban
development and agriculture that
large amounts of chlorine had to be
used at Highland^ water treatment
plant, making the water almost un-
drinkable for many residents. More-
over, the turbidity was such that fish-
ing had declined substantially.
This was not the ordinary prob-
lem of suspended solids, however, for
some soils in the Silver Lake water-
shed have a high sodium content.
The erosion of these "natric" soils
releases fine, charged soil particles
that settle very slowly and are easily
stirred up. Accordingly, in Silver
Lake, visibility through the water was
rarely better than 2 feet and usually
much less.
To correct this condition, man-
agement practices installed under the
RCWP included conservation tillage,
along with diversions, grassed water-
ways, and terracing to control agri-
cultural runoff. By far, the most
important of these practices was
conservation tillage, which had not
been used previously to any great
extent in the watershed.
Virtually all of the critical-area
acreage came under some sort of
RCWP plan, with the result that
water quality in Silver Lake has im-
proved. Although the monitoring
program has not yet demonstrated
water quality improvements resulting
from practices installed, Highland
residents have noticed an improve-
ment in the chlorine taste of drinking
water, and fishing in the lake is a
great deal better. According to High-
land's city manager, turbidity de-
clined in 1986, when measurements
showed that "NTU's" (nephalometric
turbidity units) had been reduced 14
percent—from 74 NTU's, the level
reached in 1984 and 1985, to 64
NTU's in 1986. This meant a sizable
reduction in water purification costs
for the city, a savings that project offi-
cials believe will continue.
The effectiveness of the project
has also resulted in greater interest in
conservation tillage in other water-
sheds in southern Illinois. Under a
State-funded program, smaller-scale
projects are being mounted elsewhere
with the guidance of soil conserva-
tion districts. Even a nongovernmen-
tal spinoff has taken place in which a
commercial recreational developer on
a nearby lake has created a conserva-
tion tillage information program to
encourage nearby farmers to use this
practice. The developer expects that
he can substantially reduce his dredg-
ing costs this way.
Iowa:
The Prairie Rose Lake Watershed
In Arkansas, say, or New "fork
State, a 220-acre impoundment serv-
ing as a recreational lake would be
nothing special. But not in western
Iowa. Here, in a pocket of Iowa's
rolling agricultural landscape that is
mostly com but also soybeans, small
grains, and hay, Prairie Rose Lake is
a major attraction, not only in its
own Shelby County, but as far away
as Council Bluffs and Omaha, Ne-
braska. The lake is filled with bass,
bluegills, and bullheads; the sur-
rounding 600-acre State park has
more than a hundred campsites for
tents and trailers; and there are swim-
ming and boating and picnicking,
too. In all, a quarter of a million visits
are made to Prairie Rose each year.
The rolling landscape, which
creates such a beautiful setting for
Prairie Rose Lake, looked for awhile
as if it might be the lake's undoing.
The soil is deep loess, from a Ger-
man word meaning "loose." So loose
. is it in fact that the erosion rate for
the area as a whole was 20 tons of
topsoil per acre per year. In the
steeper sections, which comprise
two-thirds of the watershed, with
slopes up to 18 percent, erosion was
reaching 30 tons per acre per year,
500 percent greater than the 5-ton
limit set by USDA as a tolerable max-
imum. As a consequence, the lake
turned an ugly, muddy brown; large
parts of it were filled with sediment;
and the runoff brought undissolved
agricultural chemicals with it. Fewer
anglers came from Omaha, swim-
ming was discouraged, and the
campsites went unfilled.
Although in many areas of Iowa
conservation tillage has served to re-
duce erosion by a significant amount,
the slopes in Shelby Country are so
steep that this relatively low-cost rem-
edy could not, by itself, stem the run-
10 Tlie Projects
-------
Stripcropping, in which crops are planted in alternate bands, can reduce erosion by
up to 50 percent. Soybeans and hay are alternated in this Iowa field.
off from many fields. Accordingly,
the management practices designed
for the farmers in the Prairie Rose
watershed relied heavily on terracing,
of which 75 linear miles were con-
structed, and underground drains to
lead water safely off the fields. The
terraces, in combination with re-
duced tillage (disking, usually, which
was not ordinarily cost-shared under
RCWP), plus some conservation
tillage (no-till), seemed to do the
trick. Eighty percent of the water-
shed's land was so treated, and ero-
sion was reduced to 5 tons per acre
per year. In the lake, sedimentation
was reduced by two-thirds, according
to project officials.
At the outset of the RCWP pro-
ject, State officials had drained the
lake to get rid of trash fish (carp) that
had invaded it, and dredged it where
necessary. When the lake refilled, it
was a brilliant blue; and now, thanks
to RCWP, so it is expected to remain,
even though from time to time a
natural algae bloom might occur—
the tradeoff with turbidity, for algal
growth cannot occur in muddy water.
No matter. The anglers are back, the
swimming beach well-used, and the
campsites filled again at Prairie Rose.
Louisiana:
The Bayou Bonne Idee Watershed
A "bayou," smaller than a river
but bigger than a creek, is a sluggish,
often meandering waterway. This
one, Bonne Idee (pronounced Bon-
nadee), runs through the heart of
Morehouse Parish (county) in north-
ern Louisiana, a rural area just south
of the Arkansas State line. Along the
bayou, there are ducks for the hunter;
and deer and small game live in adja-
cent bottomland hardwoods. The
bayou itself is deep and wide, up to
200 feet wide in places, and home to
lunker bass, bream, and white perch.
The surrounding land is planted
mainly in cotton.
In the 1970's, the accumulation
of pesticides sprayed on the cotton
over the years, principally toxaphene
and DDT, had risen to such levels in
fish taken from the bayou that, on a
"whole-fish" basis, tissue analysis
showed toxicity levels above those
permitted by the Louisiana Depart-
ment of Environmental Quality. For
the edible parts of the fish, toxicity
levels were, at best, "borderline" in
terms of human consumption.
Although DDT and toxaphene
are among the pesticides now banned
by Federal law, they are extremely
persistent in the environment. High
levels remain not only in the sedi-
ments of the bayou but in the soils of
the cotton fields. The management
practices required by the RCWP,
therefore, were those that would re-
duce silt load in runoff. Prescribed
were land-leveling to flatten out the
gently rolling cotton land, planting
cover crops to retard runoff from the
heavy fall and winter rains, and es-
tablishing permanent grassed areas
to reduce erosion.
Unfortunately, the project was
plagued with administrative prob-
lems stemming from the reduction of
its operating area from more than
200,000 acres to 60,000 acres. More-
over, the costs to farmers for land-lev-
eling was too high for many during a
period of great price instability for
cotton. According to project officials,
only a 50-percent Federal cost-share
could be provided at the outset, sig-
nificantly lower than the allowable 75
percent maximum. Then, a year or
so later, after the reduction in the size
of the project area, the cost-share was
further reduced to 30 percent for land
smoothing, leveling, and water con-
veyance. As a result, only about 50
percent of the critical land in the wa-
tershed is now covered by RCWP-
prescribed management practices.
