INVESTING CHECKOFF DOLLARS
SOURCE WATER SOLUTIONS Protecting farmland and drinking water BY CAROL BROWN
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mall towns that pull their drinking water from a public well are susceptible to groundwater contamination. Nitrates can be one of the biggest culprits. Iowa’s Source Water Protection (SWP) program, through the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR), works with community leaders, farmers and landowners for water improvement before it gets to a public well. The DNR’s definition of source water is “drinking water in its original environment, either at the surface or below the ground, before being treated and distributed by a water system.” The Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) staff worked with Rebecca Ohrtman, DNR source water protection coordinator, as she began a pilot program connecting communities with
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farmers and landowners. She saw a need for a statewide SWP framework that included partnerships to secure technical and financial resources for source water protection. “Becky knew there was going to be a need to interface with agriculture at the local level, so she contacted ISA and other ag organizations,” says Anthony Seeman, ISA environmental research coordinator. “ISA worked with farmers in the well capture zones and helped monitor their operations.” The SWP is a relative of the upstream–downstream partnership concept, which connects municipalities with farmers and landowners. The implementation of conservation farming practices upstream leads to improved water quality for downstream municipal water systems.
Enacting the pilot program The majority of Iowa’s public water supplies draw from groundwater systems, Ohrtman says. “There are about 520 susceptible public water supplies and about 220 highly-susceptible public water supplies in the state,” he says. Protection for these systems was virtually non-existent before 2006. Ohrtman began assembling local teams for pilot programs in 15 communities. The goal was to develop and implement plans using best management practices in the capture zones to decrease longterm risk to municipal wells. A capture zone is an area of land from which the well draws its water, either through groundwater or surface sources. For a community of 1,500 people, a capture zone for one well is about 1,000 acres.
