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[Music] [Applause] [Music] good morning and welcome to the University of Arkansas system Division of Agriculture and we're coming to you live today from the Don Tyson Center for agricultural sciences in Fayetteville Arkansas my name is Mike Daniels I'm a professor in the crop schools environmental sciences department of an extension specialist and I co-lead the Arkansas discovery farm with my good friend and colleague dr. Andrew sharply who you'll be hearing from here in just a minute but we want to welcome you to our sixth in a series on soil and water conservation today we're going to be focusing on our discovery farm in our partnership with the Marly beef and poultry farm in Elkins Arkansas there are tremendous co-operators and they've been very gracious to allow us to come out and monitor water quality and concert valuate conservation practices on their farm we're also going to hear today from dr. James McCarty he's going to be talking about Beaver Lake Water District and the efforts they take to protect drinking water for over 500,000 people in Northwest Arkansas but without further ado I want to introduce one the world's leading scientists and water quality especially phosphorus and how that interacts with our lakes and streams dr. Andrew sharply thanks Mike yeah I'm a new sharpie and I been at the University of Arkansas for nigh on 15 years now which time flies anyway I work in the crop sawsan Department of crop soils and environmental sciences like Mike says and I'm walked off the campus in Fayetteville and so the discovery farms program got started I'd say probably about 15 years ago in Wisconsin and we went up there independently to review the program after it been going about five years we Mike and I thought that this would be a good program for Harker so so we worked Farm Bureau to take a group of farmers and leaders and Farm Bureau to go up there and talk to their discovery farmers and see what was going on up there they came back and said we need this in Arkansas so Mike and I started banging on doors and asking you know to get some support for this program here and in Arkansas and eventually it all fruit and so one of the real reasons behind the discovery fund program it's a it's a on farm program and it's really led by farmers for the farmers and we Mike and I can manage the program for them but the reason part of the reason behind doing that the program was two concerns that farmers were having with water quality and sometimes the finger-pointing that was going on without any knowledge behind it and so we were in the Mississippi River base and most of the water that drains from the US is about 41 percent of the u.s. drains down to the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico so in this the third largest watershed in the world and so a lot of things going on there a lot of people live there diverse agriculture huge cities and so it's very difficult just to deter exactly where a lot of these nutrients are coming from but the very protection agency and the USGS the US Geological Survey used a model to get an idea of where they were coming from and based on that model predictions and Natural Resource Conservation Service identified about 40 watersheds for focusing conservation measures and for marking some funds to help farmers implement conservation in those watersheds and so it transpired that there were about five watersheds originally identified it in in Arkansas and the he we really didn't believe why some of those will be the top contributors to of nutrients to the to the Gulf and so we felt that that there was a need for a real data from farms and that's probably the unique aspect of this it's on farm work where there the farmers privilege and so that it's its normal operations of those farms and looking at water quality and in today's presentation you'll you'll see about Jeff Marley and his farmers in the Illinois River watershed partly but mainly mobile civilities in their what we called Beaver reservoir watershed which is a drinking water source for about half a million people now and so there's a real concern to try and maintain the clarity of water you'll hear Jeff in a few minutes and also say that he wants to present a good impression to the public of what real farming is about and so like I said we we were able to get funding and we got four farms and you'll see now we've got actually twelve farms most of them are in what we call a row crop which is east and south part of the state we have four farms in the Northwest Arkansas where there we have more livestock operations poultry beef grazing and one dairy so it's a diverse program and on those farms we would go to those farmers or they would come to volunteer and to be a part of this program it's not right for everybody we did approach sometimes see if they're interested and they said no way if I could in this into this type of a program it opens me up you're gonna the day to me out there and the EPA will come and shut me down line anyway that that was never happened and one of the farmers that was concerned about that actually has been my most vocal advocate and the discovery farmer down which was a subject of a earlier virtual field tour but today we're gonna focus on the Marley farm and what we tend to do is we would go to the farmer talk with him find out what he wants to know more about the malli farm is split between woodland and pastures away grazes about 300 head of cattle and ten poultry houses that have at any one time 230,000 broilers and so those broilers live there and they walk around on benning's pine shavings sawdust and so that creates them in you what it creates a fertilizer and it's a valuable source of nutrients and that's what it's been synergistic but both the poultry and the beef that means that farmers have a cheaper source of fertilizer their pastures grow better which means they can have more head of cattle on on a field and they could before and so it's a win-win in many ways however when you get that many chickens and there's a lot of other farms in this watershed sometimes too much of a good thing is present some concerns and so what we what Jeff wanted to know was how much nutrients were running off from around his poultry houses and EPA had been doing some spot checking in the Chesapeake Bay and then decided to do it