Despite these problems, officials
believe the Bonne Idee project has
helped encourage farmers throughout
the area to limit the use of pesticides
and to leave grassed areas in their
fields to reduce the silt load in runoff.
Data from monitoring is still sketchy
and inconclusive, but the Louisiana
Department of Environmental Qual-
ity has found a much reduced level of
pesticides in fish tissues and, accord-
ing to project officials, department
scientists no longer consider the
bayou to be a problem in this regard.
The Projects 11
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Maryland:
The Double Pipe Creek Watershed
The Double Pipe Creek water-
shed is part of a larger drainage sys-
tem that flows, via the Monocacy
River, into the Potomac River above
Washington, D.C., and thence into
Chesapeake Bay, for which the water
quality of all tributaries, even distant
ones, is consequential. Carroll
County, where the watershed is lo-
cated, is the largest dairying county
in Maryland; and within the county
the watershed has the greatest con-
centration of dairy farms. As a conse-
quence, excessive quantities of fecal
coliform bacteria have been moving
into the creek and, ultimately, into
the Chesapeake.
The management practices de-
veloped for the watershed's farms by
local RCWP officials have focused on
animal waste control systems. These
have included lagoons, manure stor-
age pits, drainage systems,vegetative
filter strips along waterways, and the
like. Most recently, practices involv-
ing fertilizer and pesticide manage-
ment have been developed on farms
in the watershed.
About 80 percent of the critical
area in the watershed is covered by
RCWP management plans, which are
approximately 75 percent installed.
The effect of this work, while appar-
ent to fanners and project officials
who are aware of the vast reduction
in animal wastes reaching the water-
ways, is largely unmonitored and,
therefore, statistically unverifiable.
The State of Maryland, which has
handled the monitoring, did not co-
ordinate its work well with project
planning and hence could not pro-
duce reliable results. A new monitor-
ing scheme was devised in 1987, but
statistics are not expected to be avail-
able for 3 years or so.
Farmer cooperation has been
better here than in most other RCWP
areas, and the project's effectiveness
in encouraging pollution-abating
management practices throughout
the Chesapeake drainage has been
enviable. On that basis, despite the
paucity of monitoring data, the pro-
ject has been judged a success. In July
1988, a field day for farmers, govern-
mental officials, and environmental
groups throughout Maryland attract-
ed several hundred participants.
Massachusetts:
The Westport River Watershed
The Westport River is, for the
most part, an estuary at the mouth of
Buzzard's Bay, south of Cape Cod,
and opposite the Elizabeth Islands,
themselves opposite Martha's Vine-
yard. These are prime yachting wa-
ters and historically prime shellfish
waters, too. However, because of high
levels of fecal coliform bacteria, the
shellfish beds have often had to be
closed, some permanently. Shellfish-
ing is not merely recreation here.
When the beds are open, the scallop
harvest can total nearly $3 million, as
it did in 1985, an exceptionally good
year.
The bacteria have many sources,
including seepage from residential
septic tanks. However, a prime cause
presumably has been the dairy farms
along the upper reaches of the river.
It is in the upper river that the shell-
fish beds historically have been all
but permanently closed; in the lower
reaches the beds are often open, de-
pending upon the amount of rainfall.
The management practices called for
by the RCWP, as in the case of other
project areas with this kind of prob-
lem, are comprehensive animal waste
management systems, including ma-
nure pits, lagoons, diversions, gutter-
ing, filter strips, and carefully worked
out fertilizer management plans to
help farmers keep the wastes on the
land, where it can improve pastures
rather than pollute the water.
Although the offer to share the
cost of such practices has resulted in
relatively high levels of farmer coop-
eration elsewhere, in the Westport
River watershed the adoption of im-
proved practices has been low. One
reason given by project officials was a
high turnover of technical personnel
in the local SCS office. The project's
coordinating committee now believes
it might have been better if private
engineers had been hired by farmers
In Maryland, manure injection allows nutrients to stay in the soil rather than running
Into streams, even in wet or freezing weather.
12 Tlte Projects
-------
to do the design work for the man-
agement practices recommended. Of
the dairies in the critical area, only
half have cooperated. Implemented
practices cover less than a quarter of
the critical upstream acres in the wa-
tershed. This is not expected to have
a substantial effect on the closure of
the shellfish beds.
Michigan:
The Saline Valley Watershed
In 1972, the United States en-
tered into an agreement with Canada,
under the auspices of the Interna-
tional Joint Commission, to reduce
the nonpoint source nutrient load-
ing in the Great Lakes. Phosphorus,
which had already turned a large part
of Lake Erie algae-green and com-
manded media attention coast to
coast, was to be reduced by 30
percent.
One of the contributors of non-
point phosphorus was the agricul-
tural area of the Saline River valley in
southern Michigan. It was a minor
contributor to be sure, but that exem-
plifies the problem with nonpoint
source pollution: the diffusion of
sources does not lessen its effect. The
Manure lagoons are only one element of an elaborate storage and disposal systen
keep nutrients on the land and out of the waterways.
Saline Valley, just south of Ann Ar-
bor and not far from Detroit, is inten-
sively farmed. About two-thirds of
the valley is cash-grain cropland and
one-third is in livestock farming, in-
cluding sheep. In fact, Washtenaw
County, where the Saline rises, has
more sheep than any other county
east of the Mississippi River. All the
Wastes from dairy cows such as these were contributing excessive nutrients,
particularly phosphorus, to Michigan's Saline River and thence to Lake Erie.
farmland, whether cash-grain crop-
land or dairy or sheep pasture, was
contributing phosphorus via the Sa-
line River (and the tributary Macon
Creek) to Lake Erie. The aim of the
project was to conform with the In-
ternational Joint Commission agree-
ment and reduce the watershed's
nonpoint pollution contribution to
Lake Erie by 30 percent.
The management practices
called for included comprehensive
animal waste management systems,
the most expensive item and the
most crucial. Dairy wastes were a pri-
mary source of the total phosphorus
load, and such systems were needed
to cope with them here, as in other
projects. According to one project
official, of the 27 systems installed,
which cost between $35,000 and
$150,000 apiece, only 4 or 5 might
have been installed without the
RCWP cost-share allowance. On the
cropland, the major management
practice the project encouraged was
conservation tillage. As for the sheep,
they do not contribute greatly to the
pollution load but, like the dairy
herds, were fenced away from the
streams.
The Projects 13
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Actual participation in the pro-
ject was low compared with some of
the other projects. Only about a third
of the farms were enrolled, with over-
all coverage of about 45 percent of
the land in the critical area of the wa-
tershed. Monitoring results are incon-
clusive, but University of Michigan
scientists estimate that, based on cur-
rent animal waste treatment activ-
ities, the watershed may have already
met the 30-percent reduction goal for
phosphorus. It is not likely that the
watershed will further reduce phos-
phorus pollution, however, because
most of the work on the practices in-
stalled has taken place, and there is
no money left for new cost-share
contracts.
Minnesota:
Tlie Garvin Brook Watershed
The term "karst" derives from
Corso, a town in Yugoslavia along
the Dalmation coast of the Adriatic.
