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ebrumit@cowatercongress.org.
So now on to the topic at hand. Cyanotoxins, algoglams, nutrients and
of course, how it affects Coloradoan's public health.
Today, we will hear from, hopefully, three wonderful experts and leaders
who will guide us through these topics.
Djenette Khiari with the water research foundation.
Steve Lundt, representing the Barr Milton Watershed association.
And Troy Bauder with CSU extension.
Steve has worked on lakes and reservoirs as a certified lake manager since 1999.
Focusing on improving water quality through in-lake techniques and
watershed projects.
Today he will be talking with us about work reducing algolams at Barr lake.
Which he has worked on along with other reservoirs downstream of Denver for
the past 15 years.
Troy Bauder is an Extension water quality specialist in the department
of soil and crop sciences at Colorado State University.
There he is responsible for conducting statewide educational and applied
research programs for water quality, especially related to the protections
of groundwater quality from impremest to agricultural chemicals.
His research and expertise include nutrients and irrigation management,
which he'll be talking about today.
Is Dejenette on the line?
I am not seeing that Dejenette has been able to join us.
As Kaitlyn mentioned, she had a power outage.
So we are planning, um, Steve if you are OK with this plan.
So kind of like, let you go through her slides, and I will advance them for you.
Does that work for you?
[laughing] I will do my best. I'll have to remember what she was going
to talk about.
But I can definitely address some of the things also in my talk, but I can maybe
fill in a little.
Kaitlyn: So I'll just go through the slides and when you are ready for
me to advance, just let me know.
So Djenette was going to offer an introduction to cyanobacteria
and cyanotoxins. So Steve can kick us off.
Steve: [laughing] This is a fun game, to wing someone else's presentation.
The whole reason why we probably have all these people on this webinar is to.
Because we all do care about our lakes, our reservoirs, our rivers and it boils
down to managing nutrients that support algae bloom that then now
have gotten into the realm of toxins.
This idea of blue-green algae blooms that produce cyanotoxins has been around
for quite a while. but it wasn't until about 2015, I believe, with Lake Erie
and the Toledo incident where they had to close down their drinking water plant
for, what was it, close to 1 million people. or a half a million people.
So it really brought this topic to the surface for our country.
and so since then we've been really focusing on cyantoxins.
what does it mean to drinking water?
what does it mean to recreation? and all that.
Colorado and around the country, have been focusing on nutrient standards
and have been trying to come up with appropriate numbers for phosphorus
and nitrogen. And maybe the main focus has been on, obviously, to control algae
blooms and to make sure all the uses for those waters are being met.
And so what's kind of come up as more of a higher priority is, maybe, this public
health idea. So maybe let's go to the next slide and see what she has to say.
So there are a few key blue-green algae that are very common.
There's microcystins, Anabana, Aphantzomenon and those blue-greens
are very typical throughout our lakes and reservoirs around our country as
well as the world.
The world health organization, a few years back, you know, came up with
some guidelines for the toxins that those produce.
It's really been a hard topic because those blooms sometimes produce
the toxins and sometimes they don't.
And sometimes when they die and there's no bloom or scum on the surface, that's
when the toxins are the highest. So it's a really hard thing
to understand about these toxins and the properties around them.
But some of them, they impact the liver. They impact your nervous system.
They also, you know there's even dermatologists that will give you
skin rashes and so forth. And then there's some toxins that will kind
of cover everything and just wreck havoc on your body and your system.
A lot of times those toxins, have hurt animals like cattle and pets like dogs
that will go down to a scum covered pond and drink from it.
Typically humans are wise enough to know not to get into close contact or to drink
water with cyanotoxins in it, with a bloom.
But you can see from this chart, that some of the names of the toxins.
Some of the primary organs that it goes after.
and then the different species of algae for each of those toxins.
Might talk later, for Barr Lake, we definitely have mirocystis, and
Anabana. Those are the ones that I mainly have been monitoring.
As well as Aphanzomenon. You can go to the next one.
Microcystin, there's a whole sort of different kinds of these toxins.
So there's microcystin-LR , but there's a whole series of different kinds of
microcystin. So this is just a more common one. And then you can
see the saxitoxin and the cylindrospermopsin and anatoxin-a.
Some samples that I've sent off from Barr Lake we sent to a lab in Florida.
When we had them tested for these four main categories, to see what we had
in Barr Lake. And then also states around the country are starting to set up their
monitoring program and how to sample for toxins and to give warning to people
that are using it for drinking water, for recreation.
So these are the main cyantoxins that we are concerned about. Next one.
So in June 2015, EPA put out an advisory for drinking water.
