News-Sentinel.com

Friday, 11/10/2000

TROUBLED WATERS

Fish Creek serves as a model for the St. Joseph



News-Sentinel photo by Steve Linsenmayer
Tree roots Tree roots on the shore of Fish Creek in Steuben County. Trees and other plants on the riverbank help keep sediment from finding its way into the water.

By KEVIN KILBANE of The News-Sentinel

Fort Wayne water-quality officials decided in 1995 they had to act to protect the city's drinking water. But how could they have an impact on a St. Joseph River watershed that spreads across three states and 1,075 square miles?

For a model, they had to look only about 35 miles upstream: Fish Creek in DeKalb and Steuben counties.

"This is one of the few streams you see like this left," said Larry Clemens, manager of the Nature Conservancy's Upper St. Joseph River Project, as he stood on a bluff overlooking a spot where Fish Creek's clear, steadily moving water snakes through a stand of burr oak, ash, maple and black cherry trees. "It hasn't been straightened out and cleaned."

The environmental organization's interest in the creek stems from its diversity. Fish Creek supports 43 species of fish and 31 species of mussels -- including three mussels on the federal endangered species list.

The conservancy has worked to protect Fish Creek for eight years. To reduce fertilizer and pesticide runoff and erosion on land throughout the creek's watershed, Clemens' office has relied on education, incentives and the involvement of local government and landowners.

"That's what we are really after," said Clemens, whose office expanded its work a year ago to the East Fork of the St. Joseph's West Branch in Hillsdale County, Mich. "How can man do his thing on land and still protect the environment?"

On a recent weekday afternoon, about 30 farmers and landowners from the East Fork watershed gathered with more than a dozen agricultural and wildlife agency staff on the front lawn of Reading United Methodist Church in Reading, Mich. At the Nature Conservancy's invitation, they had come to learn more about efforts to protect the East Fork.

Without some of the conservation measures already put in place by farmers, Clemens told the group, the East Fork never would have remained one of the most pristine streams in the Great Lakes area.

But the goal of the day's program was to educate landowners about how their work on land affects the quality of life in the East Fork. Within minutes, they boarded a bus to see the stream firsthand.

Later, Clemens and Pete Badra, an aquatic zoologist from Michigan State University, stood in the stream. They talked about the habitat needs of the 22 mussel species found in the East Fork, including the federally endangered clubshell. Soon Badra was passing three-ridge mussels, pocketbook mussels and Wabash pigtoes through the crowd.

"The biggest threat to mussels is sediment," said Jim Lake, a representative of the Clean Water Indiana program who has been helping on the Fish Creek and East Fork projects. "We are trying to protect the stream, and the way to do it is up on the land."



News-Sentinel photo by Steve Linsenmayer
Wading A Nature Conservancy information night near Reading, Mich., began with a trip to the St. Joseph River's East Fork, where aquatic zoologist Pete Badra talked about mussels and how farming impacts them. Wading in the St. Joseph River, the Conservancy's Larry Clemens looked for mussels in a clear-bottom bucket while Badra talked to landowners.

By leaving all or some of last year's crop stubble on a field, no-till and conservation-tillage planting can significantly reduce erosion. Buffer strips of grass or trees filter soil, fertilizer and pesticides from rainwater before it runs into a stream.

Eroded soil can smother mussels and other stream life. Pesticides can kill fish and insects, while fertilizer can cause explosive plant growth that robs the water of oxygen.

The Nature Conservancy offers incentive payments to help landowners plant grass strips or trees. A program in the Fish Creek watershed helped farmers purchase conservation-tillage equipment by offering to pay up to $3,000 of the purchase cost.

The conservancy now offers the same program to landowners in the East Fork watershed. Clemens' office also is offering East Fork landowners a one-time incentive payment of $218 per acre to plant land in filter strips.

The approach has worked.