Here, as in some other parts of the
world, including the United States, a
massive stratum of soluble limestone
(calcium carbonate) just beneath the
surface of the soil has become so
fissured and hollowed out by the
slightly acidic ground water that
streams just disappear underground,
only to reappear later as springs and
then disappear again. Limestone
caves are formed in such areas, and
as the caves grow higher and higher
toward the surface, the roofs give way
and "sinkholes" result. These are fun-
nel-like structures that send the water
collected in them back to the under-
ground system. Indeed, the water sys-
tems above and below the ground are
so interchangeable in a karst region
mat there is little practical difference
between ground water and surface
water. If one is polluted, so is the
other.
In the United States, isolated
karst regions can be found in many
places, with quite sizable ones in
north central Florida; in the area
Southeast Minnesota is underlain with limestone bedrock. The bedrock is easily
dissolved by water, leaving solution cavities, caves, and caverns.
where Illinois, Indiana, and Ken-
tucky meet; and along the Upper
Mississippi in southeastern Minne-
sota and adjoining parts of Wiscon-
sin and Iowa. It is in the Minnesota
part of this latter karst region that a
distinguished trout stream named
Garvin Brook is located. Comprised
primarily of dairy farms, the brook's
watershed also includes a significant
amount of cropland planted in corn
for silage.
When the Rural Clean Water
Program started here, considerable
emphasis was given to Garvin Brook's
quality as a fishery. Runoff from the
dairies was polluting the water with
fecal conform bacteria, and sediment
from the row-cropped land was cover-
ing the gravel bottoms needed for
spawning. The management prac-
tices prescribed for such cases are
comprehensive animal waste manage-
ment systems for the dairies, includ-
ing waste storage structures, liquid
waste ponds, and the like, and re-
duced tillage for the cropland to keep
crop residues at or near the surface in
order to impede runoff.
Although ground water pollu-
tion was recognized at the outset of
the Garvin Brook project, it was not
Sinkholes dot the landscape in the Karst region.
They form where the shallow soils over the
fractured bedrock collapse into the cavity
formed by ground water. Sinkholes provide a
direct avenue for contamination of ground
until 1985 that this problem was iden-
tified as requiring a focus all its own,
rather than as an element in an over-
all program to reduce pollution in the
brook. Because of the karst geology,
chemicals from the commercial fer-
tilizers and herbicides used on the
cropland were being delivered almost
directly into the watershed's ground
water. In some areas, nitrates in well
water often exceeded 10 parts per mil-
lion, the widely-accepted threshold
concentration established by public
health officials. When this standard is
exceeded, people are warned not to
14 The Projects
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drink the water, and infants are con-
sidered especially at risk. Herbicides,
especially atrazine and alachlor, also
were showing up in well water in con-
centrations high enough to cause
State health authorities to issue warn-
ings to those residents who relied on
shallow wells for drinking water.
Accordingly, a new management
approach was developed to deal with
ground water pollution. Rather than
specializing in animal waste manage-
ment structures, the project began
to emphasize ways to reduce the
amounts of fertilizers and pesticides
used by farmers in the watershed.
Careful management systems were
developed, including a reduction in
pesticide use for corn rootworm.
Sinkholes were a special prob-
lem. The funnel-like shape of these
formations provides a direct route for
polluted surface water to enter the
ground water (which may later
emerge through springs as surface
water again). To cure this problem
completely, an elaborate geological
repair project is required. Surface soil
in the sinkholes is bulldozed out, the
limestone fissures are filled with a
concrete grout, and the hole is filled
to the surface with alternating layers
of plastic sheeting and soil. The cost
can be as much as $10,000 to treat
one sizable sinkhole. A cheaper
method is to leave the sinkhole alone
and build a berm or dike around it to
keep water from flowing into it.
Because of the new emphasis on
ground water in the watershed, the
critical area had to be redefined. Be-
cause well water monitoring data
have been collected for the redrawn
critical area only since 1986, no reli-
able findings have emerged to judge
the effects of the sinkhole work or the
improved fertilizer and pesticide use
systems. Project officials have most
recently emphasized fertilizer and
pesticide management as opposed to
sinkhole filling, thinking that these
practices may have a greater effect on
ground water quality and are a great
deal more economical.
Nebraska:
Long Pine Creek Watershed
Long Pine Creek is one of
Nebraska's treasures. A cold, clear
stream set amid steep, wooded ter-
rain that provides relief from the
sandhill area that surrounds it, the
creek is the longest self-sustaining
trout stream in the State. With its
tributaries in the watershed, it creates
a topography of rare natural beauty
and recreational importance.
There are many sources of pol-
lution in the watershed other than ag-
riculture: a municipal sewage treat-
ment plant and overflowing septic
systems, for instance, and several
large feedlots that State authorities
have designated as "point" sources of
Sandy banks and excessive runoff combined to make Nebraska's Long Pine Creek
turbid and over-enriched with nutrients.
Planting vegetation along the areas of high stream velocity reduced streambank scouring
and filtered out sediment from water entering the stream.
The Projects 15
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pollution rather than nonpoint and
that, consequently, are beyond the
reach of RCWP.
With the advent of irrigation, the
area changed from cattle ranching to
intense row crop agriculture. In fact,
the watershed is now so heavily irri-
gated that its basic hydrologic dy-
namics have been permanently al-
tered. In some areas, the water table
has been raised to such an extent that
seasonally dry tributaries now run
full year around. Banks erode; bot-
tom sediment is stirred up; streams
cut deeper and deeper into the creek-
beds. Combined with the runoff from
cropland on which large amounts of
fertilizer and pesticides are applied,
the result is turbidity and an excess
of agricultural chemicals in the clear
waters of Long Pine Creek.
The irrigation water originates
either from private wells or from the
cooperative Ainsworth Irrigation
District, which provides water via a
canal and laterals to some 244 farms,
irrigating more than 34,000 acres in
the watershed. A feature of the irriga-
tion district is that farms must con-
tinue receiving water from it, whether
or not the water is needed. Accord-
ingly, after a storm, irrigation water
simply winds up as runoff, adding to
the nonpoint problem because there
is no practical way of disposing of it.
Given the basic change in the
hydrological system throughout the
watershed, and given the way the irri-
gation district delivers its product,
management practices had to be
planned on an areawide basis, and
specialized approaches had to be con-
sidered. One of these, and the most
costly, was the construction of a sec-
ondary waste disposal facility that the
irrigation district could use in the
case of a storm. The facility was de-
signed to store unneeded water so
that it could later be redelivered into
the canal.
Other management practices in-
cluded tailwater recovery systems for
individual farms in which excavated ,
pits would store water that could then
be pumped back onto the fields. Di-
version systems were also installed
that would direct waste irrigation wa-
ter and stormwatef away from ero-
sion-prone areas. Efforts to reduce
bank erosion ranged, on the most ele-
mentary level, from controlling the
advancement of gullies into the fields
to fencing cattle away from stream-
banks. A more sophisticated ap-
proach was using cedar logs in fast-
running tributaries as a kind of revet-
ment along the channels, creating a
secondary bank that would move the
channel away from high (sometimes
20 feet) cut banks that might other-
wise collapse and cause major epi-
sodes of turbidity.