I know here in Colorado I've been working with the health department and a group to
kind of figure out what that means for drinking water plants and how do you
monitor, and where do you monitor and how do you go about this whole process.
This whole new thing about another toxin to worry about.
To figure out how to make sure it's not in your drinking water, how you're
getting it out of your drinking water, how to prevent it.
And then what to do, god forbid that it gets through the system and it's all
sent out into distribution lines, what do you do then?
So states, Colorado and others have been working on that since 2015.
And then you see recently, EPA sent out in the fall of 2016 the recreational waters.
And this is more applied to Barr Lake and to maybe more reservoirs in Colorado
where there's a lot more recreational contact and swimming involved.
And you can see those toxins and those levels for recreational waters.
The closing period for comments, I believe, just closed for that process.
Let's see. I think we can skip this one and I'll cover it with maybe my talk?
I like this one actually. When I saw this, it definitely tells the story.
Blue-greens are the only species of algae that can change their buoyancy.
So that's why you see that one cartoon figure up there on the surface
getting a suntan.
It's blocking out the sunlight to any other species of algae that grow.
So blue-greens have evolved over billions of years to really be able to
do a good job of surviving in any kind of condition.
They prefer the warmest water.
They prefer the still water, so that's why they are more in lakes and reservoirs.
And they can get to the surface.
Obviously they can change their buoyancy and they go down at night.
I've seen blooms literally come to the surface while I'm anchored in
one spot monitoring a lake.
They can go down and they can store phosphorus.
They also have the ability to take nitrogen right out of the atmosphere
and use that instead of ammonia or nitrate.
So they are capable of using nitrogen right out of the atmosphere, which all the other
species cannot do.so that's why they definitely can beat when nitrogen is low.
They can still use that phosphorus that they stored up and they can use it
from the air.
So they have this kind of daily cycle of going down and coming back
up to get to the sun and blocking everything out.
Definitely, this occurs and has occurred at Barr Lake for many years.
Next slide.
I think I can get to my slides on this one too.
We can skip this one.
Definitely these are the sources of nutrients. If any body is dealing with
lakes, with reservoirs, with water quality with drinking water, with waste water,
these are the classic sources of nutrients. If any body's ever doing TMDL for nutrients
and you're doing it on a watershed scale, these are, you're going to be looking at
background, you're going to be looking at fertilizer application whether it's lawns
or agriculture.
Definitely stormwater. And then reservoirs and lakes, you know when a lake has zero
oxygen at the sediment, the phosphorus can recycle, dissolve out of the sediment
and get recycled into the water. next slide.
Nice pictures. Those are all the different sources.
So, how much is too much?
A lot of times for lakes and reservoirs I've seen where anything under 10 micro
grams per litre, you should be really good.
Anything that gets above 10, above 20, then you're going to start running into
signs of nutrofication and water quality issues with algae.
So dealing with lakes, I kind of keep those numbers in mind.
We can keep going , I think , to the next one.
So you can see here, you know, if total phosphorus is below 10 then it should
be very good. And then to the different levels. Very high or poor, you'll see over 100 and
with my talk, you'll see where we are at Barr Lake.
I'm at, right now, typically 250 at Barr Lake and I'm ecstatic.
I'm happy because it's a lot better than where it used to be.
So these numbers are all relevant, they are just sort of guidelines too, so just
keep that in mind. Next slide.
Source control strategies. There's a lot of things you can do in the reservoir to
keep intraloading, to keep the phosphorus in the sediment.
There's a lot of things you can do at point sources like wastewater treatment
plants. They are starting to treat for phosphorus, tertiary treatment.
There's a lot of in lake techniques. You can skim the algae off.
That's sort of a band-aid approach. Not really getting at the source of the
problem, which is the phosphorus. Many states, there's about 12
states that have state-wide phosphorus controls on lawn fertilizers.
We don't have one here in Colorado, but definitely that's the way.
You can no longer buy phosphorus in detergents in laundry soap.
That has definitely helped since 1970's with the Great Lakes and around the
country is controlling phosphorus in the products that everybody uses.
Go to the next one. Multi-barrier approach. Let's see. I think we'll just skip this one.
Prefer to get to my talk here soon. [laughter]
Looks like we are getting close to the end here. Obviously her organization
has put out a lot of good information and hopefully you can contact Dejenette and
get more information from the great things that she does. at the water resource
foundation. How was that?
Kaitlyn: thank you so much Steve, that was awesome!
Steve: Sure.
Kaitlyn: Thanks, for stepping in for Djenette. I'm going to go ahead and
pass the controls to you for your presentation.
Steve: Sure.
Thank you.
Are we good? Alright.
