Water conservation project takes on new territory in Eastern Iowa

REINBECK, Iowa (KCRG) – A water conservation project in Eastern Iowa is gaining ground.

Earlier this month, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship announced an expansion of a project aimed at improving the state’s water quality.

Tuesday, TV9 spoke to two brothers who installed a wetland on their property as part of the initiative.

The Schildroth brothers had problems with part of their property for years.

“When we were kids this was a pasture,” said Tyler Schildroth.

When it didn’t make money as a pasture, they turned to farming it.

“We just kind of kept getting stuck. So didn’t seem like a piece we should continue to farm,” said Tyler.

They said the problem was a wet spot that simply wouldn’t go away. Rather than keep fighting nature, they leaned into to. The result: a Water Quality Wetland.

Wetlands, like the one the Schildroths installed in August, are just one part of the conservation project that started in 2017 in the Black Hawk Creek watershed.

“Black Hawk Creek covers— it originally covered 217,000 acres. But now with our expansion into [the] Wolf Creek [watershed], we cover 310,000 acres,” said Faith Luce, Watershed Project Coordinator with the Natural Resource Conservation Service.

The project encourages the use of cover crops and other practices that help stop agricultural water pollution.

“The plants and the bacteria that are in the wetland will denitrify [water],” said Luce. “It is pretty much the best way to clean up water.”

When nitrogen runs off into bodies of water, just like in fields, it can act like fertilizer and cause excessive growth of algae. That then causes a host of other problems including so-called dead zones, areas of water with low oxygen.

But the brothers think there’s more of an awareness of these issues than in years past.

“I guess I feel like there’s been a lot more availability of programs or visibility of programs, I guess I could say, on our local government level,” said Jason Schildroth.

These brothers said turning a small part of their property into wetland was something they could that would help others.

“I know, there has been some negative connotations in the past to farmers from folks that live in the city, right? ‘What are farmers doing to the drinking water that the folks in the city are drinking?’” said Jason. “That’s one of the things that you read about, and, like I say, you just try to do the right thing.”

These brothers also believed conservation practices were the best way to help themselves, too.

“This is where our ancestors were. And we want to be able to farm it for our generation, and hopefully, our kids’ generation,” said Tyler.

Copyright 2023 KCRG. All rights reserved.