Some 78 percent of the critical
area in the watershed now has man-
agement practices such as these in
place, along with more traditional
techniques, such as conservation
tillage to reduce runoff, and inte-
grated fertilizer and pesticide man-
agement systems to lower the overall
amounts of agricultural chemicals.
Baseline monitoring of streamwater
has been completed, with follow-up
monitoring planned for 1990 or 1991,
after the new structures and other
techniques have had time to work.
Already, however, project officials re-
port a noticeable difference in the
water quality. And in the fields,
pheasants, which have been scarce for
10 years or more, are coming back
now that pesticide use has been
reduced.
Oregon:
The TillamookBay Watershed
Five rivers, tumbling out of
the Pacific Coast Range, run into
Tillamopk Bay, a top recreational
shellfishing area and the location of
two commercial oystering operations.
The rivers are themselves filled with
Chinook and steelhead salmon, mak-
ing the area Oregon's finest sport fish-
ery. Up the river valleys, which are
foreshortened by the steep moun-
tains, lie the lush pastures of the
Tillamook dairy farmers. For nearly a
century, these farmers have provided
the milk for Oregon's world-class
Tillamook cheddar, produced in in-
creasing quantities by the Tillamook
County Creamery Association, which
is cooperatively owned by the dairy
farmers.
All went well until the late
1970's, when the Food and Drug Ad-
ministration threatened to close the
bay to interstate commerce in shell-
fishing unless something was done to
reduce the level of fecal coliform bac-
teria that had been steadily rising in
bay waters. Not only would this mean
the end of the oystering, but it would
also cut into recreational shellfishing
and reduce tourism, including the
many visitors to the cheese factory.
The problem was some 300,000
tons of manure each year produced
by the dairy farms, about a hundred
of them, in the watershed. None was
more than a few miles from the bay,
and some were located on bay tide-
lands. The lifespan of fecal bacteria is
not long, but it is long enough so that
the bacteria would remain at high
levels when runoff from the dairies
reached the bay. Almost everyone un-
derstood the possible effects on the
interlocking economy of the area. For
the creamery association, the con-
nection between a clean environ-
ment, clean dairying, a clean public
image, and cheese sales was as ob-
vious as it was crucial. Moreover,
Oregon is tough on polluters, levying
steep civil penalties and providing no
16 Tlte Projects
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exemption for agriculture. Accord-
ingly, most dairy producers wel-
comed RCWP. For the others, the
creamery ruled that any dairy falling
below the highest standards of clean-
liness, based on an inspection by
creamery officials, would have to par-
ticipate in the program or receive a
lower price for its milk.
Oyster harvesting in Tillamook Bay is again
safe.
The practices installed to reduce
the runoff of animal wastes from the
dairies into the rivers and eventually
the bay have included, notably, the
construction of sheds to provide ma-
nure storage sheltered from rain and
elaborate drainage systems—gutter-
ing, curbing, piping—to divert un-
contaminated rainwater that falls
onto barns, sheds, and holding areas
into the rivers rather than letting it
mingle with the animal wastes. The
key factor here is that it rains 100
inches a year. When the rain hits the
manure, fecal bacteria are delivered
directly to the bay. The new sheds can
hold a 90-day accumulation of dry
manure, and liquid wastes can be col-
lected in concrete storage tanks. The
accumulated material can then be
spread on the pastures during drier
times when the ground is able to
absorb the applications.
A good deal of construction
work still remains for the cost-shared
projects. But even though half of the
new management practices are yet to
be installed, fecal bacteria counts
have declined 20 to 80 percent in the
bay and in rivers, depending upon
the monitoring station, with a typical
This below-ground liquid manure tank in Oregon stores wastes until they can be
safely spread on dry land.
reduction in the 40- to 50-percent
range. According to project officials,
the dairies' contribution to the bacte-
ria count have been reduced 60 to 70
percent. Moreover, farmers are notic-
ing increases in salmon in the tribu-
tary creeks running through their
pastures, a sure sign that the region's
environmental quality is on the
mend.
Pennsylvania:
The Conestoga Headwaters Watershed
This watershed has the highest
nonpoint source pollution potential
in Pennsylvania. It lies within the
most intensively farmed county in
this State, which is itself the most ag-
ricultural of all on the eastern sea-
board. The Conestoga headwaters are
located within the watershed of the
Susquehanna River, which produces
50 percent of the fresh water flowing
into Chesapeake Bay, which of all the
major estuaries in the United States is
the most seriously threatened by agri-
cultural nonpoint source pollution.
That is why the RCWP work in this
watershed is so crucial.
The problem in Conestoga is
manure. There is more manure per
acre here than in most other places in
Lancaster County, where most farms,
including Amish and Mennonite
ones, are small, intensive operations.
The average farm size is about 50
acres. Animal density is 2.0 "animal
units" (a unit equals 1,000 pounds of
cow, calf, poultry, or swine) per acre.
As a consequence, the nitrogen load-
ing in the streams and in the ground
water (for this is, in part, a karst area)
is severe. Some of the farmers who
routinely applied commercial fertil-
izer as well as manure were using
more than 400 pounds of nitrogen
per acre per year, twice what agrono-
mists recommend. Not surprisingly,
the nitrogen showed up in wells in
the karst areas of the watershed,
where the fissured limestone absorbs
water rapidly. One monitoring well
The Projects 17
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Ground water monitoring in Pennsylvania.
Kami geology in the Conestoga Headwaters
area makes it easy for nutrients applied onto the
land to enter ground water.
showed 53 parts per million of ni-
trate, and some of the 42 domestic
wells and springs sampled in the area
showed as high as 40 parts per mil-
lion. Public health authorities recom-
mend a maximum nitrate limit of 10
parts per million.
Although a wide range of man-
agement practices were undertaken to
reduce the nutrient loading of the
surface water and ground water in the
watershed, by far the greatest empha-
sis in recent years has been placed on
"nutrient management." The object
is to reduce the amount of nitrogen
imported to the watershed and to
manage the manure and fertilizer
that is used extremely carefully so
that an excess is not transported to
surface water or ground water. The
techniques required to reduce overall
nitrogen involve the timing and loca-
tion of fertilizer and manure applica-
tions as well as the use of crop rota-
tions that will take up the nutrients
most efficiently. To this end, at Penn-
sylvania State University, agronomists
and computer scientists have devel-
oped a computer program permitting
detailed nutrient management plans
to be made on a field-by-field basis.
Implementation of these plans
does not necessarily involve a cost for
the farmers, but instead can produce
a projected savings averaging $20 per
acre for the 86 farms participating so
far. Overall nitrogen use has declined
between 15 and 20 percent, and far-
mers are seeing better stands and
better yields.
Because the watershed area has
experienced a hundred years or more
of intense application of nutrients on
the fields, the soil is so loaded with
nitrogen (and potassium and phos-
phorus as well) that the monitoring
stations established expressly to
measure the effects of nutrient man-
agement have not yet shown a pre-
dictable change in nitrogen levels.