Round 2 here. I first want to say I just really appreciate this opportunity to talk
about Barr Lake specifically.
I've worked on it for about 15 years and for me it's pretty exciting to see how water
quality has changed over those 15 years.
And so much like the talk before, going to talk about nutrients and how algae
responds and I have definitely seen improvements in Barr Lake.
So this is why I was definitely on board when I was asked to do this webinar.
First off, cultural eutrophication it's sort of, it's a fancy way, a term of
saying people mess up a lake by sending it too much nutrients all at once.
Especially at Barr Lake. Barr Lake probably gets a million years' worth of phosphorus
in just a few months when it fills up every year.
So the process of lakes that can handle over time, thousands of years, millions
of years, can transition from a ligatrophic lake to a mesatrophic
to a hypotrophic lake where it's very very productive.
That can occur in a reservoir in a matter of years. So that's the process
that we all talk about and that we're worried about with cyanotoxins.
In the news, we usually hear about the problems. Where it's toxins, fish kills.
For Barr Lake it was high pH. It was all based around the idea that there's
these algae blooms. But again, it's mislabled. Those are just symptoms,
the true problem, is that it always goes back, every single time to too
much phosphorus and nitrogen, too quickly to a body of water.
To introduce you to Barr Lake, this is an aerial photo of Barr Lake.
It's just north of DIA. A lot of times, people fly in and you can see it out
your window as you are looking at the mountains.
Just north of the rocky mountain arsenal wildlife refuge.
There's also, you can see the community. There's definitely a lot of developments and
growth in the area. It's not quite as popular as Cherry Creek and Chatfield,
but this reservoir is quite different.
It's been around for a little over 100 years. About as old as Denver, almost.
The other thing is, is that, it fills up every winter and the main use over
the years has been agriculture.
While Cherry Creek and Chatfield and Bear Creek have been flood control.
Barr Lake has been around a long time and a lot of water goes out
there to be sent out to grow crops.
And so the residence time is only 8 months. Basically, fills in the winter and releases
during the summer and does this annual cycle.
It is twice the size of volume as Cherry Creek so it is pretty big.
It's had a state park since 1975. And the main uses now are recreation,
aquatic life, agriculture and drinking water that was added about
15 or so years ago.
The main source of water to Barr Lake is from the South Platte river.
There's a 19 mile ditch, the Burlington Ditch that diverts water from the
South Platte River. Typically, it sweeps the entire river. So any water you see
downtown by the confluence at Cherry Creek or by REI, that's going out a
couple of miles to almost the riverside cemetery and gets diverted and
sent to Barr Lake.
So travel time, if you were standing Downtown Denver, water going down
the south platte, it probably gets to Barr Lake in about a day and a half.
A lot of times, people think Barr Lake is way out northeast. People don't see
it that much, but it is definitely connected to the urban Denver area.
The ditch can also send water around Barr Lake to several other agricultural
reservoirs. So here's the watershed. Back in the 90's it collected a lot of
water quality data in Barr Lake as well as Milton Reservoir.
And determined that both were exceeding the pH standard which
is the upper limit is 9 and so they were going above 9.
So it got put on a 303 D-List. And similar to Bear Creek, and Chatfield
and Cherry Creek, the state helped organize a watershed association.
We call it the Barr-Milton watershed association because we focus on both
of those. But my main focus of this talk is Barr lake. The idea was that this group
would bring all the stakeholders together.
And help write a TMDL for pH. Which meant obviously, pH is a symptom,
so you go back to phosphorus.
So it's actually a phosphorus TMDL. To determine how you can achieve
the pH standard.
The big story for this watershed, obviously, is the number of people
living just upstream of Barr Lake.
It's literally about 1 in 2 coloradoans, live upstream of Barr. Which means,
obviously, cultural eutrophication again and excessive amount of
phosphorus that goes out to Barr Lake.
This is sort of a timeline. This is a timeline of the phosphorus out at
Barr Lake, prior to 1960's for about 50 years.
As long as there was water in the South Platte coming out of Denver,
they didn't care what was in it.
Quantity trumped quality, so they sent water, anything to Barr Lake to
according to it's water rights so they could fill it up so they could grow crops.
But that finally caught up to them and it was labeled as the country's largest
inland sewage bloom back in the 50's and 60's.
And so you can see the phosphorus concentrations are enormous.
Then there was in the mid-60's there was a better job of consolidating wastewater
treatments. and built a new treatment plant that was downstream of the
burlington ditch. And then by 1975 it became a state park. EPA actually
came out and sampled it three times in the mid 70's.
So you can see where the concentrations were in the 70s, just over 1 milligram
per litre phosphorus.
and then we started collecting a lot of data on water quality in the 90's, 2000's.