up here in Northwest Arkansas they didn't find any problems but certainly farmers thought well we need to look at this ourselves and be proactive and so he wanted to use a grassed waterway he this his idea it was a pasture he wanted to fence the cattle out and see how that feel-good effectively reduce nutrients from going in to the little creek that runs into the water river which runs into the Beaver watershed lake and so that's what we started doing and we put up some equipment there and so this is the tamales it's been a great privilege to be working with with them he has been one of our most well the longest one of the longest discover farmers we've got and so we're really happy and proud to have him and he's been a great spokesperson he's had multiple tours on the farm and the other thing about Jeff he's very humble gives the impression he he doesn't understand a lot but you will be able to see pretty soon that he knows more than it's actually going to give away and I think Mike and I were both agree that we learn more about from his operation and from farming and the pressures than he has from us so we were great pressure privilege to introduce Jeff and thanks [Music] hi I'm Jeff Marley I'm a poultry and cattle producer here in Northwest Arkansas one of the biggest challenges that we're facing and the pressures we feel is our is the nutrient containment from our operation this has gotten a lot of tension in the past we're in a nutrient surplus area but I've used the discovery farm in there and then their assistance in finding the details of you know where on nutrient losses are and how we get to manage to keep the nutrients on the farm and not having any surplus get off the farm we've got abilities to test it and then to see what it is where it is and then to try to make sure that we don't become one of those individuals or one of those operational sites to say hey we've got an overload here and this is excess and what are we going to do is it you know that's that's the biggest challenge that we're starting to feel we're faced with we're being challenged with and that you know I spend most of my time now managing my nutrient management program more than managers actually imagined my livestock operation I became involved with this discovery farm operation after visiting with my Extension agent I was looking to see if my best management practices might be MPs were up to the task of maintaining the nutrient loads on my farm and not letting them get caught up and carried off I'm not too far from there from White River so that was a very high concern of mine visiting with with him he said hey we've got a program going and the individuals when I visited with them Andrew sharply and Mike Daniels and Johnny Gonzales was the Extension agent at the time he said hey this is this is what we're looking for and then it was very parallel to exactly what I was wanting to to find and so far everything that we have done has been very positive and it has worked it's not it's not difficult and you know all a lot of most of it is just implementation and having it set up right my objectives was to find how to control it their objectives was hey he's trying to control it what are the numbers because we did not have any real numbers at that time and they said hey we're going kind of off of educated guesses within if we you know install these monitoring stations on your farm we will then get real numbers I did not have real numbers I had good I had educated ideas I had educated soil testing in numbers that was projections but actual having real data right out of the university labs I did not have and they were going to provide that and so we both were hungry for the same numbers and the data and the information I mean was this we were looking for same same and so it was a perfect timing for both of us just to get into this part that part of this discovery form for this nutrient management after we got the the program often started when then we started getting some data in we was able to know we noticed and went well and the numbers then told us that some of the solutions of the problems that we thought why might would have had to do I did not have to do those I mean one of those I'll just as an example was put infiltration tree strips together and hold dust out of our fans well that we found out that yes it there was an X there was some come out of those fans we all know that it does but it did not migrate that far from the buildings and in the case of the different monitoring stations like as this one on this pond here and then there we have another one on a six seven hundred foot grass filtration strip was the levels that entered those those are set up 80 to 100 feet behind these buildings we were losing 70 to 80 percent of nutrient reduction consumed in the pond and also through that grass filtration strip down to levels of hey this is really real close to what it naturally occurs in this in these stations from the front station to the second station was a three-quarters eighty percent reduction in nutrient load in the testing so what that then gave us confidence in saying hey if we have the ability to put these practices in and implement them around these locations then we don't have to go to spending volumes of money of whether we collect it and you know move that nutrient put it right immediately in a building or a barn which is a handling cost and then move it off farm we can live at it leave it in the buildings and then I was our annual clean-out scope that nutrient load can be moved off in those areas that are very nutrient demanding in the crop fields you know several hours from our location a lot of this data and information that we've got enough working with this discovery farm is aided in the programs and practices that we've implemented with fall right into the conservation practices the wise use practices of wealth of our of my farm and our you know our industry can implement these in my particular case a half a mile off of the farm is the White River the waiver is one of the main supply bodies of Beaver Lake Beaver Lake is the main water source for four to five hundred thousand people in all of Northwest Arkansas then it goes on in the Table Rock bull shoals North Fork and on down the line so I mean we're right here at the head of the point of the spear as the saying goes and so a lot of these