Officials expect that results which
showed up slightly in 1988 will be
more significant in 1990.
The Amish and Mennonite
farmers have been reluctant to partic-
ipate officially, as is their wont for any
governmental program, but they took
up the practices voluntarily so that
today a great many fanners in the
watershed have some sort of reduced
nutrient program on their land.
Moreover, the State of Pennsylvania,
under its Chesapeake Bay clean-up
program, has been promoting the
RCWP's nutrient management tech-
niques in 13 other watersheds that are
part of the Susquehanna system. Pro-
jecrt officials believe that their work
will someday result in an overall re-
duction of agricultural pollution in
the upper Chesapeake.
South Dakota:
The Oakwood Lakes-Poinsett
Watershed
Although the Oakwood Lakes,
Lake Poinsett, and Lake Albert are
significant recreational resources in
this lake-studded South Dakota wa-
tershed, it's what lies underneath
them that counts. And that is the Big
Sioux aquifer, a shallow water-bear-
ing stratum that provides drinking
water for 90 percent of the people in
the eastern part of South Dakota,
which includes Sioux Falls, the State's
largest city.
Though the original focus of this
project was on the recreational value
of the lakes, it was later changed to
include ground water, and with good
reason. If anyone needed a reminder
of how important it is to keep drink-
ing water pure while supporting an
agricultural industry dependent on
chemicals, it was brought vividly to
mind in 1986. It was then, in De
Smet, one of the corn-and-soybean
farm towns within the watershed,
that the death of an infant from "blue
baby" syndrome made national head-
lines. The disease, methemoglobi-
nemia, is an oxygen deprivation dis-
order that was brought on by high
levels of nitrates in the well water
used for the baby's formula. While
the tragedy involved quite special
circumstances and doubtless over-
dramatized the ground water situa-
tion in eastern South Dakota, it cer-
tainly validated the importance of
expanding the focus of the Oakwood
Lakes-Poinsett project.
The management practices
undertaken in the watershed were
straightforward, mainly reduced
tillage so that at least 30 percent of
crop residue remained on the fields
after cultivation and could retard run-
off. More important, strict pesticide
and fertilizer management systems
were called for. This meant that her-
bicide and insecticide use could no
longer be routine, but would have to
be limited to situations where weeds
IS Tlte Projects
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and insects really seemed to be get-
ting out of hand. To check weed and
insect populations, "scouts" were
hired from the nearby State univer-
sity to walk the fields and report back
to the farmers and project officials
about potential infestations. To aid in
fertilizer reduction, the scouts took
soil samples for analysis in the uni-
versity laboratory to determine how
much was really needed.
Monitoring of results has been
extremely complex in this project.
The variables are manifold and inter-
act in unexpected ways: rainfall, wa-
ter use, and aquifer levels all interre-
late. Comprehensive ground water
monitoring began in 1984, and re-
sults are not expected for several
years. When they do come in, project
officials believe that their implica-
tions for glacial till areas like the Oak-
wood Lakes-Poinsett watershed can
be important ones from a public
health standpoint—to ensure that the
blue baby syndrome remains a rare
malady, not only in South Dakota,
but everywhere.
Tennessee:
TheReelfoot Lake Watershed
In 1811, a mighty earthquake rent
the Mississippi bottomlands, creating
a fissure 18 miles long and 3 miles
wide. Then, for the first and probably
the last time in the history of the
world, the great river ran backwards,
filling up the gigantic crack in the
earth. The result was Reelfoot Lake,
now a State park, home of bald ea-
gles, and a favorite destination for an-
glers who come from some distance
to catch crappie, catfish, and bass.
The trouble with Reelfoot Lake
began in the 1970's. These were good
times for agriculture. Corn and soy-
bean prices rocketed skyward, and
farmers throughout the South con-
verted their cow-calf pastures to
cropland to cash in on the bonanza.
Within the Reelfoot Lake water-
shed,13 25 percent of the land was
converted from pasture to row-crop
Sedimentation in Tennessee's Reelfoot Lake has made this pier a landmark to the
effects of erosion.
Highly erodible lands along the Mississippi
River easily form gullies when row-cropped or
when the trees have been killed by an
infestation ofkudzu. Treating these "bully
holes" involves revegetating the area and
reserving it as wildlife habitat.
fields. In some places, converting to
row crops was a good idea, but in the
steeply sloping, loessal soils along the
Mississippi River in the Reelfoot
area, the new soybean fields pro-
duced turbidity levels in the creeks
unrivaled since the earthquake. As a
consequence, about 14,000 acres of
the lake and 50 miles of the streams
and tributaries were seriously affected
by sediments and associated pollu-
tants, particularly pesticides. Large
fish kills became a frequent
occurrence.
The objective of the project was
to try to convert as much land as pos-
sible back to pasture. Not only would
the RCWP cost-share on the reseed-
ing, but if farmers would sign a 10-
year agreement to keep the land per-
manently in grass, a $70-per-acre bo-
nus was given. After the decisive de-
cline in commodity prices in the
1980's, a number of farmers agreed.
Approximately 25 percent of the con-
verted land has now been returned to
pasture.
The monitoring has not yet pro-
duced reliable figures to show the de-
gree of reduction in sediment and
pesticides, but no fish kills have taken
place since the program began, and
siltation appears to have been
checked.
The Projects 19
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Utah:
The Snake Creek Watershed
Six farms that together added
up to less than 500 acres were a small
part of the problem but a major part
of the solution to the pollution of
Deer Creek Reservoir, a popular rec-
reational lake nestled in the moun-
tains near Salt Lake City and Provo.
The lake was becoming seriously
eutrophic from an overdose of
phosphorus.
The sources of phosphorus were
several, including vacation and year-
round homes and agricultural runoff
from watersheds other than Snake
Creek. In fact, the Snake Creek wa-
tershed contributed only about 10
percent to the total, "Vet, it was urgent
that everyone, even farms along
Snake Creek, pitch in to reduce the
amount reaching the lake by half, for
the 7-mile-long Deer Creek Reservoir
was not only a good place to sail and
swim and fish, but it also served as a
drinking water supply for growing
Salt Lake County.
Of the six farms, four were
dairies, one was a beef cattle ranch,
and one was a mixed livestock (swine
and beef cattle) operation. The man-
agement practices prescribed were
comprehensive waste management
systems, including concrete bunkers
for manure storage, liquid waste
ponds, piping and ditches to keep
fresh water away from wastes in cor-
rals and feeding areas, and fencing
to keep livestock from lounging in
streams. Of these practices, the most
expensive and crucial were the ma-
nure storage facilities that permitted
farmers to store manure and liquid
wastes until spring instead of spread-
ing them on frozen ground where
they would run off directly into the
waterways and ultimately into the
reservoir.
Given such a small number of
farms, the peer pressure for 100 per-
cent participation was intense. And
100 percent is what the project got.
As a result, according to officials in
charge of monitoring for the project,
phosphorus levels in the water leaving
the watershed have been reduced by
at least 75 percent. On one monitored
dairy, the pre-project discharge
amounted to 550 kilograms of total
In Utah, manure bunkers are part of comprehensive waste management systems that
reduce the quantity of agricultural wastes—and thus of phosphorus—that enters
waterways.
phosphorus per year into the stream.
