Water, Science and the Environment RSS feed for this section

Nitrogen is a critical input for agricultural productivity and a potent pollutant in the water environment. Significant private investment is made in the former, but significant state investment is required to address the environmental degradation from excess nitrogen in drinking water.

Fields in the Root River watershed that have been intensively monitored by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) for four years have been found to lose from 10 lbs. to more than of 34 lbs. of nitrogen per acre. Who loses when fertilizer is lost? All of us: the farm family; neighbors hoping to swim or fish in local lakes that are so fertile that they grow an excess of algae and plants, smothering the aquatic life; small-town residents that have to shoulder the tax burden to drill a new well or build a new water treatment plant so they can drink their groundwater; and taxpayers who fund the monitoring and cleanup of the state’s increasingly polluted waters.

As the lead state agency for fertilizer management, the MDA must provide guidance so that fertilizers do not degrade our water. Their current draft rule is far from ideal and is only working on the edges, on small-scale changes that will not reverse the trend of increasing nitrogen contamination in groundwater.

A future BMP? Corn planted in kura, a clover-like perennial. Rosemount Research and Outreach Center, University of Minnesota, 2016

The draft rule offers farmers in the most vulnerable areas the opportunity to voluntarily implement best management practices (BMPs). However, if farmers choose not to do so, they face no real consequences.

Recommended BMPs haven’t been demonstrated to reduce groundwater pollution, but instead they benefit crops. And if a more effective practice becomes available, a farmer won’t be required to adopt it. Since farmers are already doing most of what is being proposed in this rule, overall trends in nitrogen in the groundwater won’t be reversed.

The MDA is only testing groundwater that they have judged to be at risk and water that is already contaminated. Other areas do not have a way to get tested.

What should a proactive rule intended to protect groundwater and reverse trends contain?

Ideally, a rule 28 years in the making would require increased efficiency of nitrogen use. This would save the producer and the state money while reducing loss of nitrogen to the environment.

The rule should establish measurable goals and limits for nitrogen loss, provide for ongoing testing of affected groundwater until trends reverse, and notify affected well owners who did not participate in the program.

Only after widespread excessive application is controlled should further reductions be made by targeting vulnerable areas in the way proposed in the current draft. This could include low-cost but effective solutions for producers, such as cover crops. But those efforts alone are unlikely to reverse the current trends.

The MDA is accepting comments on the Nitrogen Fertilizer Rule through Friday, August 25. Learn more here and add your voice to the process.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

This week Freshwater Society convened a dozen people for a day-long meeting and field tour addressing the seemingly unlikely intersection of muddy rivers, landslide hazards, and NASA satellites.

In Minnesota, large and intense rainstorms are on the rise. Saturated ground that is hit by an intense rain event is more likely to fail. When river bluffs give way they pollute streams but also create hazards.

Freshwater Society is participating in a statewide LCCMR-funded project to inventory land vulnerable to landslides and quantify its sediment input to rivers. We are also partnering with Hennepin County Emergency Management to map their vulnerable slopes. They hope to predict slope failure and avoid hazardous consequences not only to natural resources but also to human life and infrastructure.

Drawing on the Minnesota roots of Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum of NASA Goddard Space Center, we convened a meeting of our local partners when she came home for a visit. We wanted to understand her work using the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission to predict precipitation-driven landslides worldwide.

Although Minnesota is not the most landslide-prone region Dr. Kirschbaum has seen, she attended the grade school that was impacted by the tragic Lilydale landslide and understands how important it is to Minnesotans to understand their vulnerabilities. She agrees that we are on the right track with our efforts, applauded our collaboration, and gave us valuable data leads. It is always good to have allies in high places.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

What’s the solution to the opioid epidemic? Can we really just rely on treatment for the addicted or do we have to address the over-prescription of painkillers, and target the doctors and pharmaceutical industry that supply them?

And how does this topic fit in a water quality blog?

I visited with a neighbor last weekend whose family has been farming for three generations. Keeping the fields “just so” is important to him and his 90-some-year-old mother who still resides there. A couple of his many brothers still help — out of nostalgia — but he is the main farmer on these couple hundred acres. He has restored his dad’s John Deere one-row, horse-drawn plow and has plans for this grain truck.

We serve together on a local watershed board so he knows full well how nutrient loading in surface waters renders them green, stagnant pools this time of year, and he even attended an all-day event to learn about conservation practices. He hates the look of residue on his fields in the fall but has learned to live with it since it’s recommended to reduce erosion. He has cut back, just a little, on the nitrogen he applies to the corn — about 10%, maybe 30% on the beans. He is trying to follow the 4Rs: right time, right place, right source, right amount. He was mowing his grassed waterways for hay the day I visited. Cutting back any more on chemicals, planting those new crops he’s heard of like perennial wheat, or getting assistance to put in BMPs isn’t going to happen though, because he’d rather do it by his own rules and not someone else’s. He’s got his habits.

