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News
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ODA beefs up water quality monitoring efforts
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1/11/2012
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Article Content
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Landowners are making progress at protecting water quality.
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Legislature provides more funding to ODA for monitoring
Landowners in Oregon hope to tell a more compelling story about their efforts to improve water quality and agricultural land conditions by having more information. Additional funding from the 2011 State Legislature to the Oregon Department of Agriculture is helping to increase monitoring activities that provide additional data. Better monitoring can lead to more credit for the good work landowners are doing and a better sense of what improvements still need to take place.
"We've heard from a variety of stakeholders, including farmers and ranchers as well as those in the environmental community, that they want to demonstrate progress in the protection of water quality and agricultural lands," says ODA Director Katy Coba. "This additional funding will help us get there. ODA's Water Quality Program is equally anxious to put together a good story when improvements are made on the ground. We can all benefit from better monitoring, data, and evaluation."
A two-pronged monitoring strategy will give the most complete picture possible.
"Monitoring gives us a way to not only determine change in water quality itself, but also change in those land conditions related to water quality," says ODA Water Quality Program Manager Dave Wilkinson. "We often prefer monitoring land conditions because those are the actual conditions landowners can more easily see and do something about."
Many landowners do a great job of making improvements to streamside areas by allowing vegetation to establish and grow, which can control erosion or provide shade to cool the stream. Others are managing livestock manure effectively, keeping fecal bacteria out of streams and other waterways.
"We already know that landowners, soil and water conservation districts, watershed councils, and many state and federal agencies have accomplished a great deal over the past 15 years," says Wilkinson. "ODA administers funding for SWCDs to work with landowners on water quality improvement projects, and we see a variety of accomplishments in the quarterly reports we receive including acres of no-tlll farming, manure storage facilities, streamside areas planted to trees, and irrigation efficiency improvements."
What is more difficult to show is how such activities and accomplishments have affected land conditions that lead to good water quality at the watershed or regional level.
"We believe that landowners' efforts have contributed to improved land conditions, but additional data will help us verify our assumptions," says Wilkinson.
Legislative funding has allowed ODA to add the position of water quality monitoring specialist and hire Stephanie Page to plan and develop the agency's related monitoring activities. Enhanced activities will complement existing information about water quality improvement on agricultural lands.
"There has been some monitoring in the past, but these additional resources will help us get a more complete picture of conditions on ag lands and water quality associated with agricultural activity in Oregon," says Page. "We were already taking advantage of resources that are out there, but this will provide us a more statistically significant picture and help us track progress."
A key component of the new position is the collaboration with other agencies and organizations to maximize efficiency of monitoring resources. Another function is to provide recommendations to program staff to make changes based on monitoring results.
The legislature also restored funding for ODA's Water Quality Program to continue monitoring trends in streamside vegetation conditions along randomly selected agricultural stream segments throughout Oregon through the use of aerial photos. This allows the collection of two additional years of streamside vegetation condition data and the ability to compare with photographs of the same stream reaches taken five years ago.
ODA's program has also received funding to establish additional water quality monitoring sites in agricultural areas throughout Oregon. In the past, the program evaluated water quality trends solely from sites funded and monitored by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in agricultural watersheds. ODA staff has identified additional sites to help provide a more complete picture of agriculture's influence on water quality throughout the state.
"The funding allows 19 additional sites to be monitored," says Page. "DEQ currently monitors 42 sites that are ag-influenced. It makes a lot more sense to contract with DEQ to add these 19 sites to their existing network because they are already out there collecting water quality samples. They have the expertise and equipment to collect samples, analyze them, and publicly report the results. Why not take advantage of that and maximize the funding we have received?"
There is no doubt in ODA's mind that improvements in land conditions and water quality are taking place. But in some cases, those improvements are scattered geographically, making it difficult to measure changes. Working with partners, ODA hopes the additional funding will help focus efforts in smaller geographic areas to see if positive change in water quality can be measured more quickly.
Enhanced monitoring efforts should help send specific messages to various audiences. Landowners want to know that their efforts and investments at improving land conditions and water quality are worth it. Conservation groups, other regulated industries, and the public want to know that agriculture is doing its fair share in providing good stewardship of land and water.
"Communication of our monitoring results with local advisory committees, landowners, agencies, the environmental community, and the public is critical," says Wilkinson. "We are pleased to be able to gather additional data to support conversations with our stakeholders about how we can continue making improvements in water quality and land conditions."
For more information, contact Dave Wilkinson at (503) 986-4712 or Stephanie Page at (503) 986-4696.
Story of the Week pdf version
http://oregon.gov/ODA/docs/pdf/news/120111monitoring.pdf
Audio Story of the Week
http://oregon.gov/ODA/news/120111monitoring_audio.shtml
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