Following adoption of the prescribed
practices, the level plummeted to a
yearly average of 44 kilograms.
An equally important contribu-
tion of the project was the inspiration
it provided government agencies to
follow suit. EPA made a "clean lakes
grant" to help reduce phosphorus in
19 other locations around the lake,
and a State water district supplied
supplementary grants to help farmers
install best management practices.
For its part, the county government
(Wasatch) passed stiff regulations to
limit phosphorus discharge from new
land development. Today, throughout
Utah, the project is seen as a model
to protect valued water resources.
Vermont:
The St. Albans Bay Watershed
St. Albans Bay, an arm of Lake
Champlain, historically has been one
of Vermont's most popular recrea-
tional areas, with St. Albans State
Park attracting thousands of picnic-
kers and campers each year. Then,
during the 1960's and 1970's, park vis-
itation began to decline. By 1978, use
was only a tenth of what it had ordi-
narily been, and the park was closed.
Elsewhere along the shoreline of the
bay, vacation cottage properties were
decidedly not holding their own in
value. According to a study con-
ducted in 1981, bayfront real estate
had lost 20 percent in value when
compared to properties elsewhere in
the area. The effect on the tax rolls
for that year was calculated to be
approximately minus $2 million.14
The cause of the trouble was the
increasing incidence of algal blooms
and aquatic weed growth stemming
from the overenrichment of the bay.
Forty percent of the phosphorus, the
most active enriching nutrient, came
from two sewage treatment plants.
But the other 60 percent originated
from dairy farms in the bay's water-
shed area.
20 TJic Projects
-------
In Vermont, dairy wastes go directly into this storage tank, where they can be saved
until the ground is able to absorb them.
Best management practices were
installed under RCWP plans on 64
farms. The practices mainly involved
improved animal waste management
systems for manure and milk house
wastes so that farmers would not have
to spread manure on frozen fields
during the winter months when it
could not be absorbed. Without such
systems, manure applied to fields in
winter would simply run off at spring
thaw, polluting the bay and doing
little to enrich the pastures.
Farmer participation has been
approximately 75 percent, which has
led to a 47-percent reduction in the
dairying contribution of phosphorus
to the bay, based on estimates pro-
vided by sophisticated computer
models specially created by the mon-
itoring team from the University of
Vermont. Residual nutrients remain
in the bay ecosystem, however, and
are the subject of a special study by
university scientists. Specifically,
there is a wetland at the head of the
bay that for years, perhaps a century,
has been a nutrient "sink" that under
certain climatic and lake-level condi-
tions can deliver high levels of phos-
phorus to the bay despite the dra-
matic reduction in pollutants.
The occasional algae-bloom
effects of the "sink" notwithstanding,
however, bayside real estate prices
have already begun to improve, and
a private concessioner has reopened
part of the park.
Virginia:
The Nansemond-Chuckatuck
Watershed
This watershed area, near Nor-
folk and Virginia Beach, is notable
for two critical and extremely delicate
water resource attributes. One is the
shellfish beds of the Nansemond
River and Chuckatuck Creek, both of
which run into the James River, here
part of the Chesapeake Bay estuary.
The other is a series of 7 water supply
lakes that provide drinking water to
the nearly 1 million residents of this
growing metropolitan area.
Upstream in the watershed as
well as downstream along the estu-
aries, this is "hog lot" country, where
swine are fattened for market. Many
of these are small, -open lots with no
manure storage or waste treatment
capability. They are a particular prob-
lem because they are frequently lo-
cated on or near streams. Taken to-
gether, the hog lots in the watershed,
with their 24,000 swine (plus 3,000
cattle, half a million chickens, and
125 dairy cows), were producing
87,000 tons of wet manure per year.
On the small hog feedlots, the ma-
nure was not applied to fields but
simply allowed to wash directly into
the upstream creeks feeding the res-
ervoirs and the downstream estuaries
associated with the shellfish beds. As
a consequence, the reservoirs were on
the verge of becoming eutrophic from
nutrients and were turbid from the
sediments carried into them. In the
estuaries below, 3,000 acres of shell-
fish beds had to be closed because of
fecal coliform bacteria.
The principal management
practices prescribed to deal with this
No-till soybeans near Norfolk, Virginia.
The Projects 21
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problem were hog lot waste manage-
ment facilities, especially the con-
struction of slats over pitted floors on
the feeding areas, anaerobic lagoons,
and various mechanisms needed to
apply stored wastes to the fields. On
the fields themselves, no-till was
called for, along.with filter strips and
grassed waterways. To stop gullying,
some 100 small earthen dams were
built with drop-pipes for drainage.
All of the major livestock oper-
ations participated in the program,
with best management practices ap-
plied to about two-thirds of the criti-
cal area in the watershed. Project offi-
cials believe that RCWP activities
have taken care of about 75 percent of
the nonpoint agricultural pollution,
although water quality monitoring
has not yet developed precise statis-
tics. In general, however, the program
is credited for the provisional reopen-
ing of shellfish beds, and the eutro-
phication threat seems to be receding
in the reservoirs.
Wisconsin:
The Lo\ver Manitowoc River
Watershed
Along the Wisconsin shore of
Lake Michigan, there is a strip called
the "nearshore waters." Two to six
miles wide, these waters do not mix
with the deeper, open waters of the
lake, but remain as a "sink" for the
sediments and pollutants that flow
into them from the land. One of the
rivers that delivers agricultural non-
point pollution into the nearshore
waters of Lake Michigan is the Lower
Manitowoc. In the year prior to the
RCWP project's start, some 41,400
cubic yards of material had to be
dredged from the Manitowoc harbor.
Upstream, in the river's water-
shed, are some 333 small dairy farms
that supply milk for the table and for
Wisconsin cheese. The wastes from
these farms pollute the nearshore wa-
ters, causing algal blooms and con-
centrations of fecal coliform bacteria
On this Wisconsin dairy farm, the wall in the background traps animal wastes so that
manure solids can settle out and be removed manually. Rainwater and other liquids
pass through small holes at the base of the wall and form a pond behind the 6-inch
high gravel spreader terrace. Liquids work their way through the gravel and run into
a grass filter strip for a final filtering.
that affect the quality of drinking wa-
ter pumped from the lake for the city
of Manitowoc. The aim of the project
was to help the dairy farms reduce
phosphorus loadings into the Great
Lakes, of consequence not only to the
city of Manitowoc, but mandated by
an international agreement with
Canada.
The management practices in-
stalled were mainly manure storage
facilities—pits, lagoons, and other
devices. At the start of the project, in
1980-81, farmers were especially in-
terested in the program, for that was a
good year for agriculture. However,
the agricultural depression of
1983-87 caused many potential par-
ticipants to withdraw in this water-
shed as in others of the program. At
present, 57 percent of the critical area
is under contract, and 31 percent of
the practices have been implemented.