practices that we've implemented to judge you know are we keeping our nutrients on farm do we get to move it into a pond for dilution effect before it leaves our control in our body before it moves into the as the saying you know the term that's used the waters of the US or in the other situation where I have the seven eight hundred foot grass filter strip where all this reduces those nutrient levels to where then and when they when they do actually enter into a stream or down that let's just say downstream then they are down at normal levels that you would experience under any flooding conditions and so what we have gained in this was these practices that we've implemented that it we have confidence in saying hey yes we are a nutrient-rich spot but now look at the data look at the numbers that we have composed look at the effort that we've exerted to keep that on site and the effort and the things that we have done to reduce those and get those consumed before it starts moving downstream into those more critical areas you know before it moves on down into Beaver Lake system I mean I'm just one spot but if everyone did it every little one spot adds you know it's back to that Camel it breaks you know the straw that breaks the camel's back every little piece adds up you know flood of answer flood events but this is just daily routines and so pretty soon the little adds up to more and the more and more in the hilly it adds up to the whole hey look we've really reduced it in conjunction with operating this form I had the opportunity was invited to serve on a board of a Conservation Board it's Beaver Lake watershed alliance we've been get designated and given the responsibility through a study of about thirty years ago for the that you know to maintain the watershed of Beaver Lake so that the water that flows in there the individuals that came to me were well aware of what my operation was and my location was was also critical because I was on the river but they also understood that I was part of the overall watershed in the AG recovers you know the weather its business its you know their Urban Development the business the headwaters and that the Forest Service that the farm ground his recreation you know was business doing this and it's it you know we have about a dozen different areas that we have representatives on the board and so I was asked to serve on that nice and I and I agreed it's a voluntary board and so we've been given the designation and the responsibility over looked at the watershed of that goes in to Beaver Lake whether it's right on the lake or plumb up at the headwaters at the point sources as you know as the locations is referred to I'm probably in the point source area instead of right there right there on the lake you know we work in conjunction with Corps of Engineers and other you know they're in us I mean the Forest Service Game and Fish and all the other entities that out there and then there's several other conservation groups that function in our area that where we're all very compatible and we all work together we're all partners and so we get groups together we put together informative meetings whether it's on forest lands their pasture lands and in and in - in particular cases what we've been instrumental on is like in this farm ground that you might seeing up over my shoulder there is aerators we've got one of those that we will provide for individuals to aerate their soil with what that does is you know when most of that's going to be close to river bottoms close to watersheds that will let the rapid influx of water into the soil instead of running off so whatever gathers on top of a sudden gets into the ground and it gets gets held I mean that's one of the main practices one of the main practices that we have facilitated we've got the machine to do that you know and then like I say we get within we have different groups for planting and get you know and cleanup sites we do those you know we do cleanups on the rivers we go out and we look at stream banks and say hey y'all this needs some stabilization that's a tape we need to get you with this group whether it's NRCS or W crc washington county conservation group the so i mean we put that together and and so we have actually became from just a one-person committee how many there's 20 individuals on the board to where we have six or eight individuals now working for us and they're spread out and we get grants to go out and implement these different programs and to monitor and see and get feedback and as time goes on individuals come up with more and more ideas and hey if it's fit if it works we use it and then so far you know our our group is growing and we vent more and more interest of course the dynamics and the and the demographics of Northwest Arkansas are expanding at the rate that it is a group like ours people are always coming to us whether it's just for a small rain garden next to a building to keep their erosion down or is it a bigger location you know is what am i doing well you know how am I get rid of these invasive species that are letting the ground erode and so you know it's it's it's it's a vast array and a multitude of things what I've taken away from this discovery farm program is that hey this is money well spent we got information true data true numbers I've addressed some of this in the past but that we did not have before so that we know now what we are talking about individuals that come and you know the support for this discovery farm through the through the finances of the the Extension Service has created a very positive image of this and so you know then the conclusion while this it was money that's been well spent it's well managed by very with with individuals with not an agenda they have a well intentioned you know objectives and goals and clearly stated to us and we've reached those and now we're looking at different areas that hey maybe we can get information that we don't have relative to this and so they in the end of this is the money and the efforts in the time of the individuals that has been presented and put to this program has been extremely beneficial everyone I've talked to his come back said well we didn't know we had those we have gathered and accumulated knowledge that we did not have before and that we can say now hey we know this to be the case may be exceptions but