And we collected a lot more data and that resulted in showing about half of the
phosphorus now, about 660 micrograms per litre.
Then by 2015 we got down to 250 micrograms per litre and that's where I got excited,
because look where we came from.
From 10,000 micrograms per litre to 250. reason why this happened was there was
the 2013 flood that happened in September and it came down sand creek and washed
out a pipeline that used to send treated effluent from metro wastewater uphill
and put it into the burlington ditch.
That pipeline was washed away. so since 2013 there's been no treated effluence
being pumped up into the ditch to go to Barr Lake.
So by, sort of, an act of God. It has definitely helped water quality.
The TMDL process, the goal is to get to less than 100 micorgrams/litre in
the growing season. So that's what we're shooting for. So we still have to reduce
it by half again. So now we're in the phase of implementing the TMDL.
From the TMDL, we estimated the annual load of phosphorus, 70,000kg would go
out to Barr Lake. About 90% of that came from point sources, which was wastewater
treatment plants and permitted stormwater MS4 folks.
then there was background, and background is what's coming from Chatfield, Cherry Creek
and Bear Creek. Those reservoirs release water into our watershed and so then
we have to account for that.
And then about 4,000kg comes internally from the reservoir.
We need about a 92% reduction, which is huge, to get down to about 6,000kg a year.
And then, you can see, it's a little more balanced distribution from the different
sources. One thing to note though, in this process, we learned that even if
you removed every single person in the watershed, all the streets, all the
stormwater, removed all the point sources, you'd still be left with the
3,000 coming in from upstream watersheds and the 4,000 in the reservoir.
So that's 7000kg which is more than what we think it will take to achieve the pH
standard. And so it just means that every single source needs to be addressed.
So how are we going to do this?
A lot of dollar signs on this slide, so you can see it's going to take a lot of money
to get down below 100 micrograms per litre.
First off, wastewater treatment plants are moving to tertiary treatment.
Metro wastewater, Littleton/Englewood, and Centennial are the three upstream
wastewater treatment plants to Barr Lake.
Stormwater also. Denver, just last year I believe, increased their stormwater bills. So they
now have plans for major improvements in north Denver.
Platte Park Hill is one of those big stormwater projects that will eventually
help water quality in Barr Lake.
We've also looked at studies for internal loading. Not quite as expensive, but still
going to cost some money.
we also have to treat the phosphorus that's coming out, from upstream in
our watershed. So we somehow have to intercept that.
And then of course we do public education.
Here's a chart of our phosphorus. This is sort of a monthly timeframe
of the 15 years I've been sampling.
You can see the phosphorus comes in with the water in the winter and slowly
drops out. and then increases again in the summer, maybe during internal loading.
and then it gets lowest in October.
Along with that, you get chlorphyill A. Chart here shows there's a big diatom
growth in the spring time.
the best time to go up to Barr Lake, I recommend, is in May and early June.
There's very little growth of algae, it's full, and it's got great water clarity.
Because as soon as 4th of July comes around and the big recreational season,
and the growing season.
Typically we would get the big blue-green algae bloom, the first one, the microcystis
algae bloom. And the kind of crash and bloom, crash and bloom. And we have
another big one Aphantzomenon in late September.
So this is why Barr Lake has the reputation of being a blue-green algae scummy lake.
When I first started in '02 sampling this was pretty much every summer what it
would look like. It would be monoculture of algae bloom that would go over
the entire lake. And eventually get crusty and scab over and cause odor issues
and stuff. And you can see the bottom picture.
The people that would mostly recreate would be people fishing from shore
and they would just tolerate it and avoid those scums the best that they could.
More recently, since the 2013 flood, there has been a big noticeable change.
Open water, it's clear and back in '02 and '03 the boat wake would be green
not white and foamy. And then you can see last, middle of July, when we should
be having a big bloom, we have really nice water quality compared to
previous years.
We did, because of the 2015 issues around the cyanotoxins. We decided to
say "Ok let's just kind of explore this and get some strip tests from Abraxis
and do some testing out there." I tested the open water as well as near shore.
Open water never had any indication of the cyanotoxins. The only time I got
it was when I would sample the shoreline where we see this green line of
blue-green algae.
Water quality's pretty good. It's not like the other pictures where it's completely
crusted over.
There was still a small less intense algae bloom. It was typically microcystis and
some Aphantzomenon.
but when we sent off those samples to green water, we did get a hit on
microcystin. We did not have any Anatoxin-A, saxitoxin, or
cylindrospermopsin. It was mainly because of the microcystis.
