Irrigation Leader Washington State March 2020

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 3 WASHINGTON STATE EDITION

march 2020

Jay O'Brien: Oroville-Tonasket’s Drought Year Water Bank

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CONTENTS MARCH 2020 Volume 11 Issue 3

Irrigation Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by

An American company established in 2009

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer

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SUBMISSIONS: Irrigation Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions.

However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request.

For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or irrigation.leader@waterstrategies.com.

Oroville-Tonasket’s Drought Year Water Bank

5 W ater Banking at Oroville-Tonasket

By Kris Polly

30 H ow Costco’s Fremont Poultry Facility Protects Local Groundwater

8 O roville-Tonasket’s Drought Year Water Bank

34 P rotecting Groundwater and Reversing Subsidence in the Coachella Valley

14 F ighting Groundwater Nitrate Contamination in the Bazile Groundwater Management Area 22 N ebraska’s Integrated Management Planning System 26 Central

Platte NRD’s Successful Groundwater Management Program

THE INNOVATORS 38 T he Voyager: An Affordable

Response to Nitrate Contamination

42 R emoving Nitrates From Groundwater via Wood Chip Walls 46 CLASSIFIEDS

ADVERTISING: Irrigation Leader accepts one-quarter, half-page, and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or irrigation.leader@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Irrigation Leader is distributed to irrigation district managers and boards of directors in the 17 western states, Bureau of Reclamation officials, members of Congress and committee staff, and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Irrigation Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Irrigation Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Irrigation Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Irrigation Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised. /IrrigationLeader

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

4 | IRRIGATION LEADER

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COVER PHOTO:

Jay O’Brien in the Osoyoos pumping plant.

Photo courtesy of OTID.

PHOTO COURTESY OF OTID.

Coming soon in Irrigation Leader: April: New Zealand May: Israel

@IrrigationLeadr

Water Banking at Oroville-Tonasket

By Kris Polly

I

n our cover story this month, Jay O’Brien of the OrovilleTonasket Irrigation District tell us about how his district is putting its unused water in trust and using it to gain revenue while also helping water users in need downstream.

It is a promising setup that will be of interest to other Washington State water right holders.

This issue of Irrigation Leader also brings you a number of features on groundwater. In northeastern Nebraska, an area called the Bazile Groundwater Management Area, suffers from nitrate infiltration into its groundwater. We bring you interviews with the managers of four local natural resources districts (NRDs) that have joined forces to engage in education and regulation in an effort to mitigate and reverse the nitrate issue.

We put the Bazile area into context with a few other stories on Nebraska. We speak with Jeff Fassett, the director of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, about how his agency cooperates with the NRDs; with Lyndon Vogt, the manager of the Central Platte NRD, about how his district dealt with a similar nitrate issue; and with Jessica Kolterman of Lincoln Premium Poultry about her company is ensuring that Costco’s vast new chicken facilities in Fremont, Nebraska, do not negatively affect local groundwater.

To provide a comparative perspective, we also speak with Zoe Rodriguez del Rey of Coachella Valley Water District about California’s new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and what it requires of groundwater managers.

Kent Foster of Filtra Systems informs us about a new system that will be of interest to rural localities dealing with groundwater contamination: the Voyager, a mobile, trailerbased filtration facility. We also speak with Lee Burbery, a New Zealand–based scientist who is studying ways to mitigate nitrate pollution through wood chip barriers.

Nitrate contamination of groundwater is a problem that is as widespread as agriculture and which frequently poses risks to human and animal health and to local ecosystems. I hope that the stories of these intelligent and committed water managers, innovators, and researchers give you ideas for how to maintain reliable, clean water for your own users. IL Kris Polly is editor-in-chief of Irrigation Leader magazine and president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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Irrigation Leader magazine runs job listings for irrigation districts, free of charge, on our website and in print.

To see a full list of current openings, visit http://irrigationleadermagazine.com/job-board/.

To submit an ad, please email Irrigation Leader Managing Editor Joshua Dill at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com.

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Oroville-Tonasket’s Drought Year Water Bank

O

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Jay O’Brien: I have been working for OTID since 1983. I

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started out in the maintenance department and worked my way up. In 2013, I accepted the secretary-manager position.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the district’s history and current services.

Jay O’Brien: OTID was born in 1916. In the mid-1980s, the Bureau of Reclamation updated the system, and we now have eight pumping stations located up and down the Okanagan Valley, from the Canadian border to a point 10 miles south of Tonasket, Washington. We irrigate about 10,000 acres and have about 1,500 customers. We have a totally pressurized system with no open canals, flumes, or ditches. The primary crops in our area are apples, cherries, pears, and alfalfa hay. In addition, a small portion of our service area is residential.

Irrigation Leader: What are the district’s current top issues?

Jay O’Brien: Maintenance and upgrades to our facilities. Our facilities are more than 30 years old now, and we are finding that pipelines need to be replaced and the pumping stations need a significant amount of work. We are finding it difficult to integrate 1980s technology with present-day technology.

Irrigation Leader: What are the district’s challenges when it comes to water supply?

PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVY LANDMAN.

roville-Tonasket Irrigation District (OTID), located in north-central Washington State, enjoys senior water supplies from its sources in Lake Osoyoos and the Okanagan River. However, the region has undergone droughts in recent years, resulting in curtailment for junior water right holders. In order to make use of the water available to it and to help those without a reliable water supply, OTID has set up a water bank under which it can first protect, then lease a portion of its unused water to interested customers in the Okanogan River basin and downstream along the mainstem Columbia River. In the short term, the water will be leased to help offset the district’s ever-increasing costs, including those of future power obligations and deferred maintenance, resulting in lower property assessments and thus helping growers remain competitive in today’s agricultural market. In the long term, the water will be protected from relinquishment and kept available to support future farm expansion, consistent with the strong agricultural values of the local community.

In this interview, OTID Secretary-Manager Jay O’Brien speaks with Irrigation Leader about the inspiration for the district’s water banking system, how it works, and how the same concept can benefit other irrigation districts across the region.

Osoyoos Lake, which spans the border between British Columbia and Washington State.

Jay O’Brien: We are pretty fortunate with our water supply most years. We border with Canada and work closely with the International Joint Commission. We are obligated to create storage and maintain lake levels on Lake Osoyoos, a transboundary waterway. The International Joint Commission dictates flows and lake levels and provides the district with a curve to follow. The lake has a dam on it called Zosel Dam, which is owned by the Washington State Department of Ecology. OTID is under contract with Ecology to operate and maintain that dam in accordance with the guidelines of the International Joint Commission. Our water supply primarily comes down the Okanagan River, with supplemental supply from the Similkameen River.

Irrigation Leader: Would you explain what the basic idea of water banking is and why a district might want to do it?

Jay O’Brien: In order to address that, we need to talk about our state’s certified water rights examiner (CWRE) process.

In 2013, when I became the secretary-manager of the district, I was told that our water rights had never been certified after a past change in points of diversion. To get those water rights certified, we had to go through a CWRE process, which is essentially a detailed review of historic irrigation practices and water use. We started that in July 2015 and finished in 2017, working with Aspect Consulting, LLC, a local water right consulting firm, and were approved by Ecology.

In Washington State, we have a use-it-or-lose-it law—if you don’t use your water or trust it for 5 consecutive years without sufficient cause, it can be relinquished. We learned from our CWRE process that we were not using all our water, primarily due to agricultural land fallowing and urbanization. Our first priority was to identify a way of protecting our unused water from relinquishment and our second was to find a method of offsetting future costs for the district and our growers. We landed on creating a regional water bank. We found that the district was regularly leaving approximately 7,500 acre-feet of water per year unused. We created a water bank and put that water in trust. Now we have water to lease downstream from the Canadian border all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Water banking is a relatively new concept in Washington State. From our perspective, Ecology has done a good job of explaining to water purveyors like us what it is and how to set it up. All this results in our clients keeping water that they otherwise might have lost.

Irrigation Leader: What exactly does it mean that the water is put in a trust? Is it literally banked in a reservoir, or is it just notionally reserved for you?

Jay O’Brien: The banking is done mainly on paper through an agreement with Ecology known as a trust water agreement. By putting the water in the state’s Trust Water IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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Irrigation Leader: How much money do you expect to make?

Jay O’Brien: That would be determined by the length and content of the contracts. Water values are all over the place right now.

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Coordinate System: NAD 1983 StatePlane Washington North FIPS 4601 Feet

Jay O’Brien: Not right now, but we are in negotiations with several interested parties. In addition, in coordination with Ecology, we plan on providing mitigation for future droughts. So far, 2020 is looking pretty dry, with limited snowpack in the mountains.

It is important to the district to be a good neighbor and to work with Ecology to offset drought-year impacts in the Okanogan River basin and the downstream Columbia River basin.

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Irrigation Leader: Do you have any current customers for your water banking program?

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Right Program, we protect it from relinquishment under that use-it-orlose-it law I mentioned. We can then debit that water bank when we find folks downstream who would like us to offset or mitigate their proposed water use through a long-term lease or water service agreement. This will likely be done by getting a new mitigated water right permit from Ecology. The permit will authorize the new use, but the effects of that use will be mitigated by the bank water. In order to provide longterm relinquishment protection, it is important that the district’s water is never taken out of the bank.

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Irrigation Leader: In drought years when you really need the water, could water banking prove to be a disadvantage? For example, could you have already sold water that you then end up needing?

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The OTID service area.

Irrigation Leader: Was your water banking program inspired by programs that other districts had established?

Jay O’Brien: I’m not aware of any other districts in our area that have a water bank. We were one of the first, at least in the upper Columbia River basin.

I believe there have been a couple of similar transfers in the lower basin.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF OTID.

Jay O’Brien: That is unlikely. We have years and years of data to work from and are pretty comfortable with the amount we have decided to make available for long-term lease. For

instance, in 2019, the Okanagan Valley was in a severe drought. We were able to do a short-term, 1-year lease to a grower downstream to alleviate drought-related impacts. This last year was really the catalyst to kick off the water bank: We worked closely with Ecology to offer the water bank to all junior water users that were curtailed due to drought conditions.

BY :

JUL-2016

Irrigation Leader: The water banking system was supported and promoted by the state, correct?

Jay O’Brien: Yes. We worked closely with Ecology. As mentioned, we suffered a pretty significant drought in Okanogan County in 2019. As we were thinking about doing this and slowly working through the water banking requirements, Ecology saw that this was desperately needed during the drought to offset junior water use and help support instream flows. Together, Ecology, OTID, and our consultant got the entire permitting process completely done in 3 months, which is incredible.

We also coordinated on an open house presentation, a drought-year mailer, and a website, which you can find at www.aspectconsulting.com/ otidwaterbank.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT AND OTID.

