(Des Moines, IA) -- An water quality effort is underway in central Iowa, targeting the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers. Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig says more than 40-saturated buffers and 11 bioreactors are being added to farm fields in Polk and Dallas Counties. The goal of the project is to protect water quality and support recreational opportunities in the two rivers. Naig says this is phase one, which is to be completed by mid-2022.
He says phase two will be larger, and include 100 projects in Polk, Dallas, and Story Counties.
“This project is proof that when we work together to leverage our financial and technical resources, we can get more practices on the ground and do it at a faster rate than ever before,” said Secretary Naig. “This project model is being replicated in other priority watersheds around the state. It is a great example of the types of locally-driven, community-based conservation projects that we can implement because of significant, long-term funding from the state.”
The state of Iowa is paying 75% of the cost, Polk County is picking up the rest.
“For this project, we really wanted to make things easy for the landowner both financially and from a workload standpoint. The project focuses on bioreactors and saturated buffers, and we selected which of those practices would be best for each site based on many factors evaluated in the survey process including; tile depth, tile grade, drainage area, soil types, etc. We did this to ensure we treat as much water as possible, while preventing any negative impacts on the field and crops that could be caused by over saturation of the soil,” said Tanner Puls, WQI-WMA coordinator, Polk SWCD.“The project will be installing practices on 51 tile outlets this year, and we have already surveyed over 100 outlets in preparation for another round of installations next year.”