Area farmers attend watershed meeting to discuss involvement in new UIRWMA District

by Lissa Blake

Decorah’s John Rodecap wants to make sure farmers have some input regarding how a new $5.5 million grant to manage floodwater will be spent.
Rodecap, who is former director of Iowa State University Extension - Winneshiek County and ISU Extension coordinator of watershed projects for northeast Iowa, hosted a meeting last week, which was attended by more than 20 farmers from Allamakee, Howard and Winneshiek counties. His intention was to talk about specific things farmers can do to address water quality in the Upper Iowa River Watershed Management Authority (UIRWMA) district.
The conversation came following the news the newly formed UIRWMA was awarded that $5.5 million in funding as part of a National Disaster Resiliency Competition grant, which allocated a total of $96.8 million to eight watershed authorities across the state over the next five years.
The Upper Iowa River Watershed encompasses approximately 641,000 acres along the Upper Iowa River in Howard, Winneshiek and Allamakee counties and stretches from Leroy, MN to the Mississippi River in New Albin. It encompasses 1,005 square miles and drains portions of Mower, Fillmore and Houston counties in Minnesota and part of Howard, Winneshiek and Allamakee counties in northeast Iowa. There are 32 sub-watersheds in the watershed.

HISTORY
In response to statewide flooding in 2008, the Iowa Legislature established the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa. In 2010, the Legislature created watershed management authorities, a vehicle for cities, counties, soil and water conservation districts (SWCDs) and other interested parties to cooperatively engage in watershed planning and management.
Entities collaborate to request federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds and to oversee usage of those funds to manage water flow and quality within the watershed.
Locally, Winneshiek County Supervisor and landowner John Beard helped spearhead the organization of the UIRWMA, which consists of nine partner entities: the Winneshiek County Board of Supervisors, The Winneshiek Soil and Water Conservation District, the City of Decorah, the Allamakee County Board of Supervisors, the Allamakee Soil and Water Conservation District, the Howard County Board of Supervisors, the Howard Soil and Conservation District, the City of Lime Springs and the Upper Iowa River Drainage District located out of New Albin.
The organization has just started meeting and is working toward organizing a formal board structure to oversee the UIRWMA.

CONCERNS
Recent information about how the grant money will be allocated includes the idea of a 75/25 cost share, where farmers would have to come up with a quarter of a project’s cost.
“We need to have an incentive program rather than a cost-share program,” said Rodecap, who said he has overseen projects in other watersheds where incentives are a motivator. “Incentives bring those with lower income and beginning farmers to the table, who may not have $10,000 or $5,000 lying around to put (water management) structures in.”
He said he is concerned that the $4 million (of the $5.5 million) allocated for conservation practices will go toward flood abatement in a single sub-watershed and will not be distributed across the entire watershed, where he feels it can do the most good.
“Can we have more bang for our buck doing some other things?” Rodecap asked.

EXAMPLES
Rodecap said a previous incentive program in the Hewett Creek Watershed in Dubuque County helped bring farmers together by teaching them best practices they could implement on their own property.
He said at the completion of the program, 100 percent of participants said the incentives rewarded a conservation systems approach to farming, 94 percent said they encouraged management changes, 86 percent said they had a positive effect on the environment, and 91 percent said the program helped make their operation more profitable.
Rodecap provided attendees with a long list of water quantity and quality practices currently in place in sub-watersheds throughout the state, including terracing, crop rotation, contour planning, strip cropping, reduced tillage passes (leaving more buffer strips), no-till planting, rotation of hay and oats, cover crop planting, buffer zones around sinkholes and streams and more. He also mentioned a variety of soil tests, including the phosphorus index, soil conditioning index and nitrogen performance management.
Under an incentive program, farmers could be paid for manure application and analysis, cover crops, grid sampling, managed grazing and more. “My concern is what’s our best bang for the buck,” said Rodecap, adding many farmers are already implementing many of the practices without any sort of payment.

HUD FOCUS
During the meeting, Ross Evelsizer, watershed planner with RC&D, said while he agrees with a lot of what Rodecap was saying, that watersheds don’t always function within ‘census blocks’ – the HUD money is meant to help urban areas, which are home to low-and middle-income persons, to help reduce flooding for specific watersheds based on populations that have been affected by flooding in the past. “But we do need to work on each of the smaller watersheds,” he said.

WHAT’S NEXT?
The UIRWMA meets Wednesday, March 9 at 4 p.m. in the basement of the Decorah Public Library. New business includes a presentation by Larry Weber of the Iowa Flood Center and the discussion of sending out requests for proposals to hire a watershed coordinator.
“A coordinator will help us make a plan and establish priorities which will include working with producers in the sub-watersheds and watersheds,” said Beard.