Irrigation Leader: Does an irrigation district need to have certain characteristics for water banking to be an appropriate option?

Jay O’Brien: Before a district moves forward with water banking, it needs to do a tremendous amount of research into what its usage has been for the past few decades in order to make sure it has water available. It also requires a district to recognize a reduction in water use and/or identify exemptions to relinquishment within 5 years. We were lucky to have senior water right certificates and an overlapping permit that is not subject to relinquishment. If a district meets all those criteria, and all the permitting stars align, water banking is a great way to protect an unused water right and perhaps create a little bit of long-term revenue.

But I want to stress that our primary goal was to protect the unused water so that when local agricultural markets return, the district will be able to provide reliable water supply.

Supporting agriculture is a strong local value, and it is one that is shared by the district.

Irrigation Leader: Do you have any advice for districts that are embarking on the creation of a water banking program?

Jay O’Brien: Find a really good consultant to help you through the process. It is also important to coordinate with Ecology or the equivalent agency in another state throughout the process and to demonstrate that the overall project benefits the public. This includes being transparent and giving the agency plenty of review time for all technical work products ahead of mandatory review periods.

The Similkameen River.

Irrigation Leader: What is your message to Congress and to the Washington State Legislature?

Jay O’Brien: Water banking has received of lot of attention in the press lately, both good and bad. From my perspective, the state’s water banking system generally works pretty well, and it is important not to overcorrect because of one or two bad examples described in the press. Do your best to streamline the processes by which water is protected and moved around the state to address current and future agricultural needs.

Irrigation Leader: What is your vision for the future of your water banking program?

Jay O’Brien: The vision for the future of our water banking program is to provide water supply and create the revenue necessary to secure the future needs of the district. As far as power use goes, we want to upgrade the system as needed to address the natural aging of the system and eventually to provide reliable water supplies at a lower price. IL

Jay O’Brien is the secretary-manager of the Oroville-Tonasket Irrigation District. He can be contacted at otidjay@nvinet.com or (509) 476-3696, extension 3.

IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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Fighting Groundwater Nitrate Contamination in the Bazile Groundwater Management Area

Annette Sudbeck and a Lewis & Clark NRD staff member collecting data from an observation well in the BGMA.

In this special interview series, Irrigation Leader speaks with Terry Julesgard, Dennis Schueth, Mike Sousek, and Annette Sudbeck—the managers of the Lower Niobrara, Upper Elkhorn, Lower Elkhorn, and Lewis & Clark NRDs, respectively—about the history of nitrate contamination in the region, its effects on human health, and what the four NRDs are doing to combat it.

Terry Julesgard - Lower Niobrara NRD

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

14 | IRRIGATION LEADER

Terry Julesgard: I have been the general manager of the Lower Niobrara NRD for 9 years. Prior to that, I worked at the Lewis & Clark NRD as a technician for 10 years. Prior to that, I spent 2 years at the Upper Republican NRD in Imperial, Nebraska.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the Lower Niobrara NRD. Terry Julesgard: The Lower Niobrara NRD has a total of 1,699,200 acres with a population of 6,985. We have 234,957 irrigated acres; the remainder is pasture, communities, and rivers. Our primary responsibly is to ensure water quality and quantity. We provide conservation

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LEWIS & CLARK NRD AND THE LOWER NIOBRARA NRD.

L

ike many agricultural areas with sandy soils, northeastern Nebraska deals with nitrate from fertilizer leaching into its groundwater. In one region in particular, nitrate levels have risen to such a level that they threaten the health of the residents of 10 rural communities that are fully dependent on groundwater for their drinking supplies. In response, the four natural resources districts (NRDs) whose territories overlap this area have decided to work together to address nitrate pollution in the area they have designated the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA).

By joining forces and funds and applying for federal and state grants, they are supporting mitigation activities like education and awareness raising, reporting requirements, and the implementation of agricultural best practices.

trees and planting services for windbreaks. We also have cost-share programs for well abandonment, nitrogen management, domestic well replacement, and home water treatment systems. In addition, we provide cost-share programs for rangeland management needs, like cross fencing and water supply systems.

Irrigation Leader: What are the NRD’s top issues today?

Terry Julesgard: Our top issue today is water quality, particularly with reference to high nitrate concentrations in the groundwater. With a lot of land in row-crop agriculture coupled with coarse soils, it’s pretty easy for nitrates to travel into the groundwater supply.

We group our land into phase categories that reflect management levels. For about 15 years, the entire district has been in phase 1 nitrogen management, with several areas in the phase 2 category, which reflected nitrate levels of 5–9 parts per million (ppm) or higher. Last year, nitrate levels rose to the point that we moved 90 percent of our irrigated acres into the phase 2 category. We have nitrate levels as high as 50 ppm in some areas.

Irrigation Leader: At what point does it become unsafe to drink?

Terry Julesgard: Nitrate levels above 10 ppm can potentially cause health issues, especially among the very young and the very old.

Irrigation Leader: How does the geography of your area affect the issue?

Terry Julesgard: We have a lot of coarse-textured soil as well as shallow groundwater tables, so it doesn’t take much overwatering for the nitrogen applied to the crops to get flushed through the soil profile into the groundwater system.

Irrigation Leader: How is the NRD addressing the issue?

Terry Julesgard: We’ve been addressing it primarily with education. All our producers have to be nitrogen certified, and that certification has to be renewed every 4 years. We explain the issues to them and promote best management practices like using soil moisture gauges and accounting for all the potential nitrogen sources that are in the soil to avoid overapplication.

The biggest hurdle we face is getting the producers to understand that applying more nitrogen does not translate to more profitable farming. For one thing, instead of aiming at the highest number of bushels, they need to aim at the highest revenue per acre. Second, all the work we’ve done shows that nitrogen and water are not the only factors that limit yields. There are other limiting factors, and we need to identify them so that farmers do not simply add more nitrogen in the hopes of achieving a higher yield.

Irrigation Leader: How have you cooperated with other NRDs in the area on this issue?

Terry Julesgard: Quite a few years ago, our NRD, the Upper Elkhorn NRD, the Lower Elkhorn NRD, and the Lewis & Clark NRD all recognized that we had issues with high nitrates. We started doing some studies on where it was coming from, and since then, the four of us have worked together with our phase levels and in trying to educate the producers on reducing their nitrogen application.

Irrigation Leader: Have you been inspired by any other areas that have successfully dealt with similar nitrate groundwater issues?

Terry Julesgard: We’ve looked at some of the work that’s been done in the Central Platte NRD, which has managed to reduce nitrate levels in some areas. We will also be working with the University of Nebraska to get information that’s pertinent to our area. Our producers often say that some solutions work in the Platte River system, but don’t work here. We want to figure out which management practices work in this area, too. This will be our first year having some test plots in coordination with the University of Nebraska. We are trying to think outside the box as much as possible and bring in experts who have done a lot with cover crops and improving soil health. We are also working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to get the soil healthy, which will improve our nitrate issues.

Irrigation Leader: What is your message to the Nebraska Legislature and to Congress?

Terry Julesgard: Keep our NRDs intact, because we are doing a lot of great things for the state. The dedicated directors, managers, and staff of Nebraska’s NRDs are working to maintain the quality of Nebraska’s abundant supply of water and make sure that it is available for beneficial use for all Nebraskans.

Dennis Schueth - Upper Elkhorn NRD

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the BGMA.

Dennis Schueth: I was hired by the Upper Elkhorn NRD in 1986. Data we collected in late 1989 and the early 1990s suggested that we needed to initiate a project that we named the Bazile Triangle because of the geographic area it encompassed. Ultimately, we ended up cooperating and partnering with the University of Nebraska Extension and Conservation Survey Division and three other NRDs that were affected by groundwater issues in this area.

The primary reason the four NRDs have focused on this IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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area, which we today call the BGMA, is that it encompasses 10 rural communities with significant drinking water needs.

Our primary objective is to protect the water resources for those communities and the many rural residents living nearby.

Irrigation Leader: When was the BGMA formally designated?

Dennis Schueth: The plan was approved in October 2016.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the coordination between the four NRDs. Dennis Schueth: The NRDs have all been willing to work together. The issue doesn’t stop at one NRD boundary line; it affects all four. That common concern led us to want to work towards a common goal of educating the general public about the nitrate levels in this area. Our objective was to secure public support for necessary changes in management practices throughout the area. We want to educate members of the public, whether they are row-crop farmers, livestock producers, or urban residents, on how best to reduce the amount of nitrogen reaching the groundwater, with the aim of bringing nitrogen levels down to or below federal health-standard levels.

Irrigation Leader: Is there a formal arrangement that outlines how the NRDs share the costs and responsibilities of this project?

Dennis Schueth: It is a shared responsibility. The four NRDs have applied for grants made available by the Federal Clean Water Act. These funds, which are known as 319 funds, are made available by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and provided to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The BGMA budget is also covered through direct contributions from the four NRDs, with two of them contributing 30 percent of the costs each and the other two covering 20 percent each. By investing this money into best management practices, we can also qualify for cost-share funding through NRCS programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which can cover as much as 90 percent of project costs. One best management practice that is of great interest to row-crop producers is the use of cover crops. Cover crops can hold nitrogen in the top 3 feet of soil, which is their root zone. This nitrogen then can be used by the overlying crop, reducing the amount of nitrogen leaching into the groundwater.

The 319 funds I mentioned were the first groundwaterfocused plan in the nation to address nonpoint-source pollution, which is pretty impressive. We are proud of that distinction and hope we can be an example for the rest of the nation regarding how to handle groundwater nitrate issues.

Irrigation Leader: What is nonpoint-source pollution, and what is its significance in this instance?

16 | IRRIGATION LEADER

Dennis Schueth: Nonpoint-source pollution is pollution you can't trace back to any particular source. Point-source pollution is pollution that can be traced back to a direct source, for instance, a leaking fuel tank. In the situation we are confronting in the BGMA, where we have identified nitrates at a higher-than-acceptable level, we know that nitrogen is being applied on multiple sites and that no one single application is causing it.

Irrigation Leader: How long do you predict that these groundwater management activities will need to continue in their present state?

Dennis Schueth: This is a long-term initiative, as far as the four NRD partners are concerned. We are pursuing additional state and federal grants and continuing to build and manage our individual budgets with the objective of continuing to fund this initiative. In addition, we have jointly hired a project coordinator, Connor Baldwin, to work with the NRCS, other departments and agencies, and the general public. We have also received funding through a National Water Quality Initiative for this area. These are federal funds that are administered through the NRCS. This funding is used to build our outreach efforts and to provide cost-share funding to producers and others to focus attention on the nitrogen issue.

