In September 2018, Bluestem posted about how the Southeast Minnesota community of Chatfield was growing kernza for wellhead protection.
A friend who grew up in Chatfield sent us a recent article in the Bluff Country News/Chatfield News, Wheatgrass helping to keep Chatfield’s water clean, reporting on the progress of the project:
City officials are finding that perennial crop cover wheatgrass may just be the way to improve water quality in Chatfield.
“We have nitrate levels of 0.4 to 0, and it’s showing that the roots are using up the nitrates, doing their job. We’ve got a ways to go yet, but we’re gaining, as far as I can tell. It’s showing that the Kernza is using nitrates the way it should be,” stated Chatfield city maintenance supervisor Brian Burkholder, telling about the farming he, a non-farmer, has witnessed and done as part of his job.
Intermediate wheatgrass, also known by the trademarked name Kernza and developed by the University of Minnesota and the Land Institute in Kansas, has made a difference in the city’s drinking water since it was planted on a total of 11 acres – three of those belonging to the city and the other eight belonging to local farmer Paul Novotny – two years ago on land near the city’s drinking water wells. The pilot project planting was part of Chatfield’s wellhead protection plan for its drinking water service management areas (DWSMA), because the plant is thirsty for water running off hillsides and is able to extract nitrates from the runoff, cleaning aquifers from which the city’s drinking water is drawn.
“The first 10 years, we didn’t do anything to try to control nitrates, but the mitigation plan states that the highest nitrate level is 5. We were at 4.4, and we don’t want it to get to 5. Our DWSMA has been expanded, and we’ve updated our drinking water plan. The whole goal is to protect our drinking water and reduce nitrates,” Burkholder said.
Because Kernza is a wheatgrass, it has the deep, curtain-like root system so characteristic of perennials, according to Brian DeVore of the Land Stewardship Project (LSP). In fact, University of Minnesota researchers say Kernza roots often extend deeper than they are able to dig with a shovel, he wrote in a recent article in an LSP newsletter.
“That’s good news when it comes to water quality, since having a living root system present in a farm 365 days a year helps build the soil’s ability to manage and store water runoff while soaking up contaminates,” he wrote. “Kernza’s knack for taking up nitrates is of particular interest in farm states like Minnesota, where nitrogen fertilizer used in the production of crops like corn has become a major pollutant in many rural communities.”
Since 1994, the Minnesota Department of Health has found 51 community wells drawing water with nitrate levels near or above federal safety standards. Some communities have had to install water treatment systems, while others have simply drilled new wells in an attempt to bypass contaminated aquifers. There are also many private wells on farms and other rural properties that have been contaminated with high levels of nitrates, making the water unsafe for drinking, particularly for infants. All of the options for procuring safe drinking water in an area where nitrate contamination is prevalent are expensive.
An alternative approach is to prevent the contamination from happening in the first place, and that’s by making changes on the landscape, according to Dr. Jake Jungers, a perennial cropping systems ecologist who is researching Kernza at the University of Minnesota. Jungers, along with other researchers at the U of M and the Kansas-based Land Institute, recently conducted a study where they compared the amount of nitrates escaping fields planted to three different plant systems: corn, switchgrass and Kernza.
According to the study, which was published earlier this year in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, the amount of nitrate leaching in the Kernza field was two orders of magnitude lower than it was in corn; it was one order of magnitude lower when compared to switch grass, which is also a perennial.
Read the entire article at the Chatfield News. Apparently there's one downside the small community is working to resolve:
Chatfield’s plants are now older perennial crops because Kernza lasts up to five years, but right now, the city is awaiting an opportunity “to buy back some of our own grain to promote it to local breweries, because once we sell it, it’s hard to get back.”
In 2017, we attended a field day for kernza (perennial wheatgrass) in Lac qui Parle County and were impressed.
This week, we tweeted the newspaper article and were pleased to learn of kernza's many fans. We hope they care as much for Chatfield's drinking water, and believe they do.
Photo: Kernza's roots.
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