Baseline monitoring was conducted
by the State of Wisconsin, but no fol-
low-up monitoring is planned. Nev-
ertheless, considerably less sediment
is going into the harbor. The average
amount of material dredged since the
project began is 25,000 cubic yards a
year, 40 percent less than before.
22 Tlte Projects
-------
the preceding thumbnail
ches suggest, the effectiveness of
ie.se 20 projects is somewhat un-
jen,''"aside'from whatever^statisti-
^jjfindings are derived from final
" mitoring data. Not every story
5 a happy ending, but that isper-
as it should be. There are les-
ljjo_be learned even in lack of ,
".cess, for this has been an experi-
jfez/ program, an examination
techniques and processes on an
lerational scale. Given the wide
je of situations encountered,
hiding no small amount ofbu-
Wtrattc confusion at the outset,
i£ls~swrpri$inghowfew out-and-out
' ilures there were.
Surmounting the Difficulties
Its beginnings, as recounted at
the outset of this report, were any-
thing but auspicious. The program as
a whole was beset by management
change, shifting objectives, poor re-
porting, and worse analysis.
These weaknesses were nobody's
fault. This was an experimental pro-
gram. Its focus was radically new—
achieving water quality by changing
the way farmers farmed. Traditional
and non-traditional approaches were
to be tried. Sometimes they suc-
ceeded, sometimes they did not.
Moreover, the national coordinating
committee was confusingly diverse —
traditionalists, innovators, and those
in between—and represented fields
ranging from agronomy to environ-
mental science to agricultural eco-
nomics, as well as many approaches
to conservation. Local officials who
were to implement the program were
never quite sure from month to
month what their basic objectives ac-
tually were. Were the projects truly
experimental, emphasizing sophisti-
cated monitoring with paired com-
parisons? Were they pilot projects for
a later program? Or one-time demon-
stration projects simply to get the
nonpoint ball rolling? The answer
was no help: they were all of the
above.
But somehow, finally, everything
got more or less sorted out. Then, the
worst agricultural depression in 50
years struck at the heart of rural
America.
Obviously, the problems at the
top had to be reflected on the bottom.
In one East Coast project, there was
such a turnover in the local SCS of-
fice that 10 conservationists were, one
after another, assigned to the project
over an 8-year period. The result was
that farmers, already suspicious of
the program, simply ran out of pa-
tience, not to mention money. One
irate landowner wrote that his partic-
ipation in the program resulted only
in "unnecessary costs, reduction of
profitability, and general frustration."
In some projects, exceedingly ex-
pensive practices were put into place
despite the fact that they could not
conceivably be cost-effective when
nonstructural remedies, such as con-
servation tillage and integrated fer-
tilizer and pesticide management,
could reduce pollution more and
increase farm profitability.
On the monitoring front, in a
small but significant fraction of the
projects, the evaluative effort has
been frustrating at best, hopeless at
worst. In more than a few areas, no
baseline data were collected at all. In
others, a shift in project objectives
caused scientists to give up in despair.
In a few, the organizations charged
with monitoring responsibility sim-
ply failed to do their part. In some
cases, monitoring personnel have fol-
lowed their own star, which has often
proved irrelevant to the actual needs
of the project. The upshot is that in
many projects the effectiveness of the
management practices installed may
never be known.
Yet, most of the projects sur-
mounted these built-in difficulties,
if not immediately then eventually.
Characteristically, the successful pro-
jects had strong, enthusiastic local
leadership and a collegia! approach
so that project team members could
work effectively and productively to-
gether. The members, from SCS, Ex-
tension, State agencies, and ASCS,
held one another in mutual esteem in
the best of the projects, and though
they often disagreed, they did so
without rancor. This enthusiasm and
courtesy was transferred to farmers
and others in the project area. Many
lasting friendships were made be-
cause of RCWP, between and among
Government employees, farmers, and
local officials.
The successful teams were will-
ing, even eager, to create original
management plans for farmer-partici-
pants based on the particularities of
each watershed and of each farm,
rather than simply pulling practices
"off the shelf." Sometimes, project of-
ficials had to travel to Washington to
plead for rule changes. In more than
one project area, ground-breaking
agronomic research and analysis of
broad national significance have been
conducted in order to produce the
most effective management plans for
cooperating farmers.
As for monitoring, when the
project evaluative system was well co-
ordinated with field work, as it was in
a good many projects, variations in
results could be accounted for and
tactical decisions on practices made,
even strategic ones that could lead to
adjustments in overall project design.
Indeed, it would seem that, as a prac-
tical matter, usable monitoring re-
sults had as much to do with the inte-
gration of monitoring techniques
with field operations as with the so-
phistication of the research approach.
As it turned out, a clear majority
of the projects displayed successful
characteristics, which is certainly a
larger number than any of the origi-
nators of the experimental RCWP
have a right to expect. How did it
happen? As the foregoing discussion
suggests, the identifiable difference
between success and failure in these
20 projects was not the nature of the
Policy Options for the Future 23
-------
nonpoint problem, or money, or lo-
cality, or local socioecpnomic condi-
tions. It was simply this: the more lo-
cal project officials took control of
their own work, the better the project
turned out to be and the more useful
the statistics (now and in the future)
produced through monitoring. Such
a finding may well suggest a future
direction for the Rural Clean Water
Program.
The Choices
There seem to be three choices
generally under discussion by those
concerned with RCWP. The first is to
develop and fund a major national
program based on the results of the
20 projects, a revisitation of the orig-
inal RCWP concept authorized 10
years ago. The object would be to ap-
ply the techniques of the experimen-
tal program as soon as possible to the
remaining watersheds in the Nation
in which significant nonpoint source
pollution from agriculture is present.
Procedurally, this could take place
under section 319 9fthe 1987 Clean
Water Act, which, in effect, reauthor-
izes the original RCWP concept
through State-level nonpoint source
pollution programs. As mentioned
previously, there are perhaps 600
agricultural watersheds needing the
kind of attention given to the experi-
mental 20. With the experience base
so far accumulated, including many
lessons about what not to do, the job
can probably be accomplished for
less, proportionately, than the average
costs incurred in the experimental
program.
*A second choice would be to ex-
pand the experimental program on a
Dight-by-flight basis to the 600 water-
sheds over the next several years, with
effective informational feedback so
that lessons learned can be constantly
refined and applied. This approach,
which would intentionally replicate
the experimental program, would
consist of initiating groups of pro-
jects, say 20 or 30 at a time, in fairly
rapid succession, but not all at once.
This would presumably require an
immediate authorization somewhat
lower than that required by the first
option.
A third choice would simply be
to let the 20 projects conclude and
adapt the lessons from them to the
Agricultural Conservation Program
(ACP) routinely administered by
ASCS, under the 50-percent cost-
share formula. Now that ASCS can
offer a 10-year "long-term agree-
ment," as much as $35,000 can be de-
veloped for the costly management
practices sometimes required to re-
duce nonpoint source pollution. Pos-
sibly, an annual "rural clean water"
component could be added to the
ACP appropriation.
There are advantages and disad-
vantages to each of these approaches.