When we first zeroed in on the Bazile Triangle, our focus was just on the farming community. However, our efforts in the BGMA today are much more holistic. We are looking at the effects of the nitrate issue on a much broader level and have broken it into a series of tiers based on time of travel.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Conservation Survey Division runs time-of-travel models that help us determine how far contaminants will spread within the management area within a certain period of time. This in turn helps us determine steps to mitigate the negative effects associated with such contaminants.

Mike Sousek - Lower Elkhorn NRD

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Mike Sousek: About 25 years ago, I was a microbiologist for the drug company Pfizer. I got tired of working in a lab, and I enjoyed nature, so when a friend of a friend gave me a call and offered me a job in the NRD system, I took it and haven’t looked back. I started getting my fingers in a little bit of everything. I worked for a district based in Wahoo, Nebraska, for 15 years; 5 years ago, I came to Norfolk to become the general manager of the Lower Elkhorn NRD. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the NRD and its services.

Mike Sousek: The Lower Elkhorn NRD covers all or part of 15 counties. We manage about 2.5 million acres of ground, 650,000 acres of which is irrigated crop ground. Most of that is irrigated by center pivots. Almost 100,000 people live in the district.

Irrigation Leader: What is the scale of nitrate pollution in the groundwater in your district, and what are the potential effects?

Mike Sousek: The nitrate issue does not affect every part of our district, but we definitely have some hotspots, including the BGMA. That area is not defined by county lines or any other arbitrary lines on a map, but by geology. In Nebraska, we grow a lot of corn. Some areas have good soil for that, but other areas have a lot of sand in the soil. When corn is grown in those sandy soils, they have a hard time holding nutrients, which get flushed through. We’re also sitting on top of a lot of water in our aquifer system. Starting around the late 1970s, we started seeing nitrates and commercial fertilizer showing up in the groundwater. Since then, the levels have been increasing and have not plateaued yet.

The main factor is the efficiency of corn and its ability to tie up the nitrogen. Another factor is farming practices.

Farmers used to frontload their nitrogen application—they would apply it all at the beginning of the growing season.

Obviously, a plant doesn’t need it all at once, so some of it washed away. Our district has now established some regulations in these areas that require farmers to split-apply the nitrogen—they can only put on so much at a time.

Our rules allow farmers to put no more than 50 pounds of nitrogen on at one pass; they can go up to 80 pounds per pass if they include a stabilizer or an inhibitor. We’re also doing things like soil and water samples. When producers plant corn, we want them to account for the nitrogen that’s already in the system instead of adding more to it. But it is almost impossible to stop the nitrogen from going through the sand.

Until we can build the organic material in the soil profile, the nitrogen is going to keep leaching into the aquifer.

Dr. Chittaranjan Ray, about whether it is truly impossible to stop the leaching of commercial fertilizer through these sandy profiles. If that is the case, then rather than spend all our time focusing on how to grow corn, maybe we should look at growing something else or developing another market entirely. How can we ensure that the producers still profit from their properties? I’ve started try to change the economic paradigm completely. I have one producer on my board who is actually going to stop planting corn altogether and install a 2,500-acre solar farm. Is producing energy instead of corn a realistic option? How many transmission lines would we need? Those questions are still being worked out.

Irrigation Leader: Is your groundwater hitting levels of nitrate that make it unhealthy to drink?

Irrigation Leader: Is it accurate to say that you have not yet found the permanent solution to the nitrate issue?

Mike Sousek: They’re way beyond unhealthy. The EPA’s drinking water maximum contaminant level is 10 ppm. I have irrigation wells out there in the 40–50 ppm range. At a certain point, animals can’t even drink the water—they start aborting their calves. There are also effects on human health.

Blue baby syndrome and certain types of cancer can be directly linked to nitrogen. Some of the recent research I’ve seen looks at the combination of multiple factors. For instance, if you have both atrazine and nitrogen in your water source, the rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma among people who are exposed are 2.5 times higher than normal; for indolent B-cell lymphoma, the rate is 3.5 times higher. In Pierce County and Madison County, which are overlap the Bazile area, the rates of congenital anomalies are double the national average— birth defects occur in 6 percent of cases rather than 3 percent.

Researchers are still looking for the definitive explanation for all this, but it seems to be caused by the combination of nitrogen and other nitrosatable agrichemicals.

Mike Sousek: That’s correct. Everything we’re doing seems to be reactive. I’m starting to have discussions with scholars at the University of Nebraska, including Dr. Ron Yoder and

Irrigation Leader: Have you drawn ideas from any other parts of the country or the state that have successfully dealt with this problem?

Irrigation Leader: Is fertigation being used to reduce the amount of fertilizer applied at one time?

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LOWER ELKHORN NRD.

A demonstration of the use of a Highboy applicator to plant cover crops into corn at the August 2019 Demonstration Field Day.

Mike Sousek: A lot of producers use that method to apply fertilizer and other chemicals, but we don’t currently require it. We have discussed whether we should require it or not. It is the most efficient way to apply nitrogen, but if we are in a wet season and a field is already saturated, a farmer is not going to want to turn their pivot on just to apply nitrogen.

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Mike Sousek: The Central Platte NRD, which is based in Grand Island, has an area where nitrate levels have plateaued and may have gone down a little bit. However, in terms of geology, the depth to groundwater in that district is 5–10 feet, which means that levels in its system can turn around much more quickly than ours. Our depth to groundwater is 80–100 feet, which means that years’ worth of nitrogen still hasn’t reached the aquifer. Another difference is that the Central Platte NRD had a lot of flood irrigation along the Platte River. It carried out a program to convert the flood irrigation to center pivots. That change alone is probably what made the nitrate levels drop.

Unfortunately, we have little flood irrigation in this area, so we can’t use the same solution.

Irrigation Leader: What should the Nebraska Legislature and Congress know about this issue?

Mike Sousek: We need help to address this problem. I don’t know whether the ultimate solution will be to change the paradigm altogether and get away from corn. This is not a problem that one local agency is going to be able to solve on its own. We’re going to need innovation and new technology.

We’re trying to solve this problem on the back end in a reactive manner, and nothing that we’re doing has the results that we’re looking for. If we want to keep growing corn in this area, we will need to either relocate the people here or provide treatment systems. But it is difficult to see how the communities in this area would be able to afford the capital outlays and yearly operating costs of the kind of treatment system that would be necessary.

Annette Sudbeck - Lewis & Clark NRD

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Lewis & Clark NRD. Annette Sudbeck: Lewis & Clark NRD is just under a million acres in total size with a population of about 15,000, based on the 2000 census. Our priorities have always been water quality and quantity, soil erosion, and flood protection. We have some hilly areas where erosion

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affects surface water and results in a loss of resources, which is a concern for the district. There is another area of the district where we have built 50 watershed structures for flood protection and to prevent gully erosion.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the scale of nitrate pollution in your groundwater and what the potential effects are.

Annette Sudbeck: The issue of nitrates first became apparent in our district in the BGMA. It’s a great area for growing corn and beans because there are good groundwater resources available at a shallow pumping level.

However, the soil there is sandy, and when a shallow water table is combined with porous, sandy soil, nitrates permeate the water table quickly. We are now starting to see nitrate pollution in other areas of the district as well, including areas that don’t have sandy soil. In some areas, the distance between the surface and the aquifer is substantial, but in others the two are close. In all cases, the nitrates that leave the root zone are headed toward the water resources, which extends this concern well beyond our management area.

Irrigation Leader: Is most of the drinking water in your area pumped from groundwater?

Annette Sudbeck: The majority of our district relies on groundwater. However, 900 rural households and 4 of the 16 or 17 communities in our district are served by surface water. That’s not due to nitrates, but rather to the quantity and quality parameters associated with the limited aquifers that exist in the northern portion of the district.

Irrigation Leader: What is the Lewis & Clark NRD doing to address the nitrate issue?

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LOWER ELKHORN NRD.

Annette Sudbeck: I graduated from Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska, in 1998 and worked in natural resources–related fields in the area. I started at Lewis & Clark NRD as a resources technician in 2011. I trained closely with the manager and directors while working with the public on groundwater rules and regulations and water quality and quantity monitoring. I took over as NRD manager in 2016.

The Elkhorn River.

Annette Sudbeck: The number 1 response has been education. We want to make sure the public and the producers who are applying nitrogen to their crops or lawns are aware of the effect these applications are having. Second, we have been working with producers to establish rules and regulations and encourage practices that are designed to turn the problem around. Some aspects of this are voluntary, but it also involves mandatory reporting. That is one of the key methods we use to track how much nitrogen is left in the soil profile after the growing season. This helps producers decide how much nitrogen they need for the next growing season. We have also imposed limitations on when producers can apply nitrogen fertilizer. We conduct water quality monitoring and require deep-soil sampling so that producers are fully aware of the nitrogen that is available to them in the water and soil and can make the best choices for their growing season. The board is reviewing its rules and regulations and making revisions in 2020 that will probably go into effect for the 2021 crop-growing year.

Irrigation Leader: Are the reporting requirements and regulations that you have in place unique to your district or are they shared across NRDs? Annette Sudbeck: All four NRDs in the BGMA require some form of reporting, but because we are all led by locally elected boards, our rules and regulations differ. Our reporting requirements differ, as do our requirements for best management practices.

Irrigation Leader: What effects have your education programs had?

Annette Sudbeck: We’ve seen more involvement on the part of the producers and more awareness of what they’re doing. We’ve also seen nitrate use starting to decline, but because nitrates were applied to the soil for many, many years before these rules were ever implemented, turning the problem around is going to take a number of years. Because of the sandy soils, nitrate leaches faster in this vicinity than in some other areas of the state and the district. While the escalation of the nitrogen level in the groundwater has slowed, it has not yet leveled off.

Irrigation Leader: Have you drawn ideas from other areas of the country or the state that have successfully dealt with a similar problem?

Annette Sudbeck: Yes, we constantly have our ear to the ground, not only in paying attention to other areas of the country, but by reading articles and otherwise following what other folks are experiencing and what they’re doing to address the issue. We are interested to know how effective voluntary methods are compared to mandatory regulations.

We would also like to know about the efficacy of whole-

farm planning as opposed to corn and bean rotation. We are listening for ideas from any helpful source.

Irrigation Leader: What should the Nebraska Legislature and Congress know about this issue?

Annette Sudbeck: It is critical to protect our water resources.

If we don’t do it now, it will be even harder in the future.

Food is important. These producers are producing food for our nation, and that typically requires chemicals. Any time you apply chemicals to the soil, some of them will leach through to the groundwater. It’s costly to turn that contamination around, so maybe we need to focus on areas that have less leaching potential. But in order to do that, we need to provide those producers with a way to be successful financially.

