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Nebraska Watersheds News and Views       Summer 2004 Issue 1

Hello, and welcome to the first edition of the quarterly electronic Nebraska Watersheds News and Views newsletter. I hope this issue and the ones to follow will provide useful information that will increase both your knowledge and interest of water resource issues. The purpose of the electronic newsletter is to provide information on watershed topics and issues, share ideas, programs and publicize events to watershed council members, watershed project coordinators, Extension educators and specialists, agency personnel, watershed management professionals and natural resources professionals. The newsletter is intended for educational purposes only. Newsletter information may be reprinted or reproduced. If you intend to use this material, please acknowledge the authors and the source of information. Interested persons are invited to contribute articles, news items, photographs or other materials for publication. Please, feel free to ask me questions, share ideas, or provide feedback.

Steve Tonn
University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension Educator-Douglas/Sarpy Counties/Omaha Lakes Extension Coordinator

In This Issue

• Building Effective Water Protection Groups
• Clean Water is Everyone’s Business – Protecting Water Quality from Agricultural Runoff
• Nebraska’s CNMP Training Program
• Taking the Watershed Approach
• Watershed Activities Views Events Successes

Building Effective Water Protection Groups
Steve Tonn, University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension Educator -Douglas/Sarpy Counties

Many groups have formed around the state to protect and restore the streams, lakes, and wetlands of Nebraska. These groups take on many tasks including education, data management, and decision-making. Group members represent many different sectors of the community including state and local government, non-profit recreational and environmental groups, landowners, farmers, homeowners, and businesses. In order to generate effective approaches to protecting water resources participants need an awareness of group dynamic principles. In the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making Sam Kaner describes four key principles found in groups with high member involvement and ownership of decisions:

1. Full participation. All members are encouraged to speak up and say what’s on their minds. The group then grows stronger because members become more courageous in raising difficult issues and sharing half-formed thoughts that may contain valuable ideas.
2. Mutual Understanding. In order for a group to reach agreements they can sustain and that contain the best ideas possible, participants must take some time and effort questioning each other, getting to know one another, and learning from each other. Over time, participants may gain insights into their own positions and discover mutual goals.
3. Inclusive solutions. Inclusive solutions are not compromises; they work for all participants with a stake in the outcome. They are usually not obvious but emerge from the integration of perspectives, needs, and goals, and typically involve the discovery of an entirely new option.
4. Shared Responsibility. Participants feel a strong sense of shared responsibility for creating and developing agreements and can voice objections even when this delays the group decisions. This commitment to shared responsibility is seen in the processes used in meetings, and in the overall expectation that everyone takes responsibility for making meetings successful.

There’s a great deal of potential in the use of group decision making to protect water resources in Nebraska but the process isn’t smooth or sequential: Group members must be willing to tolerate ambiguity and conflict as they struggle to understand one another and the water resource they are working to protect.

Adapted for Nebraska from: Building Effective Watershed Protection Groups, Anne Baird, Watershed Management Agent, Ohio State Extension; Buckeye Basins Newsletter, April/May 2001.

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Clean Water is Everybody’s Business - Protecting Water Quality from Agricultural Runoff
Steve Tonn, University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension Educator -Douglas/Sarpy Counties

Nebraska has over 46 million acres of agricultural land that produce an abundant supply of food and other products. Nebraska and American agriculture is noted for its high productivity, quality, and efficiency in delivering goods to the consumer. When improperly managed, however, agricultural activities can affect water quality.

In the 2000 National Water Quality Inventory, states reported that agricultural runoff pollution is the leading source of water quality impacts on surveyed rivers and lakes, the second largest source of impairments to wetlands, and a major contributor to contamination of surveyed estuaries and ground water. Agricultural activities that cause runoff pollution include poorly located or managed animal feeding operations; overgrazing; plowing too often or at the wrong time; and improper, excessive, or poorly timed application of pesticides, irrigation water, and fertilizer. Not only can these activities harm water resources but they also can be inefficient and costly for the producer.