this is still going to be the case instead of guestimation z-- we actually have real numbers now that we can fall back on and say hey somebody asked some this is what you can expect I would like to thank all those involved whether it's the administration than the funders that you know that has put this program together to gather all this and it's all been you know everyone has been very helpful everyone's very agreeable and one of the biggest offshoots from this for those that so you know that your money has been well spent and your efforts have been well you know all the ones that have that put effort into the discovery farm I will have tour groups on this farm and never fails to have at least one individual come up say hey I did not know this is the way it was done so now we've got another advocate for our side so thank you for supporting this this program I think it's been well worth it thank you for watching today and you know we put our time in and you're all putting your time in thank you very much thank you Jeff for that overview of what you're doing and again it's been a privilege to work with you so what I'd like to just quickly follow up on what Jeff has been talking about is just showing a little bit more of what we do this is a flume that he was standing in front of when it rains water collects in there and go through this little gap here there's a little black tube also will get triggered when it senses water going through there and suck water up into these into this equipment box here you'll see it run by solar power and then we also have a rain gauge here to know how much rain so this is an automated sampling system and it's been used widely a crowd around the world they've really revolutionized a lot of what we do in terms of collecting water samples because before this we'd have to get out there when it rained often in the middle of the night and collect a sample but this will do it for us we just have to get out of there that next day within eight hours and collect two samples but you can see here and want to run through this device and it's the more water that runs through there the higher up it goes up here and that we record that so we can then know how much and how many nutrients of a actually run across and so in that box we have one of these samplers these are automated samplers of water pumped into this bottom container it's run by the solar powers are so charges these marine batteries we do have a few friendly and sometimes not so friendly lodgers in these and samplers but it's then we analyze it we get that sample bring it back to the lab and here strongiy is getting ready to filter the sample then we pass it across the corridor basically in the Don Tyson Center and they analyze it for nutrients fertilizer nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus also how much sediment soil is in that water and from that we can then determine you know how affected though the practices are so just quick over here what we found it Jeff's farm this is where that flume inn was standing in front of this is the other flume we found the water flowing from here around the houses before it gets so our next site down here there's about a 30% reduction in flow of water actually seeps into the ground and this was this is the area that Jeff one of the try out he prepared the area and these are just averages over a year two annual losses just over the six seven years that we've been monitoring so this is a total average of that period the red is it's what's coming off and getting into that first flume and this is after it's been through the green is after it's been through the breast waterway you can see that we're getting quite a large reduction in nutrients it's being retained in that pasture to be fertilizing that pasture this conservation measure that yeah born in the Tri is working this is how much gets into that pond the red is what comes off the house it enters upon this is what in the blue is what is in the pond again you can see that that pond retains a lot of nutrients and those nutrients he uses as a radiation at times and also for drinking water for the cattle around the farm so this is really another way of him recycling some of those nutrients back onto the farm and becoming more sustainable and really making the most value of what he's got out there and so with that I'd like to introduce James McCarthy who works with the beaver water district and he's their Environmental Quality Manager and this the reason that James has graciously taken the time to be with us today is that this is the whole cycle of where that water goes and how important what Jeff is doing but before I let James get on here I just want to remember that the if you have any questions please put them in the Q&A box at the bottom and we'll do our best to answer them we can't we can't answer them all but we'll certainly give it a shot so please use that anything and anything that you think of is really welcome so with that James thank you all right thank you very much dr. sharply for that kind introduction as he said I am James McCarty and I work for beaver water district the water utility in Northwest Arkansas and we serve roughly 350,000 customers from our utility and the remaining utilities on the lake actually serve a total about half a million people in Northwest Arkansas that's one in six are Kansans that are getting their drinking water from Beaver Lake and so if I can let me share with you all just a brief presentation that kind of talks about what we do at beaver water district and also how that applies to the discovery farms and and the research that they're doing there sorry about that technical difficulties while we're waiting on this this is Mike Daniels I want to mention that we have a very strong partner in all this discovery farm program and that's a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service you'll hear throughout from all of our speakers the role that they have played and helping fund and with technical assistance in what we're doing on our discovery farms and so we'll talk a little bit more about that but I do want to acknowledge there may be some seminar webinar series live virtual field trips that we're bringing to you would not be possible without their participation and generous funding toward this effort okay let's try the skin can you see my screen now I'm