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Watershed Education
by Dan Haug
Nine years ago, I moved back to my hometown of Ames to take a job as the watershed educator for an environmental nonprofit called Prairie Rivers of Iowa. Since then, I’ve received a thorough education in my watershed and the people, plants, and animals who live within it.
A watershed is the land area that drains to a given body of water. As water flows downhill, it can carry soil, fertilizer, pesticides, road salt, and animal manure—eventually ending up in a lake, creek, river, or bay. That concept is simple enough, but there’s a difference between understanding it abstractly and seeing the torrent of muddy water rushing from a neighborhood storm sewer or watching temporary rivers and ponds form in nearby cornfields. It’s worth getting wet to capture photos and videos for audiences who’ve never seen it firsthand.
Runoff near Roland in Story County, Iowa
There’s also a difference between knowing about water quality and watersheds in general and becoming familiar with specific creeks, ponds, lakes, and rivers. One of the first projects I worked on was helping Story County Conservation mark dozens of creek crossings and watershed boundaries with signs like “Onion Creek,” “Keigley Branch,” and “Entering Ioway Creek Watershed.” It’s still one of my favorite projects because it’s so tangible. I also enjoy taking people out to canoe or wade in Ioway Creek and the South Skunk River. Sometimes we pick up trash, sometimes we catch invertebrates in nets, and sometimes we test water chemistry. People are often surprised by the scenery’s beauty and the variety of creatures hidden in our backyards.
Softshell turtle found in Ioway Creek
The word “watershed” tends to accompany “project” and “partnership.” Prairie Rivers of Iowa has been involved in every stage of the Ioway Creek (formerly Squaw Creek) Watershed Project and in the early stages of a second project for the headwaters of the South Skunk River. We prepared 28E agreements to form Watershed Management Authorities (WMAs), cultivated relationships, organized meetings and field trips, and helped spark enthusiasm for the work.
Together with the WMAs and consultants, we set goals and developed a watershed plan through listening sessions and GIS mapping. We applied for grants and hired a watershed coordinator to help farmers enroll in cost-share programs. We organized field days and shared testimonials from farmers who had succeeded with conservation practices. Yet after four years, we hadn’t met our targets for dollars spent or acres of cover crops planted.
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The author at a creek crossing in Story County
If success is measured by metrics like those, watersheds can seem more trouble than they’re worth. WMAs have no funding or authority from the state, and coordinating projects across jurisdictions is always challenging. Defining eligibility for cost-share programs is easier along road or county boundaries than by a squiggle on a topographic map. Outreach campaigns are simpler when organized by media market or postal route.
However, if success is judged by cleaner water in our rivers and lakes, then it matters where those cover crops are planted. According to the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy Dashboard, as of 2022, there were 49,000 acres of cover crops in the North Raccoon River watershed. That sounds impressive until you realize the watershed contains 1.3 million acres of cropland—enough that these practices would reduce nitrogen and phosphorus levels by only about one percent. Still, watersheds remain a powerful conceptual tool, linking what happens on the land to what happens in the water.
It’s a tool I regularly use to make sense of our water quality data. I began with “Watershed Matchups,” comparing volunteer data from creeks with different watershed types—urban versus agricultural, buffered versus unbuffered, wetland versus no wetland. By the end of my time with Prairie Rivers of Iowa, I was writing computer code to cross-reference data from dozens of long-term monitoring stations with land use, livestock density, and terrain. Still, it doesn’t need to be complex. I’ve taught ninth graders to use ModelMyWatershed.org to delineate a watershed, compile examples, and identify patterns.
The author on the job in Story County
The real reason to organize a project by watershed is to address specific concerns and achieve measurable improvement. For example, we want kids to be able to play in Ioway Creek without being exposed to human and animal feces. We want to improve smallmouth bass fishing in the Skunk River. We want to reduce the frequency and extent of flooding in Ames and Story City. We want nitrates in the Raccoon River to be low enough that residents of the Des Moines metro can have safe and affordable drinking water. If you can articulate these kinds of concerns and band together with people who share them, then watershed projects and watershed partnerships can be powerful and empowering.
In April, I started a new job as the coordinator for Story County’s watershed projects. I’ll be working with farmers and landowners, the WMAs, and conservation staff to get more conservation practices on the ground and continue educating the public about watersheds and water quality. There are a lot of exciting projects already in the works, including constructed wetlands, saturated buffers, and oxbow restoration. We continue to learn from our local water monitoring program and look for signs of progress.
I will continue to be honest about the scale of change that’s needed and where we are falling short. In addition to changes on the land and changes in the water, what makes a watershed project successful is something that I can’t easily measure, but that I’ve sometimes experienced: building a community of people who understand that land and water are connected, and who feel a connection to land and water.
Dan Haug is the watershed coordinator for Story County where he supports the volunteer monitoring program. He previously worked for Prairie Rivers of Iowa, where he helped write a monitoring plan for the county, interpret data, and work with watershed groups.