One of the biggest issues is explaining to the public why it should care and what the health considerations related to this issue are. In Nebraska, as in many places throughout the nation, groundwater is plentiful. It looks good, it tastes good, and there’s nothing that indicates there is anything about it that can lead to long-term consequences. It’s hard to convey the importance of this topic to the public. This issue is easily overlooked, and it is difficult to make people aware of the costs that are involved in providing this fresh and safe resource. IL

Terry Julesgard is the general manager of the Lower Niobrara Natural Resources District. He can be contacted at terryj@nntc.net, (402) 775-2343 (office), or (402) 340-3224 (cell).

Dennis Schueth is the general manager of the Upper Elkhorn Natural Resources District. For more about the Upper Elkhorn NRD, visit uenrd.org.

Mike Sousek is the general manager of the Lower Elkhorn Natural Resources District. For more about the Lower Elkhorn NRD, visit lenrd.org.

Annette Sudbeck is the general manager of the Lewis & Clark Natural Resources District. She can be contacted at asudbeck@lcnrd.org.

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Nebraska’s Integrated Management Planning System

N

ebraska is well known for its unique natural resources district (NRD) system, in which 23 local agencies handle a wide variety of environmental issues across the state, including groundwater quantity and quality, soil erosion, and flood prevention. While this system gives local bodies significant control, the NRDs also have to coordinate with the state. As awareness of the relationship between surface water and groundwater has increased, the Nebraska Legislature has mandated that NRDs establish Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) to help them coordinate with state agencies.

In this interview, carried out early in 2020, Jeff Fassett, the director of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources (DNR), talks about how his agency coordinates with the NRDs and how Nebraska’s NRD system allows state and local agencies to cooperate in sharing the burdens of interstate and federal obligations.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Jeff Fassett: I have been the director of the Nebraska DNR since August 2015. Immediately prior to that, I was engaged in private engineering practice with a large national firm called HDR. Before I worked for HDR, I also operated an engineering consulting firm specializing in water-related issues. However, perhaps most relevant to my current work was my time as Wyoming state engineer, a position that I held during two different gubernatorial administrations over a 16-year period. That job was effectively the equivalent of the position I hold in Nebraska today. I was recruited for my current position by Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts at the commencement of his administration. It is interesting that I was recruited, considering that while serving as Wyoming state engineer, I was the representative on the other side of the significant interstate litigation between Nebraska and Wyoming involving the North Platte River, which was ultimately settled and approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Irrigation Leader: What is the relation between the DNR and the NRDs?

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and the DNR go about developing these plans and clearly establish the roles each of our agencies will play in managing groundwater and surface water. Today, as a result, there is an enormous amount of interaction and coordination between the NRDs and the DNR. Irrigation Leader: Would you expand on how the IMP process works?

Jeff Fassett: Most simply, it is a process in which an individual NRD and the DNR develop and outline goals and objectives and create an action plan for the joint management of water. The action items can include activities such as additional metering, the collection of data, the development of surface water and groundwater computer models, and the establishment of controls for both groundwater and surface water. The process also involves the establishment of a local stakeholder or outreach group to provide input. The IMP process can take a year or more, and in the early years it took even longer.

The 2004 law required some NRDs to develop an IMP and provided the opportunity for the rest to do so voluntarily. In the years immediately after the law’s enactment, most of the planning work centered on two areas, the Republican River basin and the Upper Platte River basin, in which water use exceeded the available supply.

Today, some NRDs are on their fourth- or fifth-generation IMPs. Other areas of the state with more plentiful water resources are just getting started on their very first IMPs, which typically begin with substantial computer modeling and data collection to analyze the interaction between surface water and groundwater supplies.

Irrigation Leader: Would you give an example of recent water issues that the DNR and individual NRDs are working on?

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NEBRASKA DNR.

Jeff Fassett: The NRDs have jurisdiction over the permitting and use of groundwater, while my department has jurisdiction over surface water. For a long time, that didn’t matter much, but beginning about 20 years ago, Nebraska became increasingly aware of the physical interconnection between surface water and groundwater supplies. In 2004, after several years of study and task force engagement, the Nebraska Legislature mandated the conjunctive management of surface water and groundwater resources through a process called Integrated Management Planning. There are statutes that mandate how the NRDs

Stakeholder meetings play a significant role in the DNR’s Integrated Water Planning and basinwide planning processes.

Jeff Fassett: A few years ago, there was significant interstate litigation centered on the Republican River basin after Kansas brought suit against Nebraska and Colorado over an interstate compact. It was eventually resolved through a series of court decisions and settlements. Today, in the Republican River basin the diversion of both surface water and groundwater for irrigation uses has to be accounted for and documented in a manner that complies with the agreements between Nebraska and Kansas. These obligations play a significant role in the IMPs of each of the three main NRDs in the Republican River basin. As a result, those NRDs are investing their money and state money to incentivize the conservation of water through activities that include reducing irrigated land, stepping up metering, augmenting water supplies, and installing soil moisture probes.

Irrigation Leader: When it comes to these sorts of initiatives, do the NRDs and the state typically share costs?

Jeff Fassett: Yes. When it established the IMP framework, the state legislature created a cost-share funding mechanism that is managed by the DNR and is available to NRDs once they have their respective IMPs in place.

When an NRD puts forth its proposal for meeting the goals of the IMP, it can apply for funding from the state.

The cost-share split is 60/40, with the state covering the larger percentage.

The NRDs raise funds primarily through levies or taxes on land within their areas. The NRDs are also quite proactive in seeking and applying for a variety of grants. In addition to funding through the DNR, the state has various other available sources of funds, including the Nebraska Environmental Trust and Water Sustainability Fund. The NRDs have also successfully secured federal grants through agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Bureau of Reclamation, with its WaterSMART program.

Irrigation Leader: So NRDs play a primary role in developing and implementing programs that protect Nebraska water interests?

Jeff Fassett: I think that is a fair assessment. Going back to the example of the Republican River basin, groundwater pumping is a major factor in whether the state complies with the interstate compact—it accounts for around 90 percent of water use in the basin. The state could have forced its way in with more extensive regulations on water users. Instead, cooperation with NRDs and stakeholders allows Nebraska to meet its water obligations by balancing regulations with projects and investments identified through the IMP process and implemented by NRDs.

Jeff Fassett: I think it could be, yes. I know that several board members and managers from the Nebraska Association of Resource Districts have been invited to speak around the country on Nebraska’s NRD model, so there clearly is interest in learning more about how Nebraska tackled this issue.

The broader concept of having some decisions made locally, closer to the water users, is something I think makes sense. It suits Nebraska particularly well because this state has enormous groundwater resources that it relies on to a significant degree for a variety of uses as well as a geohydrology that varies significantly in different areas of the state. That means that local knowledge is critical. The NRDs have that knowledge and are close to the people that they are regulating and monitoring. But it is critical is to have the local entities closely linked to the state. There need to be working relationships between the local and state jurisdictions.

Wyoming is set up in a completely different way. The state agency has complete jurisdiction over both surface water and groundwater. Wyoming’s system works well and probably will continue to work for a while, so I don’t think it would be wise to force the two-tier system on it or other states without thoroughly evaluating whether it would make sense.

Irrigation Leader: Do you see the current NRD taxing authority along with state funding being adequate to handle the water issues that Nebraska faces?

Jeff Fassett: Having adequate resources is always a concern because, frankly, we have so much to do. In addition to our IMPs, the DNR also leads basinwide planning processes in many river basins in Nebraska. We’ll generally look at an entire basin and then at each NRD within it. That helps us identify potential new projects or water management initiatives such as metering or installing new computer systems. All those options are expensive, which means that there is constant pressure to look for more resources. This has been compounded in the past year by a series of serious flooding events across the state. These events brought to light significant amounts of aging infrastructure that need serious attention. There is now tremendous interest in looking for resources for flood control activities and infrastructure replacement. Since plan implementation will always require funding, we are going to have to continue to be creative in blending state and local resources and leveraging those dollars with available federal grants to remain proactive in managing our water resources. IL

Jeff Fassett is the director of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. He can be contacted at jeff.fassett@nebraska.gov.

Irrigation Leader: Do you think the Nebraska NRD model could be beneficial to other states?

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Central Platte NRD’s Successful Groundwater Management Program

Research on crop nitrogen needs is demonstrated at a field day.

L

ike many irrigated farming areas across the United States, the Central Platte Natural Resources District (NRD) faced problems with nitrate pollution in its groundwater.

With the district’s shallow water table and widespread use of flood irrigation, fertilizer was leaching into the groundwater at levels that were detrimental to human health. Through education and regulation, Central Platte NRD has successfully turned the corner, and nitrate levels are now decreasing.

In this interview, Central Platte NRD General Manager Lyndon Vogt tells Irrigation Leader about how his NRD managed to address the nitrate issue and provides his advice for other groundwater managers facing similar issues.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Central Platte NRD.

26 | IRRIGATION LEADER

Irrigation Leader: Why did Central Platte establish a groundwater management plan back in the 1980s?

Lyndon Vogt: We established the management plan because of high nitrate levels in the groundwater. Comparing the levels that we were recording back then to records from the late 1950s and early 1960s, we saw that nitrate levels were continually rising. That drove us to put together a groundwater management plan.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CENTRAL PLATTE NRD.

Lyndon Vogt: I grew up on a farm and ranch in northcentral Nebraska and have an agribusiness degree. I’ve been an employee of Nebraska’s NRD system for 24 years.

I started out as the water resources manager at Lower Niobrara NRD in Butte and was then promoted to the manager. I then transferred to Upper Niobrara White NRD in Chadron, where I was manager for 12 years. In spring 2013, I transferred to the Central Platte NRD in Grand Island.

Lyndon Vogt: Back in the late 1960s, legislation was introduced in Nebraska to combine approximately 154 special interest groups dealing with natural resources issues into one set of natural resources districts. In 1972, 24 NRDs were created (since then, two have merged), with their boundaries determined by watershed boundaries. The NRDs have taxing authority and handle 12 responsibilities laid out in the legislation, ranging from groundwater management to flood control to erosion issues and solid waste. The NRDs are governed by locally elected boards, the members of which serve 4-year terms.

Central Platte NRD covers about 2.1 million acres, of which 1,029,213 are irrigated. Only 14,000 of those acres are strictly surface water irrigated. Another 77,000 acres have access to both surface water and groundwater. The remainder is irrigated by groundwater only. We have roughly 18,000 active irrigation wells in our district and 22,000 high-capacity wells in total.

Irrigation Leader: Did the nitrates mostly come from fertilizers?

Lyndon Vogt: Yes. We have a pretty shallow water table here.

This area was conducive to flood irrigation, so we had a lot of irrigation early on. Since the advent of the pivot, we’ve seen a lot of our rougher ground be developed too. Flood irrigation tends to use a lot of water, since farmers are trying to push the water to the end of the field, so it’s a little harder to manage, and as a result, a lot of chemicals and fertilizer were leaching into the soil.