getting the thumbs up that's great okay so briefly I'm going to talk to you about how we treat water we're cut water comes from in Northwest Arkansas which is Beaver Lake what we're doing to protect the the source of our water and in some about the water quality as well so for just a brief overview of our water treatment process we pump our water out of Beaver Lake from an intake structure on the lake up to our plant where it goes to what's called a flow splitter box and that splitter box essentially just divides the flow between three separate treatment plants now we have three separate treatment plants they all function essentially the same and perform the same set of tasks but as you can imagine when you want to expand because the population area is growing a lot of times you can't just pump more water through a plant you have to build a completely new one and so that's why we have three separate treatment trains that all function essentially the same now from the splitter box it goes to what's called a flocculation sedimentation Basin and within the first structure there we're adding chemicals that are helping the sediment in the water to bind together and form larger particles and then in the section second structure here the sedimentation Basin we're counting on those heavy particles that have kind of bound together to sink to the bottom and in form this layer of sludge so then what happens is the clean water actually overflows the top here where it goes through what's called the line box where lime is added to adjust for pH and then finally it goes into a filtration system where we add chlorine on top and that disinfect the water and then it flows through a mixed aggregate filter media that consists of a coal by-product called anthracite sand and and one or two other things as well once it goes through the filtration which polishes the water and removes any little bit of turbidity or cloudiness the water it goes into what's called our clear well which is essentially our storage where we pump our water to our different customers so at beaver water district we are a wholesaler of of drinking water which means that we essentially have four customers the cities of Fayetteville Springdale Rogers and Bentonville and each of those cities then in turn whole sales out to other cities as well for example Fayetteville sells water to wheeler into Farmington and Elkins but they also sell water to retail to individual customers like residential commercial and industrial customers which is why those customers will have potentially city of Springdale or city of Fayetteville on their water bill and not beaver water district because we're wholesaling or water to them where our water comes from as I said before it's it's from the Beaver Lake and Beaver Lake watershed Beaver Lake is a US Army Corps of Engineers lake that was impounded in 1966 when I started to fill it's been authorized for flood control all along the White River system power generation as well as drinking water supply the watershed is roughly 1,200 square miles and has a land use of around 60% forest 27% pasture and 6% urban and as I said it's a water supply for one in six are Kansans if you look at the map that's shown on the right-hand side of the screen just for reference we've got our different cities here Fayetteville Springdale Rogers and Bentonville and just to the east of that is the entire Beaver Lake watershed so we have the lake up here in the northern part and then this entire southern areas the watershed that drains to the lake and if you look here as Elkins and this is actually where Jeff Marley's farm is located in his discovery farm so safe drinking water starts at the source and I have included an image on the slide here that shows it's actually Lake Erie in the northern parts of the United States and this green business on this lake is what's called cyanobacteria it's a type of algae and it can bloom and a lot of times these blooms can be seen from space and let me tell you that's not a good thing back 2014 the city of Toledo which is kind of down here in the southwest corner the the image they actually had to shut down their drinking water treatment plant for a period of four days because the sign of bacteria blooms started producing toxins and those toxins were deemed harmful to human health and so for a period of four days they had to figure out how to treat their water to remove these toxins and a city of hundreds of thousands of people essentially had to drink bottled water as you can imagine this is not a good thing but this is this is what's called a harmful algal bloom and as a result of sediments and nutrients that end up in these water supplies we also are concerned about pathogens and the level of pathogens that come into our plant all of those have to be disinfected and so obviously the less there are the safer our margins in producing drinking water and then sediment organics are definitely a concern for us because they can have a direct impact on the amount of algae that's produced but also in the formation of things called disinfection by-products and these disinfection by-products also can have health consequences if their levels are too high so the main thing that we are really concerned with and that we try to control is algal growth and algae just like your backyard tomato plant because it is a plant itself you know needs nutrients it means the right temperature and sunlight conditions and the right water conditions as well and so hydrology and water chemistry within the reservoir are important things in determining how well algae will grow when you're thinking about okay how do we reduce the amount or contain the amount of algae that grows on a lake the most cost-effective thing to control here is probably going to be the amount of nutrients that enter that water body and so where do our nutrients come from well they come from a lot of different places urban areas residential industrial commercial but since we're talking about discovery farms here and this is an agricultural presentation we'll just talk about in terms of agriculture and so Jeff really eloquently put it and then dr. sharply kind of followed up with his examination of those flumes and the runoff that goes over the fields nutrients are definitely carried and runoff from agriculture and the discovery farm has been excellent in documenting