Indiana - Fort Wayne Drinking Water, Local Partnerships

Fort Wayne's wake-up call came in 1996 with public reaction to a published report that found pesticide residues in the city's drinking water, which comes from the St. Joseph River. "We decided it wasn't good enough just to sit in Fort Wayne and continue just treating the water without looking upstream and helping make the system better there," says Doug Pooler, Superintendent of the city's filtration plant. Pooler began reaching out to upstream counties and organizations--such as the soil and water conservation districts (SWCD), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and others in the St. Joseph River watershed--to organize a conference that eventually led to the formation of a watershed-wide initiative.

It's complicated. The St. Joseph River, which rises in Michigan, flows through northwest Ohio and drains portions of Steuben, DeKalb, and Allen counties in the northeastern corner of Indiana (the western half of Allen County flows west into the Mississippi system). In Fort Wayne (Allen County), the St. Joseph joins the Ohio-born St. Mary's River to form the Maumee River, which flows east into Lake Erie at Toledo, Ohio.

Since the early 1990s, miles of buffers have been installed in the Maumee basin on both sides of the Indiana-Ohio border, primarily with funding through two "319 grants" from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Maumee River Basin Commission. These filter strips are under five-year contracts and, although they allow some cropping and haying, may count in the National Conservation Buffer Initiative's goal of 2 million miles. NRCS and the conservation districts have been promoting filters and helping farm operators design and install them. Allen County Executive Director Greg Lake says the district targeted watersheds and contacted county surveyors to identify key drainages, and then "made a concerted effort by mail, phone, and knocking on doors to get a long, contiguous filter." In DeKalb County, NRCS District Conservationist David Hines also directed his pitch. "First, we targeted three different drainage areas and made sure everyone was contacted by letter and a follow-up visit. We also got some locals to help, so we had neighbor-to-neighbor contacts."

More recently, farmers in both counties have been enrolling land in the continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for buffers, primarily in filter strips and grassed waterways. In Allen County, NRCS District Conservationist David Lamm says he's had quite a bit of success with CRP. "It's a simple program and, with the dollars, easy to sell. There are several hundred acres of CRP filter strips and 70 to 85 contracts." One farmer rents some of his filter strips to the state for a snowmobile trail that runs along several miles of creek-side filter strips; another has his filter strip used for the daily walk of a neighbor who had a heart transplant.

In DeKalb County, Jack Ruger is one of the St. Joseph watershed farmers Hines has been assisting. Ruger raises no-till corn, soybeans, and wheat on about 300 acres. Twelve acres are enrolled in CRP for a 99-foot-wide filter strip along about 5/8 mile on both sides of a small tributary of Little Cedar Creek. Ruger has planted trees, native prairie grass, and shrubs on the filter strip, and restored a small wetland. "We should be thinking about restoring more of our wetlands," Ruger says. "It would help Fort Wayne as far as flooding is concerned, and it helps cleanse the water. Wetlands are good for holding water and protecting groundwater, and they benefit wildlife. In terms of my watershed, we need to restore some of the wetlands we've drained, although it's a problem because that's our most productive farm ground."

Another St. Joseph tributary, Fish Creek, drains 70,000 acres--or 110 square miles--is 30 miles long and has 90 miles of tributaries. Fish Creek also has freshwater mussels--31 different species, three of them endangered--and 43 different species of fish. In other words, it's rich. The Nature Conservancy (TNC), which often purchases land or easements, became interested in that wealth... and in protecting it. TNC's Fish Creek Coordinator Larry Clemens says their approach is evolving. "Strategically, we can buy a few locations, but we must work with landowners. We can't buy the whole 110 square-mile watershed!" He's been working with farmers on controlling soil erosion, which is the biggest threat to mussels, and restoring the riparian corridor. In Fish Creek, as elsewhere in the Maumee Basin, partnerships are crucial; and countless individuals, agencies, and organizations are involved. "By combining government programs for filter strips with special money given to TNC, the National Turkey Federation, and Pheasants Forever," Clemens says, "we've been able to put together some pretty attractive projects for farmers. We're helping to buy no-till equipment and helping with BMPs [best management practices]. We've also helped a small town upgrade its sewage treatment plant and we have installed fencing. There are lots of community-based projects."

The St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative is another group TNC is cooperating with. This is the evolving coalition that grew out of the conference that Pooler organized in Fort Wayne. Its purpose is to improve water quality "through educational activities and voluntary actions of land users." By the spring of 1998, what began with water quality assessment and monitoring, had a 15-member board of directors--one of them Clemens--from the three St. Joseph states. It now has a project coordinator, April Ingle, who is a 1996 Purdue University graduate in natural resources and environmental science. "We have asked representatives from every interest group we could think of to serve on the board," she says. "It's a great program and I'm really proud to be a part of it." The Initiative is focused on locally led projects within individual watersheds and sub-watersheds throughout the Maumee basin--up and downstream from Fort Wayne. Says Pooler, "After all, everybody's downstream from somebody!"

All the way downstream is Toledo, Ohio, and the mouth of the Maumee on Lake Erie. There are 13.5 million tons of cargo shipped annually through the Port of Toledo, and nearly 25 percent of that comes from farms. Farmers have been shipping not just their grain, but also their topsoil to the Port of Toledo--the sediment that must be dredged from the harbor to enable shipping comes from farms throughout the Maumee basin, the St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers, Fish Creek, Cedar Creek, and all the other tributaries. These upstream "siltation avoidance" practices are supported in part by the Army Corps of Engineers and are designed to reduce the Corps' need to dredge Toledo Harbor. DeKalb County's Ruger would like to see the interstate effort on the Maumee basin continue. "If we can stop runoff, we shouldn't have to dredge." Buffer strips, conservation tillage, and other upland conservation practices are making another kind of difference--Lake Erie is healthier now than it was a decade ago.

Fort Wayne has been monitoring the results of the northeast Indiana projects and pre-testing the raw water it treats, using immunoassay equipment that can sample for specific chemicals and render results within hours. This enables the city to adjust its filtration according to need and keep its customers informed; but, it also provides watershed partners a measure of the success of their efforts to reduce the raw water levels of nutrients, pesticides, pathogens, and sedimentation in the first place.

As he considers improvements that may be needed to the Fort Wayne treatment system, Pooler stresses the importance of watershed-wide cooperation. He says it would be interesting "if we could take the money for those projects and spread it around among the farmers to put in best management practices, filter strips, grassed waterways, etc. But, the problem is it's a voluntary system. We're trying to get the message to farmers to keep levels low, to improve water quality without regulation. It's better for them--especially if it's true that the 10 percent of farmers who do 80 percent of the best management practices are also making the most money. The message we need to get to farmers is that these things can be done, and they won't cost a lot of money. If they don't do it voluntarily, eventually the government will regulate more. After all, Fort Wayne treats only about 5 percent of St. Joseph River water; the other 95 percent flows down untreated and joins other streams. Unless we do something for the river, for habitat; if something doesn't get done, you won't be able to fish, swim, or boat--and we won't make it. Things won't get any better unless we do something about it."

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