A small look at a BIG issue

BY CAROL BROWN

The water monitoring program through the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) Environmental Programs and Services (EPS) is an exercise in scale.

The program started within larger Iowa watersheds that were already being sampled by the state for nutrient levels. It evolved to encompass smaller watersheds, then drainage districts, field tile lines and finally, individual structures like a bioreactor.

Anthony Seeman, EPS environmental research coordinator, oversees the collection and analysis of the water samples, which totaled nearly 4,000 in 2018.

“We analyzed samples from 613 locations last year,” says Seeman.

“Of these locations, 334 were tile drainage outlets. The rest were rivers, streams and edge-of-field practices like bioreactors, saturated buffers, farm ponds and wetlands.”

Anthony Seeman, environmental research coordinator with the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA), prepares a water sample for testing in the association's certified water lab.

Photo: Joseph L. Murphy/Iowa Soybean Association

Farmers participating in the water monitoring program allow ISA staff or local watershed coordinators to visit their sites regularly between April and September to collect water samples. Some farmers get more involved, taking the samples themselves for delivery to ISA for processing in the on-site certified water lab.

Craig Fleishman has been collecting water samples on his farm for four years. He's also been collecting samples for ISA at five other locations for nearly a decade.

“I enjoy doing it and getting out to the sites regularly,” Fleishman says. “I start at Beaver Creek, and I work my way south to the Des Moines River.” He collects samples every two weeks and delivers them to the ISA office in Ankeny.

Each participant receives regular reports that show the water quality at their sites, such as what’s coming from tile lines or how a bioreactor is performing.

“I sample from a large tile that flows through a control structure,” Fleishman says. “It cuts across the corner of my farm and goes across a neighbor’s field, crosses a road through a water tunnel and into a ravine. It disappoints me sometimes to see the higher levels coming from the tile drains, but it is seasonal.”

He’s spoken with the landlord at one of the sites about installing a bioreactor or saturated buffer. There is interest to do something but, Fleishman says, it’s difficult for them to commit financially.

Last year the ISA's Environmental Programs and Services team analyzed nearly 4,000 water samples for farmers. The water lab tests for nitrate, phosphate and ecoli, among others.

Photo: Joseph L. Murphy/Iowa Soybean Association

Ramping up

Seeman says ISA must look at the big and small pictures of water quality simultaneously. Staff at ISA amass data from the individual sites and stream samples. That helps paint a picture of what is happening in fields, priority watershed improvement projects and across Iowa.

Farmers and landowners participating in the program can see how water coming from their fields affects nearby waterbodies. They can then make informed farm-level decisions for reducing nutrients in the water leaving their land.

The ISA water monitoring program supports the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS), which calls for a 45 percent reduction of nutrients in waters entering the Mississippi River. The strategy is an outcome from the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, which asked all states along the Mississippi River to create a plan for nitrogen and phosphorus reduction in waters coming to the Gulf. When the strategy was released in 2013, Iowa was only the second state to have a completed strategy.

THE SURVEY SAYS:

The EPS team sends a survey at the end of each year to participants in the water monitoring program. The anonymous questionnaire asks farmers and landowners to respond to a few simple questions such as whether this information is important to their farm operation and if they would share their results with others.

Surveys are still coming in, but the current 34 percent response rate is revealing highly positive feedback. Nearly 100 percent of respondents said they would encourage other farmers and landowners to participate in the tile water monitoring program. Most participants indicated they have changed, or plan to change, a farming practice based on the monitoring reports given by ISA.

Contact Carol Brown at cbrown@iasoybeans.com.