how some of these best management practices like grass filter strips and overland flow can reduce as we've seen the discovery farm the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen that are ending up in waters of the United States the concentration of nutrients and agriculture tends to be higher because there is the application of nutrients to help plants grow but also the application of litters and manures that contain those nutrients and then we have issue issues of legacy loading so loading is a term that seems to describe the amount or mass of nutrients or sediment that enters a lot of water body so when you're thinking about legacy that's going to be stuff that's been deposited down over potentially generations and that stuff has the tendency to slowly leak back into a wate body and then once those nutrients and sediments actually get to the reservoir in this case Beaver Lake we have this issue of nutrient cycling where algae potentially use nutrients within the lake they die they settle back to the bottom and then those nutrients can come back out again to be used by algae again over and over again the cycle before those nutrients finally leave the reservoir sometimes maybe even years or decades later so what are we doing at beaver water district to try to combat this problem of sediment and nutrients port to Beaver Lake ultimately to try to reduce or limit the amount of algal growth that affects our drinking water treatment operations well first we have a pretty robust education and outreach program where we are talking to people about the contaminants that end up in Beaver Lake and what they can do to try to prevent those things we do quite a bit of research in-house and through different partners including University of Arkansas extension and University Arkansas researchers we help fund and participate in stream restoration and bank stabilization efforts bank stabilization efforts within a lot of times the riparian zone which is you know the roughly 50 to 200 feet on either side of the stream we also engage with agriculture commercial and residential interests and stake holders to try to implement best management practices and that's really where this discovery farm kind of drinking water partnership comes into play we are heavily invested in the agricultural community to try to encourage the use of these best practices that have been researched and vetted through the Arkansas discovery farms program in-house we also do controlled burns that helps reduce the amount of organics that flow into the lake and also helps to infiltrate more water so we have less runoff over our land we work with the Northwest Arkansas Land Trust to help acquire or purchase conservation easements and those help preserve some of the lands with the best environmental benefit out there within the watershed and then we do a lot of stream and lake water quality sampling in-house during the summer work probably out on that Lake er in the watershed at least two or three times a week collecting samples and those samples give us an idea of the condition of the water body and also trend analysis to see maybe which streams or areas of the lake are improving or getting worse or staying the same but I've actually got a little video to share with you that kind of highlights some of our efforts that's a really short clip that shows just us out on the lake and our sampling efforts did you know the beaver water tissue protects the public health by monitoring water quality within a lake on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for a snapshot a time like today what sort of things are in the water is there a lot of nutrients is there a lot of algae we call those things contaminants and they can potentially affect how we treat the water and deliver that water to you long term over the course of a summer even over the course of years we want to see how the lake is changing over time each of these sites may be impacted by things going on inside the lake things go on inside the watershed land use of the watershed all of those things are gonna have an impact on water quality and when we look at that data we bring it back to the lab and start to analyze it is there a potential for these contaminants to reach the intake and if it reached the intake what sort of changes in our treatment strategy or treatment technologies what we need and would there be any impacts on the quality of the water the bottom line is we're always going to continue to deliver clean safe drinking water so that's really our goal is to deliver clean safe drinking water but there's a lot that goes into that process to make sure that our source water is good and can and continues to be good for the foreseeable future and to make sure that we're providing the best water treatment and safest water to our customers so one of the ways that we do that and accomplish all this stuff is through source water protection funding and in 2016 our board adopted to allocate four cents on every thousand gallons that we sell to a source water protection fund which results in about 850 thousand dollars a year right now that goes exclusively toward source water protection activities now these can be stream restorations conservation easements support to our partners like the beaver watershed alliance and this funding is great because it's proportionate to water use which means that an industry that maybe uses a lot of water ends up contributing more towards source water protection than maybe a residential user that doesn't use as much water but our board has been very supportive of these efforts highlighted by the late John Lewis who was passed PWD board president he said it's about building something sustainable water water can always be taken out of the lake for drinking we want to preserve the water quality that Lake for future generations because it is such an economic engine for this region so the main way we do that is really just through working together and in cooperation with partners our main partners the beaver watershed Alliance and we provide them with extensive funding to go out and engage stakeholders within the watershed this means landowners residential commercial agricultural producers and and they're tasked with education but also in finding ways to reduce the amount of sediment nutrients that are transported to the lake we also always try