For the section 319, "all-at-once" ap-
proach, the advantage is that non-
point source pollution would be ad-
dressed forthrightly, comprehensively,
and in a major and dramatic way,
producing a significant political dy-
namic for pollution abatement on a
State-by-State basis. Certainly, time is
of the essence with respect to non-
point source water pollution. How-
ever, money is a problem, as it was
not in the 1970's. The national debt
hovers menacingly over all con-
gressional deliberations 'these days.
Moreover, it is possible that a massive
expansion would require so much ad-
ministrative superstructure that it
could vitiate the home-grown effec-
tiveness of the best projects in the
experimental program.
The flight-by-flight approach
would, by replicating the experimen-
tal program, retain the maximum
amount of local responsibility, which
had so much to do with the success of
many of the projects. The flights
would not be so dramatic an effort as
"all-at-once," and they could fail to
produce the political momentum that
was so much a part of the experimen-
tal program at the outset. Moreover,
it might be difficult to coordinate
such an effort as fully with the States'
nonpoint source management pro-
grams. Nevertheless, the "roll-out"
process could be expected to apply
pollution-abating best management
practices in critical watersheds on a
planned basis, rather than haphaz-
ardly or not at all.
As for folding the experimental
program into the ongoing ACP oper-
ation, which is continuously funded,
this has a certain amount of adminis-
trative simplicity and budgetary ap-
peal. Nothing new is really added,
just a modicum of sustained effort.
However, it would be difficult to de-
velop the enthusiasm, focus, and
sense of dedication that was so much
a part of the experimental projects
and perhaps crucial in terms of over-
all achievement.
There may, of course, be other
approaches as well, along with an in-
finite number of choices concerning
particular elements of a national ex-
pansion of the RCWP. For example,
while the level of monitoring activity
undertaken in the experimental pro-
jects would be neither necessary nor
affordable on a national basis, it
would no doubt be advisable to
maintain a long-term commitment to
monitoring work in a sample of the
experimental projects. Monitoring
would be most important in those
projects concerned with evaluating
the effectiveness of best management
practices on ground water pollution,
which today is a more compelling
nonpoint source pollution issue than
it was at the outset of the program.
Whatever direction policy-
makers take, the one imperative sug-
gested by the experimental Rural
Clean Water Program is that the work
must continue. The economic and
environmental problems created by
agricultural nonpoint source pollu-
tion are major. To help policymakers
deal confidently with these, the final
24 Policy Options for the Future
-------
analyses of the monitoring data con-
cerning technical remedies will be
crucial in determining the relative ef-
fectiveness of the various agricultural
management practices under study in.
a given setting.
At the same time, final monitor-
ing results are not needed to confirm
the potential importance of the pro-
gram in terms of the larger issues
raised by agricultural nonpoint
source pollution. These include such
matters as the continued viability of
Chesapeake Bay and the water supply
for a major part of a State, such as
South Dakota, or a metropolitan
area, such as Norfolk-Virginia Beach.
They also include maintaining the
balance of nature in the Okeechobee-
Everglades ecosystem and meeting
United States treaty obligations con-
cerning Great Lakes pollution. These
issues and the many others that
RCWP have addressed are para-
mount, not merely in terms of agri-
cultural economics, but the welfare
of the Nation.
In this regard, the experimental
Rural Clean Water Program, which
has quietly gone about its business
for the last decade, should now be
recognized as a success story in itself
and perhaps the beginning of a
greater one. It would be tragic to ig-
nore the story and doubly tragic not
to realize its great promise, not just
for clean water in 20 rural water-
sheds, but for the economic and en-
vironmental benefit of all America.
Policy Options for the Future 25
-------
1. See, for example, Robert Rienow
and Leona Trail Rienow, Mo-
ment, in the Sun (New \brk: Dial
Press, 1967).
2. 1977 National Water Quality In-
ventory, as quoted in John B.
Braden and Donald L.
Uchtmann, "Agricultural non-
point pollution control: An as-
sessment," in Journal of Soil and
Hater Conservation, Jan-
uary-February 1985. p. 23.
3. Office of Water, National Water
Quality Inventory: 1986 Report to
Congress (Washington, DC: U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency, 1987). pp. 81-82.
4. As reported in Soil Conservation
Service, Environmental Impact
Statement: Rural Clean Water
Program (Washington DC: De-
partment of Agriculture, 1978).
p. 12.
5. Carl E Myers, et al, "Nonpoint
Sources of Water Pollution,"
Journal of Soil and Water Conser-
vation, January-February 1985.
p. 17.
6. See Charles E. Little, Green
Fields Forever: The Conservation
Tillage Revolution in America
(Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1987).
7. The brief description of some of
the practices in these five areas is
based on site visits and an exam-
ination of project reports. Addi-
tional information is available in
Part II, which provides project-
by-project descriptions. Detailed
accounts of these particular pro-
jects will be published in a series
of articles appearing in the Jour-
nal of Soil and Water Conserva-
tion during 1988 and 1989.
8. See Claudia Copeland and Jeff-
ery A. Zinn, Agricultural Non-
point Pollution: A Federal Per-
spective (Washington, DC:
- Congressional Research Service,
Library of Congress, 1986),
pp. 10-12. This paper provides
an excellent roundup and anal-
ysis of nonpoint legislation.
9. According to author Neil Samp-
son, "The dual—and often con-
flicting— programs of the SCS
and ASCS have been the source
of a great deal of friction over the
years. Every Secretary of Agri-
culture from Henry Wallace [on-
ward], has been concerned with,
but failed to find a solution for,
the battling within USDA over
the nature of the soil conserva-
tion effort." Farmland or Waste-
land: A Time to Choose (Em-
maus, PA: Rodale Press, 1981).
p. 264.
10. 1980 Rural Clean Water Pro-
gram, Federal Register, March 4,
1980 (45 F.R. 14006), as re-
printed by USDA Agricultural
Stabilization and Conservation
Service, p. 1.
11. Estimate provided by Walter Rit-
tall, who represents SCS on the
National Coordinating Commit-
tee's technical working group.
12. Unless otherwise noted, project
information in this section is
based on local project reports,
which are prepared annually; an-
alyses of the national Water
Quality Evaluation Project at
North Carolina State University;
and personal interviews by
phone or in person with local
project officials.
13. A part of the watershed extends
slightly into Kentucky, though
the lake itself is entirely in Ten-
nessee. In some listings this pro-
ject is shown under both States
since the project involved inter-
state cooperation. It is frequently
difficult to administer programs
even across county boundaries,
but in this case officials were able
to conduct the project suc-
cessfully on a bi-State basis.
14. C. Edwin %ung and Frank A.
Teti, The Influence of Water
Quality on the Value of Recre-
ation Properties Adjacent to St.
Albans Bay, Vermont (Washing-
ton, DC: Economic Research
Service, USDA, 1984). p. 25.
26
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Report on the Rural Clean Water Program
Prepared for the
Soil and Water Conservation Society
by Charles E. Little.
Kensington, Maryland 20895
Completed by SWCS under Project
Agreement No. 68-3A75-7-7
U.S. Department of Agriculture
May 1989
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