Agricultural pollutants that result from these activities are sediment, nutrients, pathogens, pesticides, metals and salts. Agricultural impacts on surface water and ground water can be minimized by using best management practices that are customized for local conditions. Many practices designed to reduce pollution also save producers money in the long run.

There are many government programs available to help people design and pay for management approaches to prevent and control runoff pollution. Check with your local NRD, NRCS or FSA office for more information.

Source: EPA publication 841-F-03-004 Protecting Water Quality from Agricultural Runoff

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Nebraska's CNMP Training Program
Paul Hay, University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension Educator -Gage County

The University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan (CNMP) team teaches a series of classes on manure nutrient management for livestock producers and ag professionals in Nebraska. These classes teach the participants how to develop a comprehensive nutrient management plan (CNMP), to calculate the rate of manure to apply to meet crop needs, methods to keep manure out of the waters of the state, and to keep the records required by their Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality permit (NDEQ). These classes use the "Nebraska CNMP Manure Application Workbook", EC02-720, recently published by NU Cooperative Extension.

Using this workbook, and the associated "Manure Storage Management" and "Odor Management Plan Workbook", EC02-721, a producer can complete a CNMP that should meet the non-engineering requirements of a permit, if it is required by NDEQ.

These classes teach the producer the manure nutrient management factors, and how to use the computer spreadsheets to develop a plan for their operation. Classes include comments from a NDEQ representative, a CD with electronic masters of the workbook and spreadsheets, and follow-up technical assistance.

From 2001 to 2004, 417 of the larger livestock producers and ag professionals in Nebraska have attended these classes, with many positive comments on the benefits of the lessons. Classes organized for ag professionals use a format of eight hours in one day. In 2005, the first class for producers will focus on the planning needed to apply for a livestock waste control facility permit from NDEQ. The second and third classes will teach participants how to maintain the permit they already have. If you want to be notified of the 2005 series of classes, contact the Extension Educator in your county, the CNMP website at cnmp.unl.edu or Charles Shapiro, CNMP project coordinator, at Norfolk, phone 402-584-2803 or e-mail cshapiro1@unl.edu.

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Taking A Watershed Approach
Jerry Iles, Watershed Management Agent, Ohio State Extension, South District
 

When any water quality project gets started, one of the frequently asked questions the project members have to answer is “Why look at the whole watershed?” Watersheds consist of an entire area of land that during a rain event, water flows across on its way to a body of water such as a stream, river or lake. A watershed does not respect municipal, township or county boundaries but is shaped by natural features.

Watershed management is fast becoming the most common approach for determining and addressing water quality and land use practices. In very simple terms, what we do with our land directly affects the water quality of our streams, rivers, lakes and groundwater. We all need to protect these sources of our drinking water. Without clean water our local economy, community health, and quality of life suffers. Since what happens upstream affects our neighbors downstream, taking a watershed approach to problem solving is very practical.

River Network has identified some universal key components to developing a successful watershed approach to problem solving. These components include:

Understanding the interrelationships between watershed health, human health and economic health and the quality of life of communities within the watershed.

Making a consistent effort to identify, involve, and work constructively with stakeholders in ALL phases of watershed assessment, planning, implementation, and program evaluation processes.

Identify local watershed needs and develop action plans based on sound scientific research. Source: Buckeye Basins, Feb 2001  

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Watershed Activities Views Events Successes

Nine Mile Creek Watershed- Dennis Beyer, Watershed Project Coordinator

How do you know if a stream or wetland is healthy or sick?

Stethoscopes, X-rays and the other tools of medicine wouldn’t produce a diagnosis. This check-up requires different experts and different tools.

Following a two-day workshop at Gering, western Nebraska now has a few more people who are qualified to diagnose the health of streams and wetlands.

A group of scientists from federal and state agencies in Wyoming led about 30 participants through a day in the classroom and a day in the field, during which they demonstrated the how’s and why’s of evaluating the health and functionality of streams and wetlands.

