Illinois - Water Quality, Flood Protection, State Program

The continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) sign-up is "really awesome." Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) District Conservationist Mike Kiefer is using it to help meet his goal of seeing filter strips installed along the many miles of creeks, streams, rivers, and drainage ditches in Iroquois County. The area has serious water quality problems, many connected to agriculture, "so the higher up these watersheds we get the chemicals and sediment out, the better." NRCS, the local soil and water conservation district (SWCD), and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) started with five town meetings around the county to promote the benefits of filter strips. The result was over 700 CRP contracts, 500 of them for filter strips. There are also 20 contracts for riparian forest buffers 150 to 300 feet wide along the Iroquois River and Sugar Creek, both of them prone to flooding.

Kiefer says he couldn't have done it without the conservation district employees. "The secretary typed hundreds of contracts and the resource conservationist helped do field checks and design systems." Kiefer describes the enrollment process: "When someone comes into the office to enroll land, we look at the proposal--using maps and doing field visits. If the land is eligible, I do the calculations and send the operator over to the Farm Service Agency to do the paperwork. When he or she comes back to NRCS, the district secretary types the contract then and there. The form takes about 5 minutes to complete, and an operator is out within an hour at the most. The application is then run through the district board for approval, usually within a week, and on the first of the month, assuming FSA County Committee approval, the contract would go into effect."

Numerous others are involved says Kiefer, including Iroquois County and Pheasants Forever, which has provided about $26,000 worth of switchgrass seed--given for free to farmers. Switchgrass is tricky to seed, so five farmers have set their drills especially to plant it; they contract to plant switchgrass for other farmers. Kiefer says that while the number of CRP acres enrolled for filter strips may not be great, "they'll cover a lot of key spots in the county for the benefit of wildlife and pheasants, as well as water quality and land health."

Kiefer has been working with Bob McCullough whose 774-acre family farm is about 80 miles south of Chicago on the Iroquois River, which runs for about a mile around the entire farm. McCullough has 653 acres of good, highly productive cropland, but it is low ground and often floods. "The river's always been about like it is today, but it didn't flood as much. We didn't work the land as hard. Years ago we had more grass--we had horses and stuff--but, more recently we've been farming right down to the water's edge. Farmers have been doing so much more tilling that when we get a big rain it just can't handle it, and the farm runoff goes into the river. It's rough on wildlife."

McCullough has enrolled about 140 acres in CRP. Some whole fields of 4 or 5 acres are enrolled; in others, filter strips are designed to come back from the river to where the land begins to rise. He's planting a lot of trees and grass cover. "On higher ground we're putting in walnut and white oak; on lower ground, where they'll volunteer, it'll be soft maple. After a period of time we'll get some timber. This will slow the water down, keep chemicals out of water, and get our groundwater replenished. In the long run, we'll have a better water supply and fewer chemicals--and we'll improve wildlife habitat." McCullough adds, "They'll pay us pretty good money, so right now it's more profitable to do this than cropping."

To assure that the land won't go back into production after the CRP contracts end, Kiefer says the State of Illinois is working to acquire a permanent easement on McCullough's buffer strips. "The easement will go with the land," Kiefer says, "so it will be in trees after the 15-year CRP contract ends. The riparian area will be forested, the water and air will be cool, there will be more macroinvertebrates, better fish habitat, and a healthier stream."

Through its Conservation 2000 fund, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is acquiring easements on key floodplain areas, many in or adjacent to continuous CRP buffers. McCullough and three neighboring landowners have applied together for one continuous block of easements. If accepted, counting river bends, this would permanently protect 5 or 6 miles along the Iroquois River. In McCullough's case, the easement would include his CRP buffers plus woods, wetlands, and other ground not in CRP. Thad Eshelman, who is handling easements for the Iroquois SWCD, describes the process:

I sit down with the landowner and decide how many acres he wants to put into an easement, mostly on the bottomland floodplain area, often incorporating the CRP riparian buffer strips and floodplain land behind them. We put in an estimated land value and turn in the application to the Kankakee River Basin Partnership for review (the Iroquois River is in the Kankakee Basin). If they think it's worthwhile, they forward it to DNR. There's a board of DNR that looks at conservation easements and they pick out the best. Once they decide everything is okay, they'll give the go-ahead to start proceedings on easements. An assessor will look at the ground and DNR will offer whatever value the assessor gives the property. At any time, the landowner can decide to pull out, right up until he or she signs the easement agreement. Landowners get a one-time up-front payment. DNR turns it over to the SWCD, which goes ahead and pays the landowner and the lawyers who have handled the matter. Easements have to follow a management plan, and the district will be the overseer of the ground and see what's going on with it. I should point out that the easements can be non-farmland, too; whereas CRP is only farmland.

Eshelman also is involved in certifying buffer strips eligible for property tax relief under another Illinois program. "In Iroquois County, it's the second year for most of our filter strips, and we'll start seeing switchgrass, brome, and alfalfa take off. Then we can go sign off on the tax break. We certify land established as buffers, but we have to see it first. We had over 400 separate filter strips to look at in the summer of 1998."

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