Following recommendations set by the University of Minnesota, he is trying to be a good steward, using precision techniques. His mother has no idea that satellite guidance now keeps the rows so straight, but she approves.

And the crops look amazing! The corn stalks bulge where the ears are filling out and tasseling. The beans are picture perfect with tiny purple blossoms.

To solve the nitrate epidemic in surface and groundwater, do we continue to focus on more user education? Or is it time deal with those who over-prescribe or supply the potent chemical?

It’s a question that is particularly relevant as the Minnesota Department of Agriculture is developing a rule for nitrogen management, by mandate of the Groundwater Protection Act of 1989. Twenty-eight years later, they have released a draft rule that is open for public comment until August 25.

We think it is inadequate and so will be sending in a comment. We encourage you to form your own opinion and do the same. Nitrate levels in groundwater continue to rise, affecting more and more rural well-owners and towns. It is a societal problem that will not be solved by offering only recommendations.

This is a system problem, not a farmer problem. We need the Department of Ag to provide real solutions that revise guidelines and create measurable goals.

— Carrie Jennings, research & policy director

Phenology is the observance of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate (ice out!), plants, and animals. We include a ton of such information in each year’s Weatherguide Environment™ Calendar and Almanac by teaming up with the phenomenal Jim Gilbert.

The USA National Phenology Network compiles a lot of this information and recently put together a national picture of how advanced spring was in various parts of the country. It’s an eye opener. You see firsthand that Minnesota was over two weeks early; it’s amazing how much of the U.S. was that or more.

Freshwater Society ties into this in two ways. We just sent the 2018 Weatherguide calendar, with its extensive phenology content, to the printer this week and are already taking orders from people who pounce on their Christmas shopping early.

Secondly, we’re working with cities and watersheds to facilitate discussions about how communities will adapt to changing conditions. For example, stormwater sewers built more than a decade ago are likely undersized — city engineers are now anticipating larger and more intense storms when they design new sewers. We help communities figure out what to do and how they want to accomplish it.

— Steve Woods, executive director

Roman road near Vulci; romanobritain.org/12_innovations/inv_roads.htm

I met a woman who worked on restoring rivers in the U.K. Much like our goals here, she was directed by E.U. policy to restore the condition of the stream to pre-settlement conditions. In Minnesota, that is a mere 200 years or so. In the U.K.? Pre-Roman — 100 B.C. to 450 A.D. — was what she was shooting for, a seemingly impossible task! (Well, start by taking out those pesky Roman roads).

The first task in restoring a water body is in knowing what it used to be. We are lucky in that we can extract information from original land surveyors’ reports to understand what the landscape looked like when they walked section lines. They recorded the witness trees at section corners and sketched in vegetation and shorelines. We can even learn the width of certain streams, in rods that is. Those surveyor notes have been scanned and are available online (in case you’re curious about a particular place) but prior to that were compiled in the so-called Marschner map that records pre-settlement vegetation.

mngeo.state.mn.us/chouse/land_use_historic.html

From this map we can see that about a third of the Minnesota River watershed and a lot more of the Red River watershed were in wet prairie or wetland (darker yellow areas). These shallow depressional areas stored water and allowed it to soak in slowly, replenishing groundwater rather than sending it directly to the streams. Too much water in the streams causes more frequent flooding, erosion of stream banks, turbid water, permanently wider valleys, and infilled floodplain lakes.

Today the depressional storage areas or prairie potholes are almost entirely gone, as are many of the shallow lakes. Town names like Bird Island and Buffalo Lake just don’t make sense in a drained landscape. Ditching and tiling have resulted in a wholesale rearrangement of our drainage system. Most of us are unaware of these rural equivalents to our gutter and storm sewer system. We count on them in the metro; farmers count on them in their fields. But at what cost to water quality? In both places, slowing water down before it reaches the stream would be beneficial.

One of the best approaches to returning our rivers to more reasonable flows and sediment loads is to again store water on the land so streams will begin to heal themselves. This is an ongoing focus of the work of Freshwater Society. Soak it up, Minnesota. It’s good for all water in the state.

— Carrie Jennings, research & policy director

I inadvertently started humming a song from 1905 as I was reading Dan Egan’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. (Check out a recent interview with Dan on MPR News with Tom Weber.)

School kids in Ohio (and probably New York) were taught this song that documents the experience of delivering goods by the fastest way possible at the time—canal boat. Here’s the ear worm for you.

I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
She’s a good old worker and a good old pal
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
We’ve hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay
And every inch of the way we know
From Albany to Buffalo….

