Wetlands initiative tests the ability to clean up runoff water

A new project, the Iowa Wetland Landscape Systems Initiative, would expand the creation of wetlands, which take tile drainage water from fields and filter out the nitrate.

Unlike the Iowa Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program's wetlands efforts, the initiative's pilot projects do not retrofit wetlands into an existing tile system. Rather, they start afresh with a new tile layout, said Shawn Richmond, the program's coordinator for the Iowa department of agriculture.

The pilot projects include one completed site in Pocahontas County and six others in the hearing process.

The first completed project cost roughly $3 million, with $1.6 million supplied by the landowners. Richmond said the pilot projects will have a price tag of about $18 million for all seven sites.

Although water monitoring at the Pocahontas site has been limited so far, the five-year monitoring process is slated to begin this year, Richmond said.

Funding for monitoring plans has become complicated, because anticipated funding from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies fell through, but Richmond said monitoring will continue as planned. The department will divert some resources from the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, or CREP.

Construction needs to begin soon for the next six sites because the expiration date on $4 million supplied by I-JOBS is June 30, 2013.

If the seven initial sites decrease nutrients that escape into Iowa waters, Richmond hopes to see more of these systems across the state, spreading the word to as many farmers a possible.

“You're not going to have a farmer in Polk County see results in Pocahontas County and put much faith in those results,” Richmond said. “We need some broadening out so producers can see benefits in their own backyard.”

He is hopeful that through private money and a focus on market-based initiatives, the program will be able to expand.

“I have a hard time thinking landowners won't invest in maintaining at least the status quo of their drainage systems,” Richmond said, adding that farmers seemed “cautiously optimistic. They recognize as well as anyone the implications of inadequate drainage.”

However, the program is not without its critics.

Among them are Linda Kinman, the public policy analyst for the Des Moines Water Works, and Chris Jones, who formerly worked as lab supervisor for the water works.

They are concerned about the monitoring process for the pilot projects and what impact these large projects might have on the environment.

“Monitoring, we believe, needs to happen to ensure the wetlands are performing nutrient removal to the degree expected and to monitor for any unintended consequences that might result from the size of the drainage area, increased size of the tile, the impacts of algae blooms and the amount of water going through the system,” Kinman said by email.

The Des Moines Water Works is home to the world's largest nitrate removal facility, proof of the large amount of nitrate that flows into Iowa rivers and complicates efforts to make the water drinkable.

In September 2010, the Des Moines Water Works expressed its concerns in a letter to the Gulf of Mexico Water Nutrient Task Force and said the project could further damage Iowa's waters instead of cleaning them up.

“They are not going to be natural systems,” Jones said. “No one really knows how these systems function.”

He criticized the pilot project as a “sort of a diversion, if you will, for the true purpose, which is to reconstruct drainage.”

Richmond acknowledged these concerns but said most were based on misinformation. Other scientists involved in the project agreed.

“They raise some good points,” said Matt Helmers, an associate professor and Iowa State University Extension agricultural engineer. “There is a need for data. The only way to gather data is through these pilot programs.”

William Crumpton, an associate professor and chairman of the environmental science program at ISU, went further and said the 10,000-acre pilot projects wouldn't cause more damage to the water supply.

“Ten-thousand acres of crop land total, out of about 30 million acres. That's 1/3,000th of the watershed area,” Crumpton said. “How could that possibly have an effect on water coming into Des Moines? They're just too small.”

Helmers and Crumpton said the window of opportunity for incorporating wetlands with tile drains is quickly closing.

Crumpton said he expected to see a spike in the number of landowners replacing their tile systems during the next 10 to 20 years.

“This (current tile system) is clay tile put in the ground almost a century ago,” he said. “The tile will be replaced anyway.”

The point of the pilot program, Crumpton said, was to gather data and research to help shape policy before people begin replacing their systems on a large scale.

Crumpton, Helmers and Richmond all emphasized that the pilot program, even if it should prove successful, is just one of many changes that will need to take place to improve the quality of the water flowing through Iowa and down to the gulf.

“The wetlands are just one tool in the kit, as far as achieving the hypoxia reduction goals,” Richmond said, “but it is a heavy lifter.”