But Barr Lake, key note is, that even though it's classfied as primary full
contact use. The rules out there for the state park is that there is no swimming,
no swim beach, even dogs are not allowed to wade into the water.
The main thing is just boating and recreating, fishing from shore.
Now clearly, people get into the water they roll their kayaks this was a camp
here that would take kayaks out and learn how to roll kayaks.
so there is incidental contact. but the thing is that we try to do a good job of
educating people year round at Barr Lake to be algae aware.
That you just want to avoid any time you see green surface scum on any body of water.
So what we do educationally, we try to do our best to educate people just algae in
general, water quality, phosphorus and the watershed.
So the big plan here. If we achieve making sure all these uses are being met, then
I think we'll be good.
Obviously there's dollar signs to this. so if aquatic life is happy then the
fish will be happy.
We'll be spending less money on fixing the problem than just maintaining the
proper conditions out there.
Recreation's a big deal. And then of course we grow a lot of food and
it's a water supply.
So those are definitely all these. What's unique about our lake is that
these uses are equally important.
And if we achieve the right amount of nutrients coming from the watershed,
then we believe the blooms will be less intense, not as long and that the
reservoir will be a healthy system.
So I believe with that, I'll end with a sunset picture and I thank every body
for listening to me for the last half hour.
Kaitlyn; Thank you so much Steve. We are going to switch to Troy.
Troy I just made you a presenter and I believe you just un-muted yourself.
So thank you.
Troy: Good morning every body. Is my sound and screen working ok?
They sure are.
Troy: Ok good deal.
Moderator: You are not in presentation mode so we can still see your next slide.
Troy: Let's try that. Did that help?
Moderator: No, we can still see your next slide but feel free to carry on.
Troy: Ok, sorry about that. So you get a preview of what I'm talking about before
I get there. We're going to switch from point sources, that Steve was talking
about with Barr Lake.
You know, system mostly impacted by point sources to non point source.
My field is working with agricultural producers on reducing nutrient losses on their fields.
I'll give you a little bit about the process. and where we are on that.
So it's important to remember that ag nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus are
in other nutrients, but in this instance we are talking about N and P.
Are absolutely required for productive agriculture. If we fail to replace or
supplement nitrogen and phosphorus that's removed by our crop systems,
ultimately not only will you result in low and unprofitable yields,
but you'll end up with a situation where you're not putting enough crop residue back into the system and you can have soil degredation.
So it is important for sustainable agriculture.
But of course we need good management. To prevent too much N and P in our soils
and then of course the potential to reduce the potential for movement to
surface and groundwater.
So recently, in 2012, Colorado passed a nutrient policy called regulation 85.
For agriculture it's still a non point source kind of voluntary approach
to help incentivize producers to utilize, voluntarily, BMPs around nitrogen and
phosphorus control in their operations.
and we partnered with CDPHE, to produce some resources and outreach program
which we are calling Colorado Ag Water Quality and this is our logo.
And you'll find all these resources at that URL, coloradoagnutrients.org.
the purpose of this outreach effort is to get the word out to growers about
how reg 85 could potentially affect them.
and right now it's a non point source voluntary policy for agriculture, but
they are going to reevaluate that in 2022 to see if we've made progress
on BMP implementation, adoption and water quality as it relates to non
point source in agriculture.
I'd really encourage you to go to that URL. There's a couple of videos up
there that do a really nice job of having the stakeholders, producers and people
that represent them talk about how nutrient, using nutrients in agriculture
is important to them.
and practices they can use to prevent non point source pollution.
I'd encourage you to go check that out.
So the approach that I encourage and we do in our program is what I call
participatory research and outreach.
Around getting growers to implement BMPs voluntary.
And some of the concepts that we work with are nutrient management with
the 4R concept.
We encourage BMPs around conservation tillage and the soil resource.
And what's really important in a semi-arid state like colorado, where so much of our
crop production relies on agriculture's managing that water source improved
irrigation systems and advanced irrigation scheduling.
and i'll talk about that a little bit more in a couple of slides.
and then finally, we definitely want to work with our growers on the agronomic
and economic feasibility of these practices to help them understand
how they can help the bottom line.
so early in the process of any localized or state wide stakeholder engagement
around ag and water quality, it's important to get the stakeholders
involved early in the process.
And we've been doing that for many years. producer input; we want them to
understand that buying into what is even defined as a best management practice.
and then demonstrate their effectiveness and their agronomic practicality.
and then try to follow up with tools and resources that our producers can use
and understand and help them manage their nutrients and water better.
So a little bit about BMP effectiveness on the ground.
I talked about the 4R concept that's kind of become fairly popular recently in
agriculture. And that is applying the right nutrient at the right amount, or rate,
at the right place within the soil.