The event was sponsored by the Panhandle Resource Conservation and Development Inc., the North Platte Natural Resources District, the Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition, the Nine Mile Creek Watershed Advisory Committee, and the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Dennis Beyer, watershed coordinator for the NRD, said: “All water and waterways are not well understood as to why and how they are reacting to the demands put on them by man and nature. All changes have a profound effect on a stream or wetlands and to understand this reaction gives us the ability to assist in making them the best conveyance possible. Keeping water on the land longer is of utmost importance!”

The Wyoming Interagency Riparian Assessment Team conducted the workshop. These five scientists spent the first day explaining “Proper Functioning Condition” (PFC), a tool used to help determine how a stream or wetland is responding to the uses and conditions that humans and nature together have placed upon it.

The PFC process was dissected and each part explained in great detail.

Mark Gorges, U.S. Bureau of Land Management fisheries biologist and team leader, explained that Proper Functioning Condition is just a tool to be used during the early stages of doing an assessment on flowing water (lotic) streams and standing water (lentic) wetlands.

Chuck Harnish, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality hydrologist, explained how to analyze whether streams are, or should be, doing what nature deems best for that locale. He led the group into assessing functionality.

Experts in hydrology, plants and soils showed the participants how each discipline is brought into the process of evaluating the health of a stream.

Dennis Doncaster, BLM hydrologist, explained the process of using lotic functioning condition to determine just how a particular stream is responding to the parameters the stream has to work with. He showed the group how to apply the hydrologic checklist as part of the PFC process. The vegetative checklist was explained by Cheryl Newberry, BLM range specialist, and the erosion/deposition checklist was explained by Steve Kiracofe, BLM soils specialist.

On the second day, the group went to the field to apply the techniques learned the previous day. Four teams were chosen to assess the same stretch of Nine Mile Creek. After filling in the checklist sheet, the groups assembled to compare notes and discuss how they arrived at their ratings.

Wagon Train Lake Watershed – Jim Harder, Watershed Project Coordinator

We had a great day at the Wagon Train Lake Expo on Saturday, May 22. This event was organized by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and coincided with the annual Free Park Entry and Free Fishing Day at all of their facilities. The weather was great, the crowd (about 200) was great, and the newly renovated Wagon Train Lake was in great condition. There was a tent set up on site where I had two display tables for the Wagon Train Lake Watershed Project. One of the displays depicted some of our Wagon Train Lake Watershed protection activities. The second display area used one of the Nebraska Forest Service Riparian Buffer table top displays.

Other groups or agencies with displays or demonstrations and otherwise helping with the event were the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, the Lower Platte South NRD, the Norris High School FFA and an area fishing club.

Cedar River Watershed – Vicki Bauer, Watershed Project Coordinator

Cedar River
National River Cleanup
May 20, 2004

Spalding Academy 5th-8th grade students joined the nationwide effort to keep America’s waterways clean. Twenty-four volunteers cleaned up 3-4 miles around the Spalding Dam and along the Cedar River on Thursday, May 20th in conjunction with the thirteenth annual National River Cleanup Week (May 15-23, 2004). This effort was coordinated by the Cedar River Stabilization Project and Keep Loup Basin Beautiful through the Loup Basin RC&D Council. The students collected over 25 bags of litter. The students sorted the collected items and recycled the plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and tin cans. The students recorded what types of items were collected. The results were: 150 beverage cans, 123 paper products, 84 glass beverage bottles, 71 plastic beverage bottles, 24 tin cans, 22 car parts, 20 food wrappers/containers and numerous other items including fishing tackle, rope, cigarette tips and filters, and shotgun shells. The students said the most unusual items found were a baby diaper and a toy football.

Cleaning up America’s waterways has, in recent years, not only become an issue of aesthetics in outdoor recreation, but a matter of clean water. Improperly discarded waste contributes to contaminated drinking water and surface water and adversely affects wildlife. Improperly discarded trash and debris inevitably end up in the watersheds on many rivers and streams. Unchecked, much of this trash and debris is channeled into waterways and collects along the banks thus affecting the appearance and ecosystem of the streamside environment.

Thank you students and your teachers Mrs. Hartley and Mrs. McKay for doing your part to keep the Spalding Dam and Cedar River beautiful!!