Irrigation Leader: What were the main actions that were undertaken to address that nitrate issue?

Lyndon Vogt: We developed a plan that uses a phased approach, with lesser restrictions in areas low in nitrates and additional regulations in areas where the groundwater has higher nitrate concentrations. Areas with nitrate levels of less than 7.5 parts per million (ppm) are in phase 1, which is really just an educational phase. Phase 2 covers areas with levels of 7.6–15 ppm. That’s when our when our regulations kick in. Phase 3 covers areas with levels over 15.1 ppm.

We are the only district that has triggers above 10 ppm, which is higher than the drinking water standard. That’s because ours was the first plan in the state to be approved—and probably the first in the nation, too. I don’t think that the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) allowed subsequent plans to move forward with triggers higher than the drinking water standard of 10 ppm.

We started with education. We have a full-time University of Nebraska employee in our office to do nitrogen demonstration projects. We’ve done over 400 nitrogen plots on producers’ farms. Then we got into the regulations. We require the producers to either pass a test or take a nitrogen management class on a 4-year rotating basis. We require farmers in phase 2 and 3 areas to do an annual crop report, which requires that they take water and soil samples to determine how much available nitrogen is in their water and soils. A couple of years ago, we transitioned to an online reporting system that shows farmers what the Central Platte NRD’s nitrogen fertilizer recommendation is for their crop.

There is an educational aspect to the annual crop reports, in that they request that producers go back and look at how much water they applied, what available nutrients were in their soil and water, and what their crop demand was. It also shows the recommended amount of nitrogen for each of their fields based on crop type and yield goals. We have set restrictions on the fall application of nitrogen on sandy soils, because when this program began, we had a lot of anhydrous

applied in the fall, which resulted in additional nutrient leaching. We see very little of that anymore.

Irrigation Leader: When you implemented this plan, did you have to cooperate with any other local, state, or federal agencies?

Lyndon Vogt: The Nebraska Legislature requires every NRD to have a groundwater management plan, but it didn’t require them to go to the lengths ours did at the time of its introduction. Our plan was reviewed and approved by the DNR. We had to go through public hearings and have public information meetings. The plan was not developed behind closed doors; it was done in the eyes of the public.

Drones are used to gather images of a field and determine when to apply nitrogen.

Irrigation Leader: How has the implementation of the plan changed over the years since you first introduced it?

Lyndon Vogt: The funny thing is that our plan hasn’t changed all that much. The board and staff who developed the plan did good research. The main changes we’ve made have been technological. We have a database that goes back to the late 1980s and shows how much water has been applied, what crops have been grown, and what the yields were. We used to manually enter the information from every crop report form. A couple of years ago, we moved everything online.

We no longer accept paper forms. We have employees who can help producers who don’t have internet access or are having trouble with it. Not only does the new system help us, it’s also a recordkeeping system for the producers. They can enter their yields and yield goals and can also record notes. They can easily look up historical information on their crops, yields, nitrogen application, and so on.

Irrigation Leader: What have the results of your groundwater management plan been?

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Lyndon Vogt: My advice is to stick with it. Nothing’s going to happen overnight. Over time, the rise in the price of fertilizer has assisted us tremendously because it’s made producers look more carefully at how much fertilizer they are using. The educational part never ends. I think our water table is shallower than that in the BGMA, so their results won’t come quite as quickly, but they will come. It just takes time and patience. You’ll have a bad year or two—our levels will spike up a full part per million one year and drop one half or two parts the next year. Mother Nature plays a big role, too. We have years in which we get a tremendous amount of rain. Many variables are out of your control, but if you stick with your plan and the educational process and keep applying the proper amount of nutrients for your crop, you will succeed.

Through a 3-year pilot project called Project SENSE, nutrients are being applied with sensor-based technology,

Lyndon Vogt: When we started back in 1987, our average nitrate level was about 19 ppm. As of this year, our average is about 13 ppm. We’ve seen positive results over the past 30 years. Our water quality didn’t degrade overnight. It degraded over a 40- to 50-year time frame after the advent of commercial fertilizers and irrigation. We’re fortunate in that we have a fairly stable supply of groundwater and a lot of irrigated acres. As long as we keep on reusing that water and not adding nitrogen to it, we have a pretty good, albeit slow, way of cleaning that groundwater.

Irrigation Leader: Is your NRD's situation relevant to the situation of the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA)?

Irrigation Leader: As the manager of an NRD with a successful groundwater management plan for nitrates, what advice do you have for groundwater managers dealing with similar issues?

28 | IRRIGATION LEADER

We’ve talked with quite a few entities about our plan because of its age and success. We’ve done presentations several different states, and a number of countries have come to look at our program, how we’re implementing it, and how it is accepted socially. We’re fortunate to have a successful program, and we’re fortunate that our board had the foresight to implement it back in the 1980s, because these types of programs are never popular, especially at first.

One of the biggest challenges is enforcing your program. We file cease-and-desist orders, and we’ve been to court to make sure people submit their crop report forms and do their water and soil samples. The great majority of our producers see the benefit of the program. IL

Lyndon Vogt is the general manager of Central Platte Natural Resources District.

He can be contacted at vogt@cpnrd.org or (308) 385-6282.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CENTRAL PLATTE NRD.

Lyndon Vogt: One of the biggest challenges with this sort of thing—and this is probably true nationwide—is that even if you have a test plot that gives reliable results, farmers who live 50 miles away tend to say that those methods won’t work where they live. It seems like you have to do the test plots in the areas where farmers are actively farming for them to pay a lot of attention to them.

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How Costco’s Fremont Poultry Facility Protects Local Groundwater

Lincoln Premium Poultry’s feed mill.

C

ostco is known and loved for its $5 rotisserie chickens. In order to better provide this popular item, Costco has recently moved beyond simply supplying chickens to actually raising them. To do this, it established an enormous chicken operation— including a hatchery, a feed mill, a processing facility, and a network of local farmers who raise the poultry—in and around Fremont, Nebraska. It will eventually produce 2 million chickens a week.

With such a large facility coming into the area, some locals were concerned about issues including the amount of chicken litter, or manure, that the poultry would create and its potential effects on groundwater. In this interview, Jessica Kolterman of Lincoln Premium Poultry, the company formed by Costco to manage its facility, explains how it worked with the State of Nebraska to establish stringent guidelines to make sure that the chicken litter was disposed of in an environmentally safe manner.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Lincoln Premium Poultry.

Jessica Kolterman: Lincoln Premium Poultry is a company that was formed by Costco to manage the poultry operations of its new facility. Our team was built to accommodate

30 | IRRIGATION LEADER

Costco’s goals and objectives, which were to create a food processing facility for chicken, a feed mill, and a hatchery, and then to develop a network of farmers here in Nebraska to raise the poultry. We are working with 80–100 farms. We refer to the combination of the hatchery, the feed mill, the processing facility, and all the farms that are associated with those facilities as a complex.

Irrigation Leader: How large are the new facilities?

Jessica Kolterman: The food processing facility is about 400,000 square feet and the hatchery is about 90,000 square feet. The feed mill produces enough feed to haul out to all our farms in the region.

Irrigation Leader: Were there any concerns about the effects that this increase in poultry production would have on groundwater?

Jessica Kolterman: There were concerns about the volume of chicken litter that the new poultry would create. People who are not associated with farms may not realize how much fertilizer is currently being used on farms or understand the regulations that govern that use. In reality, quite a bit of cattle manure and hog manure is already being used as fertilizer across Nebraska. Chicken litter shouldn’t be looked at any differently. We worked hard to set a high standard in order to mitigate these concerns.

Irrigation Leader: Were there any legal regulations that regulated how you disposed of that litter?

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LINCOLN PREMIUM POULTRY.

Jessica Kolterman: I came to the Lincoln Premium Poultry team by way of working for the State of Nebraska. I was working for the Nebraska Department of Agriculture on a temporary assignment with the goal of recruiting this project to the state. After we had achieved that goal, the company hired me to work on implementing the project.

Lincoln Premium Poultry’s process plant.

Jessica Kolterman: Actually, there were no regulations that applied to chicken litter, because it’s a dry substance.

In fact, we went to the State of Nebraska and asked to be regulated. The state developed a permit that would hold our poultry growers to the same standard that other livestock operators are held to. In order to grow for us, poultry growers are required to get a state operating permit from the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy.

That requires them to have a nutrient management plan, to develop nutrient budgets, and to track everything. They can’t just dump their litter on a field somewhere; it all has to be monitored and accounted for in a prescribed manner.

Irrigation Leader: What has been your experience with public relations during this?

Jessica Kolterman: As with anything that’s new, there were a lot of questions about how the project would work and how it would affect people. Our team committed to answering those questions and telling the story of the project through a strong public relations effort. At the beginning, we spent a lot of time in front of church groups, civic organizations, chambers of commerce, and anyone else who wanted to learn more. We would go to their gatherings and events and discuss the specifics of the project. On one side, we talked about how the project would affect the local community and the region economically and in terms of job creation. We talked about the technology we’re hoping to use in the facility. We talked about traffic associated with the facility. We talked about our goal to be good environmental stewards with the processing facility and the surrounding buildings. We also discussed our relationship with the farmers and how we want them to be good stewards of the land as well.

We did everything from door-to-door canvassing, in which we answered people’s questions at their doors, to presentations at public forums and before formal bodies like city councils, local zoning groups, and natural resources districts. We spent a lot of time and energy trying to answer any questions that existed and to provide a picture of how the project would affect people in their day-to-day lives.

We have also built a safe, clean viewing corridor in our facility from which visitors can see our chickens being processed. There are no secrets or mystery about it. We’ve also worked with Costco to create a viewing room on one of our farms. If someone wants to see how the chickens are being raised, we can take people there and show them that we raise our chickens humanely and we treat them well.

Irrigation Leader: Now that your facilities are up and running, what have the results on the ground been? Have you had to make any adjustments?

Jessica Kolterman: One small adjustment, a good one, was that because the corn and soybeans here in Nebraska are of such high quality, our birds are growing a little faster than

we initially expected. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the feed conversion was better than expected.

Generally speaking, most of the people who have visited our facility have had a positive experience. We had an open house with about 5,000 visitors and guests, and the feedback was positive. We have had a great deal of interest from people in coming to work for us. People who have heard about our company and want to be a part of our team come in every day. We have a staff of 660 people at this point and have done only limited advertising and marketing. There has been a lot of interest in our company and publicity about it. This is a respectful company with a good working environment; it takes care of its employees, protects the environment, and works to have a sustainable operation. We work hard to meet those goals every day.

Irrigation Leader: What is your advice for people considering building a similar project?

Jessica Kolterman: On the groundwater side, first of all, look at what the current regulations are. Make sure those regulations meet the standard that you want your company to meet. In our case, we added an additional layer of accountability for growers.

