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<br />UUlu~'t
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<br />Notes on Watershed Management
<br />Watershed Heroes to the Rescue!
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<br />If you were to ask Sherman Lundy, a high school chemistry teacher in Burlington, Iowa, to
<br />describe himself in one word, he probably wouldn't pick the word "hero." That's because when
<br />people think of heroes they usually imagine someone in a cape flying around saving people from
<br />danger. But there's a new group of heroes made up of people like Lundy from all over the country,
<br />and for the last four years the Watershed Heroes Conference in Amana, Iowa, has brought these
<br />unsung heroes together to learn new ways to protect water quality.
<br />
<br />In 1996 Lundy was one of 75 people who took pan in the first Watershed Heroes Conference
<br />sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF). EachJune the conference brings
<br />together AFBF staff, state agricultural agency personnel, farmers, municipal water suppliers, local
<br />community leaders, teachers, and others to educate them on the latest information related to
<br />pesticide and nutrient impacts on human health, water quality, and soil biology. According to Jim
<br />Porterfield, AFBF's Watershed Heroes Conference Coordinator, "the goal is to solve problems in
<br />watersheds together so that farmers make money both immediately and in the long term. "
<br />Attendees spend four days learning about factors that influence a watershed, such as tillage, soil
<br />structure, how fertilizer and chemicals move with soil and water, new nutrient management
<br />techniques and technologies, and even how earthworms influence the soil's water-holding capacity.
<br />
<br />The conference is not your typicallisten-to-lectures conference. It is unique for several reasons.
<br />First and foremost are the teams created. AFBF organizes all the conference participants into small
<br />teams (six or seven people) charged with making some management decisions on a plot of corn
<br />and a plot of soybeans (30 feet wide by 580 feet long) and following it through to harvest. AFBF
<br />tries to mix water producers (farmers who own and operate the land that rain falls on) with water
<br />consumers (water utility operators, wastewater treatment plant operators) on each team. The teams
<br />decide how much fertilizer, pesticides, or other chemicals to apply according to the soil conditions,
<br />rainfall, and other factors and relay their decisions through AFBF to the staff at Amana Society
<br />Farms to implement. Teams can request herbicides at different rates and times, chose no-till or disk
<br />and field cultivation, and select different nitrogen rates. Each field also has a control section where
<br />no chemicals are applied. The goal is to get the most profitable harvest while at the same time
<br />reducing the crops' impact on the environment. Newsletter updates help the teams follow their
<br />field plots for many months, turning the four-day conference into a lO-month affair.
<br />
<br />Second, the conference is unique in terms of the number of hands-on field activities during the
<br />conference. Team members are encouraged to actually go out into the field and test and measure for
<br />nitrogen, infiltration, soil compaction, crop residue cover, weed growth, and soil erosion.
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<br />Finally, and perhaps most importantly from the point of view of the participants, is the fact that
<br />part of each team member's registration fee is put into an escrow account to guarantee Amana
<br />Farms that they will not lose any money for having implemented the experiments requested by the
<br />teams. Because each team member has "ownership" of the plots (i.e., puts real money at risk),
<br />participants walk away with a greater sense of real-world applicability.
<br />
<br />Each year a new crop of heroes take what they have learned at the conference back to their
<br />hometowns and begin to use that knowledge to solve real water quality problems in their regions.
<br />Lundy oecame interested in the conference after a group of student "investigators" from his
<br />advanced placement chemistry class found high levels of fecal coliforms in Flint Creek, a small
<br />creek that flows through the city of Burlington. His students sparked the creation of the Flint
<br />Creek Advisory Board (FCAB), consisting of approximately 15 stakeholders representing farm and
<br />commodity groups, citizens, and supervisors. Lundy's students, trained in water quality and
<br />habitat testing techniques, collected data from the creek over a six-year period and presented it to
<br />the FCAB. One member of the board who is also a member of the local Farm Bureau, suggested
<br />that representatives from the board panicipate in the Watershed Heroes Conference to learn what
<br />could be done to heal the degraded creek.
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<br />NON POINT SOURCE NEWS.NOTES
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<br />MARCH 2000, ISSUE.&O
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