to find alignment of mutual interests which means that we don't really exclude any partner if we can find some common ground and some things that we can work on together then we're going to work with you we believe strongly in agricultural land stewardship which is why we promote so many programs and have funded a lot of these programs to implement best management practices on agricultural lands in one great example of that is through the regional conservation partnership program or our CPP which is a program that we've started here in Northwest Arkansas through the NRCS now our our CPP is for the West Fork of White River which is one of the main tributaries to Beaver Lake and it's roughly an eight point six million dollar a funding mechanism half of it funded through NRCS and the other half funded through partners like the district which hopes to achieve were in year four or five and so we're coming close to the end but hopes to achieve one two miles of river river restoration on the West Fork White River two to four miles of a riparian restoration so those are the areas on either side of the stream and a very large eighty percent decrease in the amount of sediment and nutrients that are transported from westfork to Beaver Lake and we're doing that through this our CPP funding mechanism which includes Environmental Quality incentives program through NRCS of roughly 2.2 million dollars and that's money that's going directly to agricultural producers for best management practices then there's PL 566 which is a funding mechanism that was originally intended for large watershed improvement projects and we are using for stream restoration on the West Fork with roughly six million dollars then we have some additional funding in monitoring and education but for us the big win was that we were able to leverage roughly a million dollars on our part in contributions to achieve this eight point six million dollar our CPP project which is an eight to one leverage which is exactly what we are hoping to do with our source water protection funding is is leverage large amounts of money to bring into the watershed and help agricultural producers as well as you know residential commercial and industrial interests as well all of these with the goal to reduce the amount of nutrient and sediments that are transported to the lake and help maintain the water quality of that lake for future generations and with that I'm going to turn it back over to dr. sharply and I just want to thank you all for the opportunity to share a little bit about what the district is doing in Beaver Lake and also just want to highlight again how important this discovery farms program has been to us in helping to research and vet a lot of these practices that are being used today by producers in the entire region thank you very much James and that's really good you eloquently just parceled everything up as to why it's important to protect our water and we really appreciate time you taken to be with us today so I just want to kind of wrap up quickly so that gives you time to still put some questions down in the Q&A and then Mike can answer them all I hope anyway I just want to just get a bit more idea of the program just the basic big picture 20,000 foot whatever you want to call it 3,000 but view of it it's more than just collecting data its facilitating farmers to be proactive and rather than being for what to do when the researchers come in they are part of them part of it and that's a critical part of this whole process I mean this is what the discovery films have really been important across the u.s. oh and other similar programs that you were engaging the farmers to be part of the solutions that might come up on their own property I think you know there's at least in Arkansas we have great collaborations with Farm Bureau and the farmers and they've and Congress in engaging farmers rather than you know ignoring this and burying the heads and saying that we don't have a problem they recognized that they'd rather be a part of the process and it's also you know involving them in the solutions and I think one of the big things Mike and I have talked to many different groups state legislatures but farmers carry more and hey be safe Mike but that I kept there carry more credibility of them than we do and so farmer to farmer education is a real product of this the farmers listen to other farmers they also watch what others are doing and they may not adapt what everything that gets done but if they adapt a little bit of it then that's a win for everybody and if they see what Jeff's doing is working in a ward for him they're more liable to be engaged in the conservation that process of this is critical and it's a real fundamental part now I think of outreach and extension in Arkansas it also educates policy makers and the people that like Jeff says come on to the farm and say I never knew this and this is what happened I thought that such as such it's not what people think and that is really important educating policymakers educating the general public to what farming is that you know where the food that they assume that comes from the supermarket actually actually comes from what's of his but into that to get it to into the you know on the table from field to walk so it's engaging that other sector but I think one of the things that we found was really important to this whole process is the engagement and the involvement of the farmers is not for everybody some of them shy away from you know the public I just want to get on with it was work that's fine we respect that but they still part of the program but the others that want to show what they're doing and so it's a symbolic but I think the critical part here is empowerment and we're powering farmers to be a part of that change and of that process so I will let my take over thank you [Music] thank you Andrew first up on mute okay thank you Andrew I want to thank over speakers today Andrew James McCarty and most of all Jeff Marley who's taking time out of his busy schedule to join us today and it's not just Jeff you when you work with Jeff you're gonna work with all the Marley's Marsa their children just a great family and we're so appreciative of the effort that they make to accommodate us I also want to thank NRCS they they are providing the funding through a grant to dr. Julie Robinson