Second, you have to tell the story of what’s happening with your farmers or your facility. If you don’t tell that story, someone will fill that gap for you. In the absence of facts, people will often go looking for answers, and sometimes they find answers that aren’t accurate or up to date. From a public relations standpoint, we work hard every day to be accessible, to answer the questions that people have, and to paint an accurate and honest picture of what we’re doing.

Keep getting as much information out there as fast as you possibly can.

Irrigation Leader: Was there anything else you wanted to touch on?

Jessica Kolterman: When we moved in, Fremont’s wastewater treatment system needed to be updated, and we were able to help provide some funding on the front end for those upgrades. Communities can look at the growth of large companies or large operations like this as an opportunity to update or upgrade their infrastructure without putting additional cost burdens on the average citizen. When Fremont upgraded its system, it was able to incorporate our needs while also addressing what it was lacking and what it needed to improve. IL Jessica Kolterman works in external affairs for Lincoln Premium Poultry.

She can be contacted at jkolterman@lincolnpremiumpoultry.com.

IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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Protecting Groundwater and Reversing Subsidence in the Coachella Valley

T

he Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is a 2014 California law intended to preserve and protect California’s precious groundwater resources. The law required all hydrological basins and subbasins across the state to be assessed for their priority and overdraft status and then to develop appropriate plans for the sustainable management of their groundwater. Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) was able to prove that its existing groundwater management activities lived up to the SGMA standard, obviating the need for new plans. Moreover, its groundwater management is resulting in a significant increase in groundwater levels and even the reversal of ground subsidence.

In this interview, Zoe Rodriguez del Rey, the manager of CVWD’s water resources division, speaks with Irrigation Leader about the requirements of SGMA and the results of the district’s management activities.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: I have a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in environmental science, but my primary focus has always been on water. During my undergraduate studies, I worked with a group at the University of New Orleans that combined research and practical application, working to restore Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. Thereafter, I secured a job with the City of Portland, Oregon’s Water Bureau, working in their water quality and compliance division of operations, which included both groundwater and an unfiltered surface water system. I fell in love with the planning and implementation it takes to operate a water system and ensure that folks have a long-term, reliable, sustainable water supply. That led to the opportunity 2 years ago to join CVWD, where I am now the manager of the water resources division.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about CVWD.

34 | IRRIGATION LEADER

down further by sector. For example, our agricultural sector primarily uses imported surface water. Imported water is also used to replenish the groundwater basin.

Irrigation Leader: What is SGMA and why was it introduced?

Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: There are areas of California that are heavily reliant on groundwater and are overdrafting groundwater supplies to an extreme degree. The Central Valley, which has a large agricultural sector, is seeing the effects of long-term groundwater pumping. Groundwater is an important resource, and we needed to start thinking about how we can manage it in a sustainable manner and ensure that system outflows aren’t greater than inflows. That was the main driver for the establishment of SGMA. There has been strong collaboration among a broad spectrum of individuals, businesses, and state entities to implement the law.

Irrigation Leader: What does SGMA require of districts like CVWD? Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: Initially, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) had to do an assessment of all the groundwater basins in California. It designated each basin as either low, medium, or high priority and either critically overdrafted or not. Once a subbasin was identified as being medium or high priority, then certain local agencies, for example water purveyors, had the authority to form groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs).

SGMA lays out which entities can form a GSA. Once formed, the GSA must be approved by the DWR. There are places in California where new agencies were formed to fill the GSA function, but for the most part, the entities that form GSAs are existing agencies. CVWD provides services in two subbasins that are medium priority and not

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CVWD.

Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: CVWD covers 1,000 square miles, mainly within Riverside County but also stretching into Imperial and San Diego Counties. We serve approximately 110,000 domestic accounts. We provide seven water-related services: domestic water service, sanitation, water recycling, regional flood control protection, groundwater replenishment, agricultural irrigation, and agricultural drainage.

Our two largest sources of water are imported water, which makes up a particularly large portion of the mix, and local groundwater. We also use a small amount of local surface water, although we don’t use it directly, like other purveyors in the valley do. This could be broken

CVWD's Whitewater Groundwater Replenishment Facility.

critically overdrafted. In both cases, local water agencies came together and became GSAs in their service areas and then decided to work collectively to comply with SGMA. The next step was to develop a groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) that charted out how the subbasin was going to become sustainable within 20 years. SGMA did allow for subbasins with existing plans that were functionally equivalent to GSPs to submit those rather than developing something new. The GSAs tied to the subbasins that we manage decided to collaboratively submit water management plans that had already been developed, drawing on stakeholder input that started in the 1990s, that met the intent of the goals of SGMA. The plans were submitted in late 2016, and in summer 2019 we learned that the DWR had approved both plans, eliminating the need for new GSPs. That puts us in a group of only 9 of the approximately 109 medium- and high-priority basins.

Critically overdrafted basins were required to submit GSPs

by January 2020; those deemed not critically overdrafted must submit them by January 2022. In all cases, a basin’s sustainability goals must be achieved within 20 years of the initial submission. To ensure that that happens, basins are required to undertake annual reporting as well as an assessment and updating of their plans every 5 years. We’re getting ready to work on our first 5-year update of the plans we submitted in 2017, which will be due by January 1, 2022.

Irrigation Leader: Did you have to alter your existing management plans to ensure that they met the specific requirements of SGMA? Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: We did not modify our existing operational plans, but when we submitted them, we provided additional reporting and information that showed that they were the functional equivalent of a SGMA-mandated GSP. The bridge documents we submitted included items such as reports on groundwater conditions and replenishment programs that we were already producing annually. The fact that the state accepted our alternative plans demonstrates the level of success that CVWD and its partners have had managing our groundwater resources.

Irrigation Leader: What results have you been seeing from your groundwater management activities?

Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: The results have been positive.

While other places are seeing their groundwater levels going down, ours are coming up; while other areas are worried about ground subsidence, CVWD is actually seeing a complete leveling off of subsidence in some areas and even an uplift in others.

One of the main things we have been focusing on is maximizing the use of our imported water supplies. Through the construction of replenishment facilities and through agreements that allow us to store water for partners during

wet years and provide their allocations during dry years, we are effectively balancing the use of pumped groundwater and imported surface water. While we historically focused mostly on agriculture, we are now addressing other areas of high water demand, such as turf irrigation, golf courses, and schoolyards. We are also targeting conservation. CVWD has some amazing conservation programs in which we work with people to make sure that they’re being efficient. We are pursuing grants and other forms of funding to help provide customers with the means and incentives to save water. As a result, in the upper-west part of the basin, we’ve seen stable water level increases of upwards of 20 feet. Moving to the east, where there’s a lot of agriculture, we’ve seen increases of up to 90 feet as well as the return of free-flowing artesian conditions and increases in drain flows, which are indicators that groundwater levels are rising. In the mid-valley, we’ve seen the situation stabilizing, but work remains to be done. We are working to expand the number of customers connected to a pipeline, allowing us to get a lot of golf courses off of groundwater pumping and onto imported or recycled water.

Irrigation Leader: In addition to concerns about water quantity, do you also have any concerns about groundwater quality?

Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: Certainly. You cannot be a water purveyor without being concerned about water quality. We continuously watch for new or changing regulations and closely observe use patterns to ensure we have the flexibility to effectively respond to emerging water quality issues. We’re fortunate in that we have an extensive well field and a fair amount of operational flexibility. We drill our wells deep and we have a long history of groundwater monitoring, so we know where there are potential issues.

Irrigation Leader: What is your vision for the future?

Zoe Rodriguez del Rey: My vision for the future is focused at the moment on our first 5-year plan update. I intend to focus all my energies on ensuring that we effectively assess and update that plan with the best information available. We are working with some amazing partners, stakeholders, internal staff, and consultants in a collaborative way. Throughout, we are taking into account what has worked, what is changing and what needs to be adjusted. Ultimately, the goal is to make absolutely sure that this valley continues to have a sustainable and reliable water supply far after everyone that you’re talking to here has retired. IL Zoe Rodriguez del Rey is the manager of Coachella Valley Water District’s water resources division. She can be contacted at zrodriguezdelrey@cvwd.org.

IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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THE INNOVATORS

The Voyager: An Affordable Response to Nitrate Contamination

Filtra's Voyager mobile water purification platform.

M

any rural agricultural areas across the United States have issues with nitrate contamination in their groundwater but lack the funds to build a large water treatment plant. That’s where Filtra-Systems steps in. The Oklahoma-based company has created the Voyager, a mobile water treatment station that is more affordable than a full-scale facility. Small communities can buy one or more Voyagers to treat their water, or can enter into service contracts with Filtra, reducing their up-front costs even more.

In this interview, Kent Foster, Filtra’s senior vice president of business development, speaks with Irrigation Leader about his company’s solution and why it makes sense for rural communities with nitrate contamination issues.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Kent Foster: I started as a manufacturing employee, went through trade school, became a welder, over time rose through the ranks of the shop, and in my early 20s, became a plant manager for Siemens Dematic. I oversaw its manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma and Texas and spent time in some of its facilities in California and Alabama. About 16 years ago, I went to work for Chickasaw Nation Industries, which has a manufacturing facility in Marietta, Oklahoma. Eventually

38 | IRRIGATION LEADER

I became the vice president of operations. Today, I’m senior vice president of business development for a company called Filtra-Systems, which is wholly owned by Chickasaw Nation Industries. We have manufacturing facilities in Marietta and in Tennessee, each about 120,000 square feet in size, and an engineering office in Farmington Hills, Michigan, right outside Detroit. We have about 165 employees in total.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Filtra and its services.

Kent Foster: Filtra-Systems is a solutions-based organization that provides turnkey engineering, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance services for filter systems.

We’ve got over 40 years of industry experience, specializing in large custom-designed industrial filtration and separation products supporting the municipal, energy, industrial, and automotive markets. We have the ability to deliver mobile systems as well as modular systems. We have over 50 patented products, and we ship products to every continent except for Antarctica.

Irrigation Leader: Who are your clients?

Kent Foster: In the automotive industry, we serve as a tier-one and tier-two supplier to all the major automotive

THE INNOVATORS

Filtra's modular water filtration system.

companies and manufacturers. We also work with most major oil and gas companies. In the municipal market, we work directly with municipalities as well as engineering consultant firms.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about Filtra’s services as they relate to groundwater in rural agricultural areas.

Kent Foster: One of our main focuses is on small rural communities. About 8 months ago, we started a big campaign here in Oklahoma. We’re working to build out an innovative model to bring economical water treatment to about 12 different small rural communities. The solutions that have been available in the past have not been affordable, and it is a challenge even now to improve water quality in rural areas due to limited capital. When it comes to groundwater, we’re doing a lot of benchmark and pilot field testing related to nitrate contamination. In farming country in Oklahoma and across the continental United States where nitrogen is used for beneficial farming purposes, that’s a continual challenge. In Oklahoma, when nitrates reach the 10 parts per million level, water no longer meets drinking quality standards. Over the last year and a half, we have designed and tested some specialized products that will help alleviate those challenges.

