Spreading water awareness

The non-profit Southern Iowa Resource Conservation and Development (RCD) has completed a project to add signage to county creeks, rivers and watershed in Adams, Taylor and Union counties, started due to the Iowa DNR’s County Creek Sign Grant.

The organization was awarded $30,000 for the three counties last September, said Southern Iowa RCD Executive Director Michelle Wilson.

“We have a long history of working with watershed improvement,” Wilson said. “When I came across this grant from the Iowa DNR, I was like, this matches our mission and could do some good in the counties that we serve.”

A watershed is “the area of land that drains to a body of water,” according the Iowa DNR.

Between Adams, Taylor and Union counties, signs were placed in 41 different locations to denote these areas.

“If you’re driving around the countryside, when you pass or go over a bridge and there’s no sign whatsoever that says if it’s a river, it’s a creek, what it is,” Wilson said. “An Iowa State study was showing that if people know the names of their creeks or rivers and they understand the watershed that it’s connected to and how that connects to drinking water, there’s that greater awareness that can sometimes translate into other stewardship activities and water protection and preservation efforts.”

Wilson explained that, with the importance of agriculture in Iowa, water conservation efforts can be difficult.

“It‘s kind of tricky because we’re a really agriculture focused state and area, but we do know that there is a lot of extra nitrates that get into the watersheds,” Wilson said. “Down at the gulf there is that deadzone because all of the chemicals that are being used drain down into the Mississippi River.”

Wilson said one way local agriculturalists can help is through filtering their water.

“Things that folks can do with their land to help protect the watershed, like doing covercrops and doing prairie strips, so that the water is filtered before it comes down into that waterway,” Wilson said.

According to the USDA, “a cover crop is any crop grown to cover the soil and may be incorporated into the soil later for enrichment. Planting cover crops in your garden provides multiple benefits such as controlling erosion, suppressing weeds, reducing soil compaction, increasing moisture and nutrient content of soil, improving yield potential, attracting pollinators, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife as well as food to animals.”

Prairie Strips are described as “a conservation practice that protects soil and water while providing habitat for wildlife,” according to Iowa State. They further stated that “by converting 10% of a crop-field to diverse, native perennial vegetation, farmers and landowners can reduce sediment movement off their field by 95% and total phosphorous and nitrogen lost through runoff by 90% and 85%, respectively.”

Outside of farming, Wilson said more awareness can help the everyday person.

“I’ve been on many walks out in the countryside in our area, and you see a creek and people have used it as a dump. There’s tires in it, there’s old washing machines,” Wilson said. “Even on that basic level of that’s not where you dump your appliances or your tires, which I know sounds super obvious. Just bringing that awareness in is important to us.”

The signage project was fully funded by the grant, Wilson said.

“It all came through federal and filtered through the state down to the local level,” Wilson said. “We didn’t charge any administrative funds to do the project, which took literally hundreds of hours. We did it as an offering to the community.”

According to a press release from the Iowa DNR, the County Creek Sign Grant Program covered 24 projects in 33 counties, receiving a combined total of $240,000. The program is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Section 319 program.