NRCS Helps Watershed Get Health Check

Harlan Community High School senior Nate Andersen pours water from a Shelby County stream into a beaker held by NRCS District Conservationist Angela Biggs as senior Ryan Thorne looks on. The three spent a day testing water quality within the county’s Mosquito Creek Watershed as part of IOWATER’s statewide snapshot of water quality. (NRCS photo by Dick Tremain)

Harlan, Iowa—Angela Biggs normally works as a conservationist helping Shelby County farmers and landowners keep their soil in place and productive. On April 16 she changed roles and spent the day as a scientific detective, examining county streams and testing water in the Mosquito Creek Watershed. The goals are to check water quality and the effectiveness of her team’s environmental work.

Biggs is a district conservationist with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and leads the federal, state and local employees at the Shelby County Soil and Water Conservation District.

This is the second year Shelby County participated in a day of water testing. Biggs and her team will use the data as a baseline of water quality within the watershed and to identify “hot spots” or streams with elevated concentrations of nitrate or other problems. This is so conservationists and landowners can work together on solutions.

Harlan Community High School seniors Ryan Thorne, son of Michelle and Roger Thorne and Nate Andersen, son of Rick and Sheryl Andersen, both of Harlan, and senior Derek Buman, son of Paul and Ann Buman of Portsmouth, assisted Biggs with her water testing. Recommended for the assignment by chemistry teacher Bernard Hermanson, the four visited five rural sites.

With a bag full of equipment, the team tested each water source for pH, nitrate-N, nitrite-N, dissolved oxygen, phosphate, water transparency, chloride and temperature. They observed the stream banks for human and animal activity and looked for active stream bank erosion. They bottled water samples from each site and put them on ice for transport to the Iowa Hygienic Lab for additional testing.

*Andersen checks the phosphate concentration of water from a Shelby County stream with NRCS District Conservationist Angela Biggs. (NRCS photo by Dick Tremain)*

Biggs said she was very pleased to participate in the day of water quality testing. “This is a great opportunity to look at water quality, interact with students, get involved in the community and see how we are doing,” she said,

The landscape of Shelby County is gently rolling with a fine loess soil. Biggs said, “The soils are well drained, very productive but prone to water and wind erosion. Our biggest resource concern is soil erosion. With erosion, chemical pollutants are picked up by water runoff and travel with the sediment to pollute our rivers, lakes and streams. The county is very well terraced, but there is a lot more that needs to be done to keep soil in place and cut water pollution.”

Biggs’ team tested from a bridge over a 30-foot wide stream that suffered from severe stream bank erosion. A farmer that owns land next to the stream stopped his field work to talk with the three. He told them he did not like erosion because it cost him money. “Over the past 20 years,” he said, “stream bank erosion has claimed 6 acres of my land. At $5,000 an acre, that’s an expensive loss.”

Starting in Shelby County, the Mosquito Creek Watershed drains more than 160,000 acres in Shelby, Harrison and Pottawattamie counties. A part of the flow is diverted into Lake Manawa, one of the most important recreational areas in the Council Bluffs/Omaha area.

“One and a quarter million people visit Lake Manawa every year,” said Kevin Seevers, Pottawattamie County resource planner. “Having clean water drain from the Mosquito Creek Watershed into the lake is critical to the quality and quantity of the lake’s aquatic life and very important to its popularity. Water testing tells us how well we are addressing resource concerns in the watershed and gives us an idea what else needs to be done.”

Harlan Community High School senior Ryan Thorne and NRCS District Conservationist Angela Biggs use a transparency tube to check the water clarity of the stream below. (NRCS photo by Dick Tremain)

The Shelby County testing is part of the statewide IOWATER volunteer water testing initiative, a citizen-based program managed by the Iowa Geological Survey section of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Participants included: NRCS, West Pottawattamie and Shelby Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship-Division of Soil Conservation (IDALS-DSC), DNR and Harlan Community High School.

The students said they were pleased with the day of testing as well. Thorne, who wants to be a physician or science teacher, said, “Today was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about what is going on in the environment.”

Andersen, who is taking high school chemistry for college credit, said, “It was very interesting to see what types of chemicals are in the water. We need to do what we can to keep them out of the water.”

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NRCS Helps Watershed Get Health Check