One of our products is a mobile water treatment facility called the Voyager. When it arrives on site, you attach a power source to the unit, and you can be treating water in a matter of hours. This particular system is an granular activated carbon (GAC)/ion-exchange system that uses a variety of proprietary media to remove a multitude of constituents. It is capable of filtering 350 gallons of water a minute. In rural communities that derive their drinking water supply from groundwater, the water is drawn out of a well and held in a raw water holding

tank. That’s where we connect the Voyager to filter the water and remove the nitrates.

The Voyager isn’t limited to just nitrate removal; it is a full-fledged chemical-removal system. Our systems use both ion exchange and GAC. In addition to nitrates, we can remove or lower sulphates, phosphates, arsenic, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS compounds are carcinogenic compounds that are found in water across the continental United States and are an increasing topic of concern. We are quickly becoming a leader in PFAS removal. We can also treat water for total organic carbon, disinfection byproducts, color, and odor, which are common pain points for water in rural communities across the continental United States.

Currently, our clients are mainly in Oklahoma, but we expect and plan to expand our footprint beyond the state. As of right now, we have built 38 units.

Irrigation Leader: How much do the Voyager units cost?

Kent Foster: The unit itself is typically around $450,000– 500,000. We can also enter into service contracts with municipalities to filter their water on a per-thousand-gallon basis. Typically, those contracts last for a certain duration.

That helps municipalities that don’t have a lot of up-front capital to use our services without taking out a huge loan. IL

Kent Foster is the senior vice president of business development for Filtra-Systems.

For more about Filtra-Systems, visit filtrasystems.com.

IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

| 39

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THE INNOVATORS

Removing Nitrates From Groundwater via Wood Chip Walls

L

ike many agricultural regions in the United States, New Zealand’s South Island deals with the contamination of its groundwater by nitrates. However, the situation is distinct in two respects. First, the alluvial gravel aquifers that underlie much of the intensively farmed land on New Zealand’s South Island are extremely permeable and are characterized by fast groundwater velocities. Second, the primary source of nitrogen in the groundwater is the waste produced by New Zealand’s millions of dairy cows.

In this interview, Lee Burbery, a scientist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) in Christchurch, speaks with Irrigation Leader about the technical, political, and economic challenges of combatting nitrate pollution and about the wood chip denitrification wall installations he is researching.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

42 | IRRIGATION LEADER

the development of a recirculating tracer well test concept, which was a means by which nitrate reduction rates might be measured in situ in fast-flowing aquifers where single-well push-pull tests were impracticable. From 2008 to 2010, I did a stint as a hydrogeologist for the local regional council before returning to groundwater research. Seven years ago, I started working as a senior groundwater scientist at ESR, which is one of several government-owned science research entities referred to in New Zealand as Crown Research Institutes. The fate and transport of pathogens and nitrate in New Zealand groundwater systems are two of my major research themes.

For many years I worked on projects aimed at evaluating the capacity of various New Zealand groundwater systems to assimilate nitrate pollution from intensive land use. More recently, this has bent toward the research and development of possible nitrate mitigation and groundwater nitrate remediation options. Since alluvial gravel aquifers typify New

Zealand hydrogeology, they are the systems I am most interested in.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the nitrate issue in New Zealand.

Lee Burbery: Agriculture has long been a mainstay of the New Zealand economy, and agriculture and nitrate pollution go hand in hand. Since the 1990s, however, agricultural land use in New Zealand has intensified significantly thanks to advances in irrigation, especially the use of groundwater pumped from highyielding alluvial gravel aquifers. Driving this has been the massive expansion of the dairy industry. Accounting for 3.1 percent of gross domestic product, dairying now ranks as the fifth-largest industry in New Zealand. The national dairy herd is now 6.4 million cows— outnumbering the human population of 4.8 million. When you consider that a cow produces about 20 times more waste than a human, you can start to appreciate the scale of the agricultural waste problem on the small islands of New Zealand.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LEE BURBERY.

Lee Burbery: After graduating with an environmental science degree from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom in 1996, I worked as an environmental consultant with the company ARCADIS Geraghty & Miller International, Inc. Most of my work involved conducting contaminated site investigations and toxicological risk assessments. In 2000, I returned to Lancaster to complete a PhD. My thesis concerned the limitations of single-well push-pull tests for measurement of in situ biodegradation rates in groundwater. At the time, monitored natural attenuation was developing as an approved groundwater remediation strategy and push-pull tests were evolving a conventional fieldtesting method.

In 2005, I moved to New Zealand to conduct postdoctoral research on

A wood chip barrier installation.

THE INNOVATORS It is normal practice in New Zealand for cows to be raised outdoors on pasture rather than in barns, which makes dairy farming here more profitable. Although the use of nitrogenous fertilizers in New Zealand continues to rise, the dominant cause of nitrogen contamination is the urine patches from the millions of cows. Urine contains more nitrogen than soil can assimilate, and this nitrogen is leached into groundwater as nitrate and can present a health hazard when this water is consumed as drinking water.

I live in the Canterbury Plains area of the South Island, which is the largest flat-lying area in New Zealand and its most intensively farmed land. The plains are composed of alluvial gravel outwash deposited by braided rivers. The soils on the plains are young. You’re lucky if they’re more than 20 centimeters (8 inches) deep. Generally, they have a low water-holding capacity and are prone to leaching nitrate into the underlying gravel aquifers, and because alluvial gravel aquifers are inherently connected to the rivers that deposited them, that contaminated groundwater supplies the base flow to the rivers and spring-fed streams and lagoons in the lower region of the plains.

As a result of the recent intensification in agriculture, we are seeing a significant deterioration in our water quality, primarily due to nutrients, but also because of sediment and pathogenic bacteria. Water quality has become a salient issue in politics over the last 3 years, and there are actually politicians who have been voted in because of their promises to clean up the water and the environment. This is a challenging task, especially with regards to nitrate, because of groundwater lag effects. Some of the changes that are currently being observed are likely the legacy effects of postwar land-use intensification rather than results of the massive intensification of the dairy industry we’ve had in the last 20 years. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

PHOTO COURTESY OF C. K. HARTMAN.

Irrigation Leader: What are the health consequences of nitrate contamination?

Lee Burbery: New Zealand adheres to the World Health Organization advisory limit for nitrate in drinking water: 50 parts per million (ppm) of nitrate or 11.3 ppm of nitrate-N. That limit was set to protect bottle-fed babies against methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome), although I understand there has only ever been one reported fatal case of blue baby syndrome in New Zealand. Protecting public health is important, but it’s not the driver of concern at the moment. In New Zealand, rivers and lakes are naturally low in nutrients, and the aquatic organisms and plants are used to a low-nutrient environment. Therefore, even minor changes in the nitrate levels in surface waters—a rise to 2 ppm, for instance—can unleash an ecotoxic effect. We are already having issues with toxic algal blooms and both toxic and nuisance periphyton growths in rivers that are used for recreation and fishing. Rivers and water also have a huge cultural significance to the Māori population, especially in

terms of mahinga kai, or food gathering. This population is seeing effects on its traditional areas for gathering crayfish, watercress, and fish.

The previous government came under some criticism from environmentally conscious folks for encouraging much more intensive agriculture. Its goal, as recently as 3 years ago, was to double productivity across the country while cleaning up the environment, which was not realistic.

This was a significant reason that the present government was voted in—it promoted a more realistic approach, acknowledging that you can’t have it both ways without tremendous expense.

The mouth of the Rakaia River, a braided river that crosses New Zealand’s Canterbury Plains.

Irrigation Leader: How is your research addressing the problem?

Lee Burbery: My research is recognizing that the gravel aquifers are carbon limited. We do have a nitrate issue, and we don’t have extensive known areas where there is natural denitrification potential. Thus, I have been looking at the feasibility of passive, in situ groundwater nitrate remediation systems. We have had a lot of policy reforms in the last decade, including a national freshwater water framework that sets limits within water catchments on how much water can be taken out of a system that includes surface water and groundwater. Regional councils and populations are responsible for setting metering limits within catchments, although there are some upper limits that they cannot exceed, including drinking water quality levels and national limits on nitrate levels in surface waters, which vary depending on the type and location of the water body. Those limits are actually under review. The Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council established some guidelines that recognize ecotoxicity thresholds. In the case of nitrates, it has established levels as low as 1 ppm for 95 percent protection probability and to protect some of the more vulnerable species in our rivers. The previous government, which was formed by a conservative national party, bumped those limits up to IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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THE INNOVATORS 6.9 ppm. The current government envisions lowering levels back to 1 ppm. That is the driver behind all these remediation and mitigation practices and measures. While it may appear desirable, you have to question how feasible such a target is.

Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your research into wood chip walls.

Lee Burbery: Nitrate is an oxidized form of nitrogen, and denitrification has long been recognized as the primary natural method for eliminating nitrate. It is a stepwise reduction process performed by consortia of bacteria, the end product of which is dinitrogen gas. The bacteria involved normally eat carbon or metabolize some substrate and respire oxygen, but when oxygen becomes limited, they switch to taking the oxygen off the nitrate, thus reducing it.

Wood chip walls promote the enhanced natural attenuation of nitrates. Wood chips are solid carbon and are porous, creating what we refer to as a denitrifying bioreactor. By providing organic carbon that allows the natural organisms of the subsurface environment to thrive, we create something like an anaerobic filter. We have aerobic water, so we have to create anaerobic conditions before any denitrification can occur.

There are situations in which you might put wood chips in a bed on a surface to filter surface water pipe drainage. That is becoming popular in the corn-growing regions of the United States. Another approach is to install a wood chip barrier in trenches deeper in the groundwater to produce a sort of constant denitrification process. This sort of wood chip wall is a porous, permeable, reactive barrier and can be constructed to ensure that water flows through and not around, it. It is still in the experimental stage, I believe. There is a gentleman named Casey Schmidt in Florida who put together an experimental version of such a barrier in 2012 and a nonexperimental version last year. His is the only active ongoing denitrification wall initiative that I am aware of other than my own.

While these other wood chip studies have been conducted in sandy aquifers of generally slow-flowing groundwater, we are trying to implement the technology in a challenging, heterogeneous gravel aquifer with high fluxes of water, nitrate, and oxygen. Because of our permeable gravel, we’ve had to make the barrier system highly permeable to prevent the water from simply flowing around it. The gravel channels within our aquifer have a permeability or hydraulic conductivity of about 10,000 meters a day, if not more.

That is as much as 100 times more permeable than sand.