Omaha Metro Lakes Watersheds – Steve Tonn, Omaha Lakes Extension Coordinator

The Omaha metro area public lakes consist of Standing Bear, Zorinsky, Cunningham, Wehrspann and Walnut Creek. All the lakes are feeling the pressure from urban development. Runoff pollution, especially sediment and nutrients, is impacting the water quality in the lakes. Watershed sizes range from 2,112 to 11,400 acres.

Standing Bear Lake, Zorinsky Lake and Walnut Creek Lake have active watershed councils. Each council has educational efforts ongoing in their watersheds. The educational efforts focus on informing residents about runoff pollution, preventing runoff pollution from leaving their property and preventing pollutants from entering stormwater drain inlets. Small changes in everyday behaviors and practices can have a positive impact on the lakes.

Each watershed council meets several times a year. Activities have also been held on a metro area wide basis for all council members. The area wide activity is a good way for council members to exchange ideas, share successes, and learn more about watershed and lake management issues and topics. Citizen involvement in watershed management is the key to a healthy watershed.

Walnut Creek Lake Project – Elbert Traylor, Nebraska Dept. of Environmental Quality

The Walnut Creek Lake and Recreation Area, near Papillion, represents a new approach to reservoir development. Walnut Creek Lake planners, aware that Omaha area lakes suffer from excess sediment and nutrients, set out to prevent those problems from the start. The project partners consisted of the Papio-Missouri River NRD, the City of Papillion, Sarpy County, University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, and the Nebraska Dept. of Environmental Quality.

An initial accomplishment was the creation of a 15 – member Clean Lakes Community Council consisting of area farmers, residents and other private citizens. The Council’s mission was to develop management goals for the lake watershed that would serve the needs and desires of the community and protect the lake from run-off pollution. The Council quickly established itself as the driving force of the project.

The Walnut Creek watershed was entirely agricultural and enjoyed an unusually high level of land treatment at the beginning of the project. However, the Council and project partners recognized that creation of a lake would quickly attract residential and commercial development in the watershed and with it, the excessive erosion characteristic of land development. To guard against this threat, the Council drafted a special ordinance for the lake watershed that requires a high level of erosion control on construction sites and provides for higher penalties than usual for violators of the ordinance. The City of Papillion subsequently adopted the ordinance within its jurisdiction of the lake watershed. The practices required by the ordinance provide the first barrier to keep sediment on the development site and out of the lake.

Further protections were built into the design of the lake itself. Islands and jetties dissipate wave action and prevent shoreline erosion. Sediment retention basins intercept sediment before it reaches the lake. Shoreline plantings stabilize soils, break up wave action and provide food and habitat for aquatic organisms. Pallet stacks, tire reefs, and brush piles placed at the bottom of the lake provide shelter for fish. Boating restrictions prevent generation of destructive wakes that erode shorelines and disturb aquatic wildlife. The cost of installing these practices as preventative measures is a fraction of the costs of installing them as restorative measures, after a lake has suffered degradation.

The goal of the project partners and the Citizens Council was to create a model lake designed to resist the pollutant pressures typical in eastern Nebraska, and to meet or exceed its design lifetime. Early water quality data suggests that goals will be achieved. Initial water transparency of 61 inches is expected to stabilize in the long term to about 28 inches, well above the 22 inches average for other area lakes. In-lake total phosphorus concentrations should stabilize at 0.07 milligrams per liter (mg/l) from the current 0.05 mg/l. Other area lakes average 0.08 mg/l total phosphorus. Sediment basins and other erosion controls will limit the lake volume loss to 0.27 % per year compared to the average 0.85 % loss in other area lakes.

Higher water quality and habitat enhancements are expected to make Walnut Creek Lake the premier fishery among the Omaha area lakes. An added bonus of the project is that it leaves behind an energized group of watershed residents. The Clean Lakes Community Council is dedicated to assuring that protective measures remain in place to protect the lake from run-off pollution. Source: NDEQ Environmental Update, Spring 2000.

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Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Elbert C. Dickey, Director of Cooperative Extension, University of Nebraska, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

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