Leo Lease appeared before the Sac County supervisors on May 24, 2011 to have addressed his concerns regarding erosion control in drainage districts 2 and 51 in Sac County. Lease is the landowner whose land through which all of the water in the district drains. According to Lease, addressing the erosion and water quality issues facing the district has to happen through a three pronged engineering, administrative, and social approach.
Lease characterized the Sac County supervisors attitude toward drainage as one of merely getting rid of the water and then washing their hands, (so to speak,) of all further responsibility. Of particular concern to Mr. Lease are nitrates which he claims people downstream have to spend considerable money getting rid of in order to make their water usable.
Lease seemed concerned that as the urban areas grow they will gain the power to dictate what farmers do with their land and he indicated that he would rather start taking care of the problem of erosion and chemicals in the water now rather than be at the mercy of the future urban populations.
Lease advocated that the Sac County supervisors, in addition to taking care of their legal obligation to control erosion in the drainage districts, also take the opportunity to make a statement to the rest of the state by voluntarily taking steps to improve the quality of the water that they are sending downstream. He suggested that by taking this voluntary stand now the supervisors will be setting themselves up to take advantage of possible future funding should any future funding be designated to the counties for water quality improvement.
Lease suggested to the supervisors that they do a feasibility study to find out just what it would cost to start putting best management practices into place that would improve water quality. He suggests that while conducting the study they do so without regard to cost so that they could tell exactly where they stand.
Lease summed up his stance by saying that what he is about is enabling future generations to continue to be able to have productive land for their use.
As he concluded his presentation he asked for input from the supervisors.
Supervisor Rick Hecht, in his opening statement, said that he agreed with Lease in that the county is charged with controlling erosion in the drainage districts. The water quality part on the other hand Hecht characterized as “more difficult to do “. According to Hecht water quality management will now be more difficult due to new Federal rules that make the buffer strip program that catches a lot of the runoff unfeasible to maintain. On top of that slowing down drainage would be impeding the rights of other property owners that they are entitled to by code.
Lease seemed to disagree, indicating that he doesn’t think his fellow farmers are mercenary about the land and that if they only have the proper education they would see the value of slowing that runoff in order to preserve the land for future generations.
At this point in the conversation Hecht turned the conversation over to Ivan Droesler who explained that in this particular case the property owners have petitioned for drainage relief and that though there will be a larger volume of water all together, the peak water that will be running through the districts in question will not increase due to the fact that there still ponding areas that will hold onto storm water and released it slowly over 48 hour period into the tile system. Droesler went on to explain that in order to put Mr. Leases plan into place farmers would have to divert agricultural and into treatment wetland.
According to Droesler, Iowa’s changing weather patterns which are producing bigger more intense storms which are causing increased need for more drainage. In light of that reality the current drainage in the district is too restrictive and there is a need for additional drainage relief at the upper end. To accomplish that they have to go through a wetland check to verify how many of these parcels upstream have any actual true wetlands left.
When asked if he would be willing to convert his ag ground into treatment wetland and which would have the effect of allowing the district to slow down drainage on the upper end, Lease indicated that he would be willing to do that but also suggested that he viewed that type of solution as a mere spot fix and would rather see a comprehensive plan in which the clock was turned back and more wetland area was integrated back into the drainage district.
Droessler disagreed saying, ”That’s the trouble with many of the false ideas out there that going back to having small little wetlands and inpondment areas in the upper portion of the watershed do very little for treatment in regard to nitrates, because the water that you’re trying to treat is after that water has moved through the soil profile and picked up the nitrates. Basically putting a vegetative wetland in little pockets throughout the upper portion of the watershed will not effectively treat nitrates out of the water. That’s been studied through Iowa State [University ]. They have over 20 years of study gathering on that issue. ”
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