We’ve had to do a lot of work to come up with an optimal combination of correctly sized wood chips and gravel.

Lee Burbery: I do, particularly considering how the use of denitrification beds has become standard practice in

44 | IRRIGATION LEADER

Irrigation Leader: If installations like these became commercially and technically viable, would they be installed by individual farmers or by irrigation schemes and local governments?

Lee Burbery: Here in New Zealand, individual farmers would install them to address hotspots, but irrigation schemes and consortia might also use them to address the cumulative effects of leaching across a catchment. In general, these nitrate walls would need to be installed downstream of a particular pollution hotspot like a standoff pad. Perhaps if you had a large number of farms in a particular area, you could string a remediation system across the bottom of the catchment where all the water has to flow. It is likely that only larger organizations would have the resources and motivation to do that.

I should also say that denitrification is not always the best solution. For example, if we have aerobic water with some nitrate in it but nothing else, we have water that is not far from a geochemical standard of purity. New Zealand’s water is young and mostly free of heavy metals. But if we start targeting nitrate and make the water anoxic and chemically reductive, we start to mobilize inorganic chemicals like iron, manganese, and arsenic, which might be far more toxic. Similarly, we have to consider the greenhouse gas emissions created by rotting inorganic matter. In the process of denitrification, as it is on its way to being reduced to inert dinitrogen gas, nitrate-nitrogen is converted successively into nitrite, nitric oxide, and nitrous oxide gas, the last of which is a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If you underengineer something like this and it becomes carbon limiting, there is a risk that before it is converted to dinitrogen gas we could be pumping a load of nitrous oxide into the environment. We are studying and evaluating this sort of pollution-swapping phenomenon as part of our feasibility assessment. We are making significant progress in addressing the nitrate issue, but it is clearly a long-term initiative with many chapters yet to be written. IL Lee Burbery is a senior groundwater scientist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research in Christchurch, New Zealand. He can be contacted at lee.burbery@esr.cri.nz.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LEE BURBERY.

Irrigation Leader: What are the prospects for this denitrification wall process? Do you foresee its commercialization in the near future?

the agricultural regions of the United States. The reason denitrification walls have been slower to evolve is their cost.

Digging below the water table can be expensive compared to simply digging a trench in the soil and lining it with wood chips. Ultimately, the spread of the use of denitrification beds may depend on government policy. For example, if the new nitrate standard proposed by the New Zealand government were to become effective, farmers would need to dramatically cut the amount of nitrogen that is exported from their catchments. At that point, farmers will need to weigh the costs of farming with a denitrification wall against not farming at all.

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Irrigation Leader provides this service to irrigation districts free of charge.

For more information, please email Kris Polly at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

QUINCY-COLUMBIA BASIN IRRIGATION DISTRICT DISTRICT ENGINEER Salary: Non-bargaining wage schedule Level 9, DOE Deadline: Open until filled RESPONSIBILITIES +T he district engineer is responsible for ensuring QuincyColumbia Basin Irrigation District procedures and policies are followed to safeguard the efficient and uninterrupted delivery of irrigation water to landowners.

REQUIREMENTS +B achelor’s degree in engineering or agricultural field +P rofessional Engineer certification desired +M inimum of 5 years civil engineering required +O pen channel flow experience desired FOR MORE INFORMATION Website: www.qcbid.org/index.php/employment Email: humanresources@qcbid.org GILA RIVER INDIAN IRRIGATION & DRAINAGE DISTRICT IRRIGATION ENGINEERING MANAGER Salary: $100,101 (DOE) Deadline: Open Until filled RESPONSIBILITIES +P lanning, organizing, overseeing and managing the engineering activities and system operations of the Gila River Indian Irrigation and Drainage District (GRIIDD), including the design, construction and inspection of complex projects related to GRIIDD facilities and operations. +C oordinating assigned activities with various departments of the Gila River Indian Community and outside agencies. +S erving as technical specialist in the fields of water management, measurement, supply, automation, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, water quality, drainage, and storm water management for the GRIIDD. QUALIFICATIONS +B achelor’s degree in agricultural or civil engineering or a closely related field +T en (10) years of engineering experience in irrigation conveyance systems and design or irrigation systems operations and maintenance, including SCADA and contract administration or closely related field and three (3) years of experience supervising professionals or multi-disciplined crafts.

MORE INFORMATION For a complete position description and to apply online, visit GRIC at selfservice.gric.nsn.us/mss/ employmentopportunities/default.aspx For questions, call 520-562-9800

46 | IRRIGATION LEADER

ABERDEEN-SPRINGFIELD CANAL COMPANY AUTOMATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TECHNICIAN Salary: $15.00/hour Deadline: Until filled RESPONSIBILITIES +S CADA: Participate in the design, installation, and maintenance of remote monitoring and gate control systems. +U tilize Campbell Scientific data loggers and CRBasic programming language. Training available as needed. +M aintain Control and storage servers. +C reate and modify operator control screens. +M aintain wireless communication system.

REQUIREMENTS +T wo-year degree in an electronics-based discipline such as electronics engineering, instrumentation, automation or comparable and demonstratable work experience. +V alid Idaho driver’s license with no restrictions. +A bility to lift 70 lbs, ability to climb to and work at heights up to 120 feet, frequent night and weekend work may be required. +T his position is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during the irrigation season (March-November). +A pplicant must live within 30 minutes of the ASCC System (Aberdeen, American Falls, Blackfoot, Pocatello) or be willing to relocate.

TO APPLY: Send complete resume and list of references to: Idaho Department of Labor 450 N. 5th Pocatello, ID 83205 Or by email to: pocatellomail@labor.idaho.gov Or by fax to: (208)232-0865

KENNEWICK IRRIGATION DISTRICT STAFF ENGINEER Salary: $30.09 to $40.33 hourly range depending on licensing and experience Deadline: Until filled RESPONSIBILITIES: +R eviewing development civil plans +P reparing design drawings and specs +W ater modeling +D eveloping construction cost estimates +S urveying +W ork includes frequent public and staff interaction +O utdoor assignments +P roject site investigations and inspections FOR MORE INFORMATION: kid.org/employment

PECOS VALLEY ARTESIAN CONSERVANCY DISTRICT WATER RESOURCE SPECIALIST Salary: Dependent on Experience Deadline: Until filled RESPONSIBILITIES +S ort, research, and analyze water right data; +P articipate in field activities; +P articipate in meetings with local, state, and federal agencies and area schools, which may require out of town travel; +C onduct information workshops and attend conferences as required; Required Qualifications +A minimum of two (2) years of related experience and/ or training and a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university or an equivalent combination of education and experience +E xcellent oral and written communications and interpersonal skills +A bility to communicate in written and oral formats +A bility to maintain confidentiality +M ust possess and maintain a valid New Mexico driver’s license TO APPLY May be submitted in person at the offices of the PVACD, 2303 East Second, Roswell, New Mexico 88201 or by email directed to Aron Balok, ab@pvacd.com. No telephone calls regarding the position will be accepted.

YAKIMA-TIETON IRRIGATION DISTRICT ASSISTANT MANAGER Salary: $70,000-$80,000 Deadline: January 17, 2020 RESPONSIBILITIES +P rimarily responsible for the day to day operation and maintenance of district facilities and equipment +S upervision of the project and engineering lead and maintenance and technical crews +C oordinating with the Bureau of Reclamation and District employees to monitor weather and water flows, demand changes in water use, system failures, dam inspections and improvement projects, segregations and boundary line adjustments +W ill work closely with the Secretary-Manager on district wide projects, budget and policy matters REQUIREMENTS +E xperience supervising and overseeing the maintenance and operations of a water system or a related industry +E xcellent customer service skills +C ommitment to developing employees and an understanding of rules and regulations related to a government agency +A n associate’s degree in civil engineering or a related field plus five years of progressively responsible experience including two years on a supervisory or managerial capacity; or an equivalent combination of education and experience which provides knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to perform the requirements of the job FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.yakimatietonirrigation.com

NAMPA & MERIDIAN IRRIGATION DISTRICT EQUIPMENT OPERATOR Salary: Wages depend on experience Deadline: Until filled DESCRIPTION +F ull time position +4 0 hrs. per week (4 10-hour days: Monday through Thursday 7:00am to 5:30pm) +9 paid holidays +P aid vacation and sick leave +P ERSI, 456 and 401K Retirement Plans +F ull Medical and Dental Insurance REQUIREMENTS +E xperience operating backhoe excavators and road grader +P oses a Class A CDL License +M ust reside within 30 minutes from the district shop location (5525 E. Greenhurst Road Nampa, ID) TO APPLY Applications are only available at the shop office (5525 E. Greenhurst Road Nampa, ID) MUST APPLY IN PERSON. For more information: Please call (208) 466-0663

QUINCY–COLUMBIA BASIN IRRIGATION DISTRICT STAFF ENGINEER Salary: Non-bargaining was schedule level 8, wage DOE Deadline: Position open until filled DESCRIPTION: Perform civil engineering work related to designing, planning, reviewing, and inspecting district facilities and private facilities; perform technical and feasibility studies and make recommendations based on the result.

QUALIFICATIONS: +U ndergraduate degree in civil engineering or related engineering field from an Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology (ABET) accredited college or university +E ngineer-in-training (EIT) Certification required +P rofessional Engineer License preferred +M inimum 4 years’ experience in civil engineering practice or closely related engineering field +V alid Washington State driver license with insurable MVR (Motor Vehicle Record), successful completion of pre-employment drug test and extensive background investigation +M ust live within the District boundaries FOR MORE INFORMATION: QCBID website: www.qcbid.org/index.php/employment Email: humanresources@qcbid.org Online Application: webcorp.com/apply/QCBID/

IRRIGATIONLEADERMAGAZINE.COM

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Upcoming Events March 4–6 Texas Water Conservation Association, Annual Conference, Fort Worth, TX March 12 Association of California Water Agencies, Legislative Symposium, Sacramento, CA March 16–18 Utah Water Users Association, Annual Workshop, St. George, UT March 24–26 Texas Water Conservation Association, Texas Water Day, Washington, DC April 2–3 Association of California Water Agencies, Water Policy Conference, Davis, CA April 6–9 CA/NV AWWA Section, Spring Conference, Anaheim, CA April 7–9 Irrigation NZ, Water for Life Conference and Expo, Christchurch, New Zealand April 20–22 National Water Resources Association, Federal Water Issues Conference, Washington, DC May 5–8 Association of California Water Agencies, Monterey, CA May 15 Agribusiness & Water Council of Arizona, Annual Meeting, TBD June 8–9 Idaho Water Users Association, Water Law & Resources Issues Seminar, Sun Valley, ID June 17–19 Texas Water Conservation Association, Mid-Year Conference, The Woodlands, TX

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