Either spatially or within the plane of the root zone, at the right time. Trying
to time our nutrients when the crops need them the most.
So the uptake efficiency will be be higher. and the right source.
Sometimes we have different nutrient sources, whether it be compost or
commercial fertilizer. It might be better for the conditions on the
ground or the farmer's situation.
When these practices are properly implemented, they do in most cases
increase nutrient use efficiency by the crop and thus prevent the potential for
movement in most environments.
However, as I mentioned before, in Colorado in our irrigated
environment we know that most of our losses are with water, soluableized
or attached to sediments.
For these 4R's to work we need improved irrigation management to take place
at the same time. In each of nutrients type we don't manage our water,
we could be defeating the purpose.
So a little bit about irrigation management.
Like I mentioned, it's really critical for quatifiable reductions at the
field level. Particularly with nitrate leaching but also with runoff.
and you can have improvements in system upgrades moving from a furrow to a
pivot to a drip system. or you can improve your management in terms of scheduling
your water at the right time and right amount.
and together those two practices can go a long way for tightly managing your water
and your nutrients. and a lot of this is occurring organically in the watershed.
a good example I like to show is some google earth imagery, satellite imagery
from around fort morgan. And if you go back to 1998 and look,
and this is black and white imagery. you can see a grid work of rectangular and
square fields out there as recently as only 20 years ago.
but if you look at an image from just a couple of years ago, you can see that
most of those have been replaced with circles and center pivot irrigation systems
and the opportunity to manage your water and your nutrients is much higher
when you improve your efficiency of your system.
a lot of this is happening already. growers are adopting these practices
for a variety of reasons, but usually it's economics and labor.
I mentioned we like to provide tools that growers can use to manage their nutrients
and their water.
and recently we released an online irrigation scheduler called WISE.
This is a couple screen shots from that particular product.
you can find that at wise.colostate.edu.
it's a very user friendly, convenient irrigation scheduling platform at
erams at colorado state university.
again tying our nutrients to our water management.
the other thing that i mentioned that is important for agriculture for adoption
of BMPs is to show results and water quality is part of that.
growers need to know that if they use these practices it will make a difference.
on one side of your screen you can see some water quality coming off fields
where we had just conventional tillage and on the other side of the screen
you can see BMP in terms of strip tillage and you can see the residue that it
left in place there. and how that residue is affecting the
quality of the water coming off that plot compared to the other plot.
and of course, the bottom line matters with growers. they are in business to
make money. and so we try to provide them the costs and returns of
adopting practices. our gross returns are represented largely by the yield on one
side of your graph where you can see the dark brown bar of conventional, compared
to the light brown bar of strip vs the green bar of another BMP that we tried that was
minimum till on this particular project.
and where the gross returns showed the BMP was losing a little bit of money,
when we looked at the net returns because of the costs of inputs for that particular
practice, you can see that the gross returns were highest with the BMP
practice of strip tillage.
so the bottom line matters and it's important to work with growers so
that they know how these practices are going to affect that for them.
Some challenges that i see or have seen in my career, both looking locally and
nationally in terms of what we're facing in nutrients and water quality.
in colorado, where water rights and policy may be perceived from keeping
growers from implementing certain, maybe, irrigation practices.
a lot of times that's more perception than reality but it's still out there.
In many parts of the country we have some nutrient balances and watersheds, with
high density of animal feeding that are off.
we have more N and P coming in than is going out as product.
I see places where perhaps our baseline concentrations are greater than the
standard that we are going to try and achieve and I think that's going to be
difficult with non point source implementation to meet those targets.
And then the idea, we know that a lot of our water quality problems are localized.
And how do you target a watershed or an area of agriculture without making the
producers feel like they are being targeted, as, at the problem with
finger pointing. Funding is always an issue. not all of these BMPs are cost
neutral or positive.
so getting funding through NRCS cost shares or other places to help implement
these is an issue.
and then finally, when it comes to showing these are working. obtaining non point
source water quality and adoption data is going to be necessary to show agriculture's
doing it's part moving forward.
just to finish up here. like i said, supplemental nutrients are definitely
necessary for sustainable agriculture. you can't continue to grow profitable crops
without supplementing what they are removing from the system.
They have a lot of BMPs that can help mitigate that loss in movement in
water resources.
A lot of these growers are using already and I think we can improve upon what
we are doing as we learn more information.
Incentives, tools and resources are all critical to help growers adopt BMPs.
and i think we can all work together to do a better job with that.