There’s a Bruce Springsteen version that might have made it much cooler, but that was after my time.

The hey-day of the canal system was brief. However, in this attempt to open up the Midwest to Atlantic markets, we inadvertently impacted the Great Lakes ecosystem from the top of the food chain to the bottom in ways that are still unfolding. The lakes are forever changed.

The top predator fish in the Great Lakes—lake trout—were decimated by the invasive and spectacularly ugly sea lamprey. The cry of “lamprey” by a swimmer where I lifeguarded on Lake Erie could clear the water faster than any whistle. Kids knew that they attached to almost anything moving through the water and sucked the blood out. Worse than leeches.

Massive schools of the invasive salt-water herring called alewives had short-lived population explosions followed by wholesale die-offs. The worst die-off in Chicago in 1967 created a huge disposal problem, not to mention an awful smell. Just the memory of it made the people I worked with on the beaches of Lake Michigan anxious at certain times of year.

Even Lake Erie’s recent issue with toxic blue-green algae in Toledo’s drinking water can be traced back to the changes wrought by the opening of the Great Lakes to waters and biota from elsewhere. It’s so 1970s for Lake Erie to turn toxic and green (like the shades and the Princess Leia hair-do.)

With our modern perspective we can smugly say they should have figured out that canals were only going to be economically viable for a short time. But if we are honest, we can see how our choices for economic prosperity can blind us to unintended impacts on water resources.

What are we doing that will make people generations from now shake their heads?   What would make the list for the short-term-gains-for-long-term -havoc award? Extra points for anyone who comes up with a better name for the award.

1. Over-salting our roadways? Salt is toxic and builds up in lakes and our drinking water. Salting the earth was done in the ancient Near East and during the Middle Ages to conquered cities to curse their re-inhabitation. Are we cursing our own rivers and lakes so that we can drive fast in winter?
2. Crude oil leaks? A pipeline in Bemidji in 1979 that released 100,000 gallons into the ground is still being studied 40 years later. The oil and its degradants continue to move into the aquifer and vapors are emitted from the soil. It’s not going away anytime soon.
3. Millions of tons of nitrogen fertilizer applied to agricultural fields for increased yields, some of which invariably leaches away? The result is water we can’t drink and crops we can’t sell.

Look into your crystal ball and tell me what’s on your list.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director

I learned of a farm family in west central Minnesota that spends about $70,000 each year to buy fertilizer for their farm. Corn fertilizer costs have ranged from $120-200 per acre in the last few years so I’m guessing that this family is applying the recommended amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to about 400 acres of corn. When their bags are delivered in the early spring, this mortgageable amount of fertilizer fills the entryway of their house.

I am sure that this farm family does not want to lose one granule of this huge investment. And yet, unknowingly or certainly unintentionally, that is what is happening to a lot of fertilizer that is being applied to farm fields across Minnesota. It is lost.

Fields in the Root River watershed that have been intensively monitored by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) for four years  lose on average 1.4 lbs of phosphorus per acre (range of <0.1 to 8.3) each year. The phosphorus can dissolve and leave with water, primarily when the ground is frozen in March, or it can move as a particle attached to the sediment, primarily in May and June before the leafy crop canopy protects the soil. This year, look for an earlier dissolved phosphorus spike because of our warm February.

Nitrogen also moves with water — from tile to ditch to rivers, and into groundwater. Annual nitrogen loss in the monitored fields in the Root River ranges from 10 lbs to more than of 34 lbs/acre.

Who loses when fertilizer is lost? All of us: the farm family with the entryway full of fertilizer; neighbors hoping to swim or fish in local lakes that are so fertile that they grow an excess of algae and plants, smothering the aquatic life; small-town residents that have to shoulder the tax burden to build a new water treatment plant so they can drink their groundwater; and taxpayers who fund the monitoring and clean-up of the state’s increasingly polluted waters.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture wants farmers to use soil temperatures as a guide to proper fall nitrogen applications. (photo: farmindustrynews.com)

Isn’t it better and cheaper to apply less fertilizer and keep what is applied in place? Yes.

The MDA is the lead state agency for fertilizer management and it is their role to provide guidance so fertilizers do not degrade our water. They have taken initial steps of giving farmers in the most vulnerable areas the opportunity to voluntarily implement best management practices to mitigate the effects of nitrogen pollution. For example, they recommended that these farmers restrict fall and winter application of nitrogen, a time when crops are not growing and using nitrogen. Even commodity groups are stepping up and promoting efficiencies and outreach efforts to reduce nitrogen loss.

It’s a start. If farmers do not voluntarily adopt best management practices, the next steps will be to introduce regulatory action and restrictions. It is our job to make sure farmers and the MDA make adequate and timely progress in achieving their goals.

— Carrie Jennings, research and policy director