Clemens estimates farmers now use no-till equipment to plant 70 percent of the soybeans and 50 percent of the corn grown in the Fish Creek watershed. Grass filter-strips border about 35 miles of the Fish Creek and East Fork watersheds. The conservancy also has helped landowners in both watersheds plant about 1,000 acres of trees.

Using the Nature Conservancy model, people working in Fort Wayne to clean up the St. Joseph River hope to achieve different missions: Protecting Fort Wayne's drinking water supply, while restoring the river for recreational use. Local organizers set up the St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative in 1995 to accomplish those goals.

A local nonprofit organization funded mainly by federal grants, the initiative currently operates from the offices of the Allen County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Initiative organizers began work in 1995 by assembling a board of directors that includes stakeholders from throughout the river's three-state, 1,075-square-mile watershed: farmers and other landowners, municipal government officials, county directors of soil-and-water conservation agencies, and county drainage supervisors and educators from six counties in northeast Indiana, northwest Ohio and south-central Michigan.

The St. Joseph Watershed Initiative aims to reduce the amount of soil, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides that rain carries in throughout the river's watershed. Members of the organization also hope to shut off the flow of livestock waste and septic tank effluent, which regularly send E. coli bacteria counts soaring well over levels safe for swimming.

To identify problem areas, initiative staff in 1996 began collecting water samples at more than a dozen sites throughout the St. Joseph watershed. Initiative staff and soil-and-water conservation officials use the water-quality data when they talk with farmers and landowners about the role those individuals can play in improving water quality.

"It brings home the fact that this is a problem, and it is right here in my own back yard," said Greg Lake, a member of the initiative's technical advisory committee who also serves as director of the Allen County Soil and Water Conservation District.

The initiative last winter offered incentive payments to encourage landowners to plant grass filter-strips along streams and ditches in the Cedar Creek watershed in DeKalb County and along Bear Creek in Williams County, Ohio.

Landowners have committed to planting about 18 miles of grass filter-strips, mostly along erosion-prone fields in DeKalb County, according to Jonathan Bickel, the initiative's

former public outreach coordinator. Initiative staff will spend time this winter talking to Indiana and Ohio farmers about planting filter strips.

Agricultural agency staff also will try persuading more farmers to switch to no-till or conservation-tillage planting.

The Nature Conservancy's water-quality monitoring on Fish Creek suggests the conservation measures will pay off.

"If insects are any indicator," Clemens said, "life in the stream is improving. But it takes a long time to see the benefit or impact of what you do on land."

How you can help

Here are some ways you can help protect the St. Joseph River and other area streams:

* Read and follow directions when using pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and other chemicals. Delay use if rain is expected because the rain can wash the chemical into a ditch or stream.

* Dispose of household and business sewage and hazardous waste properly. Hazardous waste includes weedkillers, pesticides, oil-based paints, batteries and motor oil. Allen County residents can dispose of household hazardous waste at the annual Tox-Away Day. Call 449-7878 for information.

* If your house uses a septic system for sanitary waste disposal, have the tank inspected annually and pumped out as needed. Limit water use when the septic system's leach field is saturated by rainfall. Allow the system time to work by spacing out activities that produce a lot of waste water, such as doing laundry and bathing. Never pour hazardous waste down a drain or toilet. Be aware of signs of septic tank failure: slowly draining sinks and toilets, plumbing backups, sewage odors in the house or yard, mushy or wet ground over the leach field, and grass growing faster or greener over the leach field.

* Plant grass filter-strips or install other barriers to prevent rain from washing soil into waterways from farm fields or construction sites.

If you see a pollution problem, call authorities In Allen County: Call the county Safety and Environmental Affairs office at 449-7265, or Emergency Management office at 449-7684.

Elsewhere in Indiana: Call the Department of Natural Resources' tip line at 1-800-TIP-IDNR or the Department of Environmental Management's spill line at 1-888-233-7745.

In Ohio: Call the state Division of Wildlife's Findlay office at 1-419-424-5000, or the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's emergency response line at 1-800-282-9378.

Sources: St. Joseph Watershed Initiative and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.