It's definitely important to engage growers early and often in this process
and not only the growers but their representatives and commodity groups
and the people that advise them.
and that is what I had to share this morning. I appreciate your attention and
I appreciate the opportunity to be on this call. So I'll turn it back to Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn: It looks like we have a few questions coming in, so i think Emily
will read those and Troy and Steve can see if they have responses.
Emily: Yeah, so we have a few questions.
The first question comes from Lisa Buchanan and she asks, "How difficult
was it to get buy in for upstream treatment for Barr Lake?"
Steve: Well, buy-in. So starting in 2002 we formed this watershed group that
brought together the point source dischargers as well as the users of the
lake and the owners of the lake and the people that use it for drinking water.
So our goal from the very beginning was to have the consensus- driven
process with this board of directors and this watershed group.
We didn't want to have finger pointing and going down lawsuit routes and
have twenty models trying to explain the system.
so from the very beginning when we formed our watershed group and we put in
our bylaws, we wanted to have buy in from every body that was sitting at the table.
To join, and to be a member of the board, you had to put in $10,000 as a member
and you got a seat on the board.
And so the people, the dischargers, the upstream folks that were definitely
going to be part of the TMDL as an allocation for phosphorus, wanted
to be at the table.
so you joined and then we all agree, that you know. We all understand this
is an effort by everybody and that everyone's going to be paying for
treatment plant upgrades, everyone's going to be paying for drinking
water upgrades.
Everybody will hopefully be enjoying Barr Lake and so we really tried to come
together as one group and always make decisions based on 100% consensus.
We literally do our voting with thumbs up or thumbs down. if we don't have
everyone's thumbs up then we continue to work on it.
Emily: thank you so much. we have a couple more questions.
The next one is directed at Steve. "Steve did you alum to fix P in sediment?
If so, what was the result and cost? Thanks"
Steve: Sure. So alum is a very common whole lake treatment process. People
have been using since the 70's.
We have not used alum in Barr Lake. We have people, we've had some reports
saying that alum would be a great way to bind up and keep that phosphorus
bound up in the sediment. The in-canal treatment,
treating the upstream phosphorus that comes into our watershed and then
comes through and comes down the ditch.
One process or a study we said was that we could divert that water out of the ditch.
mix it with alum, separate the phosphorus, and then send that water into Barr Lake.
We did use alum a little bit in, there was that picture of those corrals, those
columnar corrals they did some studying of what would happen to cholophill A
and phosphorus if phosphorus did get below 100.
Because we've never seen it below 300. so we had to do some artificial
testing out there. and we did use alum to strip out the phosphorus in the water
column. just so we could see how the lake responds.
It's about, when we did our study, it's about $1 per gallon and so it's just a
matter of how many gallons of alum you want to put in to remove the amount
of phosphorus.
Emily: thanks. The next question comes from Ken Clark. "What are the
opportunities. What opportunities are there for translating or scaling, agricultural
BMPs to urban landscape practices?"
Let me know if you want me to repeat the question.
Troy: Go ahead and start Steve.
Steve:The only thing I can sort of talk about a little bit is, some of those
translations of nutrient management with fertilizers, the same concept can be
applied to what we do with urban lawns.
And so, a lot of times, its a matter of keeping the fertilizer on your lawn.
so it's the 4R's applies to your lawn as well as a corn field in Weld county.
Don't do it just before a storm event, washes on your driveway and goes
into a storm drain. Maybe do some soil testing and maybe you don't need
phosphorus to grow a lawn.
Phosphorus is, as I understand, is for seed production and flowering. People
just want a green lawn so that's the nitrogen part of it. Troy do you have
anything else?
Troy: Just would ditto that. Again when you look at CSU Extension's
recommendations for lawns, we don't really even recommend phosphorus.
We prefer folks stick with nitrogen and for a low maintenance lawn that's
really at around 1 pound per 1,000 square foot per year.
Again making sure you put the right rate on, not too much, at the right time.
and we have recommendations for those too.
And the biggest one is just keeping it off impermeable surfaces.
Emily: Great, thanks. So the next question is directed at Troy. From Kelly Denataly.
"Do you think the rollback of the Obama administration's clean water rules
will change the attitudes of ag producers towards implementing BMPs?"
Troy: Hmm. [chuckle] Good one Kelly. I don't think so.
Particularly in Colorado, since we do have somewhat of a statewide policy with reg 85
and some of the other policies with non point source with agriculture.
You know, our state, is so semi-arid and we have so few places where we have
direct contact between agriculture and a stream, I don't think so.
I think that there are a lot of economic incentives especially around fertilizer to
apply the 4R concept to what they're doing that what I worry perhaps more
about is cuts to conservation programs within agencies such as USDA-NRCS
and research potential cuts as has been proposed to the ag research service,
agricultural research service within USDA and our land grant system.
because that's where we develop a lot of the information that we can translate to
producers about, you know, the best way to manage their nutrients.
