The headwaters of the Big Sioux River (Tehankasandata, or Thick Wooded River) aren't far from where I live in Roberts County, South Dakota, then meanders mostly southward to join the Missouri at Sioux City, Iowa.
Bluestem is sharing two recent news articles about this river which illustrate the issues that arise at the confluence of conservation and agriculture.
At the Mitchell Republic, Jason Harward report in 25,000-acre CREP program looks to improve water quality, recreation access in Big Sioux watershed:
A coalition of agencies and nonprofit organizations in South Dakota has launched a Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program in the Big Sioux River Watershed that hopes to expand wildlife habitat and improve water quality.
According to a report on the project by the Farm Service Agency, the state portion of the cost over 15 years, assuming full enrollment and no changes to incentive structures, would be $22.2 million.
“We think it’s a win-win program,” said Matt Morlock, the South Dakota assistant director of Pheasants Forever, a nonprofit partner helping the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department with producer outreach. “Producers will get compensated well for moving environmentally-sensitive, low-production land into different usages. And then the public has access to more hunting and fishing opportunities.”
The program is modeled closely after the successful James River Watershed CREP, which has registered approximately 80,000 acres since its inception in 2009 and significantly expanded breeding grounds for pheasants, ducks and other waterfowl, according to the GF&P Commission, which spearheads both initiatives.
Like the dozens of CREP projects nationwide, the Big Sioux River Watershed initiative is a federal-state cost share built atop the basic Conservation Reserve Program, the federal conservation program funded in the Farm Bill. Producers would sign CRP contracts and receive an additional CREP incentive on top of that contract.
The program will start by enrolling up to 25,000 acres of the 3.8 million-acre watershed into 10- to 15-year contracts, which will allow for planting permanent vegetation like grasslands or herbs. . . .
Higher crop prices could mean increased costs, lower producer interest
The tension between crop prices and interest in non-working land programs like CRP is a simple economic reality. And, while the supposed solution to this issue is the enrollment of less-productive land, overall enrollment in general CRP continues to decline, partially due to crop prices as well as policy factors like lower total acreage caps and more stringent bidding requirements.
In September 2012, there were nearly 740,000 total CRP contracts nationwide covering nearly 30 million acres. Ten years later, there are 560,000 contracts representing 22 million acres.
“Prices have come up and in a lot of cases, it’s more profitable to go ahead and farm it,” said Scott VanderWal, president of the South Dakota Farm Bureau. “At the same time, they've been raising the CRP rental rates, which we don't really like because the government's competing with farmers and ranchers for land.”
The Big Sioux CREP, however, avoids some of these downsides. For one, South Dakota is adding premiums of at least 20% and up to 30% on top of CRP rental rates. In addition, it’s a continuous program focused on specific areas in the state, which means farmers don’t have to bid on a finite pot of federal money. . . .
Read more at the Mitchell Republic.
But the river's pollution problems don't stop as one heads toward Iowa.
Earlier this month, Joshua Haiar reported on one circumstance downstream in Water quality group gives Big Sioux River an ‘ F’ grade over E. coli contamination for the South Dakota Searchlight:
A water conservation non-profit gives the Big Sioux River an ‘F’ grade over E. coli levels beyond what’s considered safe by the state Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR).
Nitrate levels in the river, fueled in part by agricultural fertilizer runoff, are also rising.
The report card was presented Monday evening at Augustana University in Sioux Falls by Friends of the Big Sioux River (FBSR) in the form of its 2022 water quality summary of the Big Sioux River watershed.
A watershed is an area of land with a common set of waterways and streams that all drain into a single larger body of water, such as a river. To assess the Big Sioux watershed, FBSR took 500 samples at 18 locations along the river, from Dell Rapids to Akron.
The group reports that over 75% of water samples taken throughout 2022 had E. coli levels considered “unsafe for emersion.”
Water quality degrades in the Big Sioux River as it flows south, according to the nonprofit’s report. The southern monitoring sites at Newton Hills and Akron have higher levels of contaminants.
The primary cause of the unsafe levels is cattle feces, which runs off from farms after rainfall events and makes its way to public waters. A water sample taken just south of Brandon two days after record rain showed E. coli levels almost 200 times higher than the DANR’s allowable limits.
Pollution high in spite of dry conditions
This year’s results are telling, given that the region didn’t receive a lot of rain, said FBSR Treasurer Rachel Koos.
Some Sioux Falls residents want to see the state do something about contaminants. A river with high levels of E. coli running through the state’s largest city is not safe, they say – especially given children play along the river.
FBSR has turned the water sample findings over to DANR. The department is required to issue a water quality report every two years for the federal government.
DANR did not immediately reply to a request for comment regarding the department’s efforts to limit cattle feces from entering the Big Sioux River watershed.
DANR’s biannual reports have shown high levels of E. coli for years.
Travis Entenman, managing director of FSBR, said the state offers a lot of “carrots” to keep livestock waste out of public water. It may be time for some “sticks,” Entenman said.
“The fines that we give after someone violates a permit could have more teeth to them. Maybe it’s getting cattle out of the water bodies altogether like in many eastern states,” Entenman said. “Or, we could look at what Minnesota has done with mandatory buffer strips.”
A buffer strip is a vegetated area along a stream or river that helps filter out the waste and soil prior to entering the water. Buffer strip root systems prevent soil erosion along the stream and river banks.
Nitrates on the radar
FBSR also tests for nitrate levels, which continue to rise but are within safe levels. However, for the second year in a row, nitrates in one water sample exceeded safe levels in the Big Sioux River.
Nitrogen is one of the necessary nutrients for plant growth — it’s often applied to fields in the form of fertilizer. Nitrates are a combination of nitrogen and oxygen.
Nitrates can be carried into watersheds by drain tiles, which are perforated pipes buried under farmland to remove excess water during wet seasons. They stabilize the water table for the crops a farmer has planted, but they also carry anything water soluble with that water – like nitrates.
The number of drain tile projects increased in eastern South Dakota in the 2000s, generally because of increased precipitation and demand for higher yields. Some farmers have taken advantage of the drought to install drain tile where fields had previously been too wet to get the tile installed.
Iowa has experienced the downsides of drain tile, however.
Des Moines had to build nitrate removal facilities in response to drain tiling.
Newborns began developing Infant Methemoglobinemia, or “blue baby syndrome,” where nitrogen levels starve the body of oxygen.
The Big Sioux River is not at that level yet, according to Koos, the FBSR treasurer
“Nitrates are not a really big problem for us right now. But we want to proactively watch it because we know how big of a problem that can be,” Koos said.
‘Heartland River’
The impetus for the event was the release of “Heartland River,” a collection of essays that aim to tell the story of the Big Sioux River.
The book was not conceived as a means to advance water quality discussions, but some authors featured in the book hope its documentation of the river’s history and cultural significance can serve to inform them.
David O’Hara, director of sustainability at Augustana University, said if people learn the history of the river, they may come to care more about it.
“It wasn’t that long ago that this river was clear as glass,” O’Hara said. “This is going to come down to asking the question, ‘how can we, along the banks of the Big Sioux River, become leaders in water and soil conservation in such a way that we’re making money doing that.”
Check out the article at the Searchlight for nifty graphics.
Bluestem republished the SD Searchlight article online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. If you want to help the Searchlight, donate.
Map: - Base map used was taken from the National Atlas, remaining work was done by the uploader. Drainage basin maps used as a reference were from this site from the United States Geological Survey, at Wikipedia entry for Big Sioux River.
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