who's the PI on the grant to produce these virtual real time field trips for us and I think it one theme you heard throughout these speakers is the fact that NRCS provides funding they love different mechanisms first of all they fund a lot of our discovery farms through equip and that's third conservation activity 201 and 202 and we're lucky today that in attendance we've had Carla Anderson who oversees that program nationally for NRCS and then we also have Roger cousins our state water quality specialist who oversees the program in Arkansas but we do a lot of educating on tering through conservation activity enculturation if you wanted to do secondly you saw that they do a lot of cost sharing with farmers but then they also do grants to help us look at specific items related to some water conservation but the third thing they do is they provide funding for the what you saw that the Beaver Lake water district is doing is the resource conservation partnership program so they are a very big part of all of our efforts here in Arkansas and trying to protect our natural resources we've got some questions and the first one that we have andrew is for you it is the question about how economical is it to lower the nutrient levels on these farms thanks Mike that's a good question and he's one that everybody I guess his fundamental in the back of the mind is it's not easy economically it probably isn't economically that costly it just takes time you can grow crops or you could go pasture then you cut that hay you remove those nutrients and slowly you but you can take it down so you can reduce it that way there really isn't once especially for phosphorus once the nutrients are pretty high in soil there's not you can add things but then you run into problems of what problem was what you're gonna add is not going to create another problem so I'm I guess it my best answer is it's not that expensive to reduce it but it takes time and so the best option is to avoid it getting high in the first place to reduce alter nutrients and in the soil and the same in in the lake so I think the cheapest way most cost-effective way sorry would be to stop or reduce those increases from the get-go thank you this next question is for James cuz people like ever had an algal bloom and the follow-up is that what is the current condition of Beaver Lake nutrient wise so has it ever had an algal bloom and what's the current condition yes so most water bodies are gonna experience an algal bloom at some point and Beaver Lake certainly has had a fair share of them but I think maybe what the the questioner is asking really is a harmful algal bloom and there's a big difference there algal blooms happen all the time where it's harmful ones are gonna be ones that are gonna adversely affect either aquatic or human health and as of right now we have not experienced a harmful well it seems that we've lost the audio from James think he furrows if he gets on will be well go ahead James we consider it adequate for drinking water treatment which is why our goal really is to maintain the water quality okay thank you James I've got another question for andrew is the pond considered a conservation practice and if so how does it function it is it functions by collecting water that would otherwise go into into a creek or I'll leave that farm so it also you could use it to reduce erosion so it is considered a BMP I think its main function would be as a water collection for cattle for drinking water source or to reuse that water I think a secondary benefit might be that you know if we're tracking nutrients like it did does on Jeff's but I think the main that main real the main benefits in what NRCS would would a doctor would be to would be to collect water that would be a drinking water source and also reaching for water running off thanks Mike yes Andrew and James this question is for both of you because I think you bring a different perspective on it but the question is are nutrients really considered a contaminant and maybe saying excess nutrients would be more accurate most of y'all address that go first not technically considered a contaminant am would probably more like a chemical or an oil or a hydrocarbon or something like that but for our purposes we we kind of lump excess nutrients which is probably the more accurate way to say th t in in with other contaminants or things that are gonna cause concerns for us in in drinking water treatment okay thank you I would add that you right it is excess nutrients would be a would be a better term it's not a contaminant like James says what it's a fine line and it's a fine balance between algae provide a ecosystem in waters rivers lakes whatever as a source often the food for the fish and so it's just like anything else on the land you need a feed for some nutrients for those to grow to have a healthy aquatic environment but if that's if there becomes an excess of nutrients then those penalty can keep growing and as James alluded to it can have come from algal blooms but you could also have those out you will like plan to use oxygen and so they can deplete the oxygen in the water we've built like the Gulf of Mexico as you've got a hypoxic zone so it is a balance and I think we have to remember that having some nutrients in waters is beneficial for having a what we would call an ideal ecosystem it's just when they get above certain thresholds which EPA have defined that we run into some detrimental uses which would impair the use of that one that water would be in in case of beaver it's for drinking water thanks Andrew where we want to thank you again for joining us today we're gonna have to wrap it up if you do have questions that were unanswered you can always email myself or Andrew my email is M Daniels at UA ext bu we also encourage you to visit our web page www.uaex.edu to get more information apologize we couldn't get to all the questions but our time is up but again thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to learn more about protecting source water and Beaver Lake thank you thank you for joining us for the Soil and Water Conservation virtual field trip [Music] this broadcast is funded by NRCS and produced by the University of Arkansas system Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service to find out more about soil and water conservation visit UAE x-naught ad you [Music]