I don't think it's going to be, I'm less worried about perhaps, changes in
attitudes with growers than I am with the proposed cuts to our research and land
grant and outreach organizations that work directly with producers around the country.
Emily: the next question comes to us from Kevin McBride. and he asks "how is the?"
agricultural practice of high alt hay and ranching different from the row cropping
discussed? Is there extra nutrients appropriate BMPs?"
Troy: I think I understand the question. What are some differences in Best
management practices between high altitude mountain meadow production
versus row crop production.
They are not terribly different, it's just the opportunities perhaps to do things
like placement like nutrients in the root zone or a little more limited in
those established pastures.
but there's other things that they can do up there. Timing makes a difference
on when you apply fertilizer to a high altitude meadow system.
we've done some research with Joe Brummer, in our department, a forage
and high mountain meadow specialist, on timing fertilizer applications in the fall vs
early spring vs late spring. and found that the earlier you can apply
your nutrients before you apply your irrigation water in the spring, the less
likely they are going to move out of those systems.
I'd say the other difference is that those mountain meadows have a
very short growing season and limited productivities, so they, a lot of times
their productivity is not necessarily defined as much by how much fertilizer
they apply. Is the short growing season whereas
down here on the plains with row crop agriculture much longer growing season
and typically much higher nutrient application rates.
Emily: great thanks. The next question is for Troy from Lisa Buchanan. She asks
"for areas where BMPs are being used, have you seen an improvement in downstream
water quality is treated?"'
Troy: Yeah that's a good question. I personally haven't done any, that
many studies with surface water quality and BMP implementation on a
watershed scale. The data I showed you was on the edge of field scale.
and we definitely can show edge of field water quality improvements at
edge of field in the work that I've done. nationally other folks have done
watershed studies and it depends on the BMP systems and how well they were
implemented and how well the BMP fit the agriculture in the area.
Emily: thanks. we have time for one more question. This question comes
from Jojo Laff and he asks "Troy in your experience what is the best way to
agricultural members buy in for participation in voluntary programs?"
"What do you believe are the best incentives for participation? Additionally,
what is the best way to conduct public education on BMPs and the tools available?"
Let me know if you want me to repeat any part of that.
Troy: So the best, or the first part of that question I heard, I think I heard was
"what's the best way to agricultural producers involved and interested in
learning about and implementing best management practices.?"
It depends on the practice to be honest with you. I think a lot of practices, like I
showed with implementing center pivot irrigation instead of furrow irrigation
are happening on their own because the incentives are already there.
whether it's labor saving time or money or nutrients.
The tougher ones I think are structural BMPS like filter strips
and set backs and things like that may cost producers some time and money.
I think those have, your incentives there are cost sharing and those kinds of things.
I think in terms of getting them to the table, you know, working through their groups that
represent them, whether they be commodity or livestock associations are really important.
those folks are really engaged in the conversation and they want their
producers to know what's going on.
Because there's so many producers and there's so few of us doing this kind of work,
that we can't talk to every body.
But getting people around the table is really important whether it be growers or the people that represent them.
Can you repeat the second part of that question?
Emily: The second part asks, "Additionally, what is the best way to conduct public
education on BMPs and the tools available?"
Troy: yeah, that is an interesting question.
because we just went through this process with CDPHE and stakeholders over the past
year with reg 85 and the example outreach program that I showed early in my
presentation. And we've kind of evolved about how we presented information to
producers. It used to be a lot of factsheets and bulletins and written materials.
and that kind of thing. and it's certainly going more high tech with short videos a
nd websites and providing them tools like irrigation schedulers or nutrient
management planners that they can use. particularly stuff that they can pull
up on their smartphone when they are up there on their tractor with their g
uidance system taking them down the row.
Definitely, technology and I think the other place, again, is getting to the
people that talk to them.
getting to the local extension people, getting to NRCS, getting to
certified crop advisers.
Fertilizer dealers, people who, input suppliers can reach so many more
growers than we can. Emily: great thanks so much.
I believe that concludes the question part and I will pass it over to Katelyn.
Kaitlyn: thank you to both of our panelists. And Steve, thanks for
taking over for Dejenette. We did record this webinar, so you all will receive an
email with links to the recording.
Or you can find it on either of our websites.
We encourage you to take the next step by connecting with the Colorado foundation
for water education and colorado water congress.
You should see our websites on your screen.
Thanks to the presenters for their time as well as the audience for
their participation and those wonderful questions.
This concludes our webinar, thank you.