FEATS Tour of Indiana

NRCS engineers from the northeast states get together each year to learn about recent engineering theory and practices at the Fall Engineering and Technology Symposium (FEATS). This year, Indiana hosted the event and showed that there are both large and small things happening in the Hoosier State.

Over the four days, engineers saw typical Midwest practices ― one of the hundreds of grassed waterways built each year, a typical swine farm, small wetlands and grazing systems, and one of our 132 watershed dams. They visited the National Soil Erosion Laboratory, where the Universal Soil Loss Equation was born.

The engineers also saw some not-so-typical projects, including a $3 million Emergency Watershed Protection Program stream bank stabilization project and a 7,000-acre Wetlands Reserve Program wetland site called the Goose Pond that is changing the migratory pattern of birds in the central United States. The Goose Pond construction is in the final phase and is a huge success story for the engineers and planners involved.

Find out more about NRCS in Indiana

Tour-goers walked-through the manure handling system for 3,500 cows at Fair Oaks Dairy. The dairy facility incorporates sand separation to recycle bedding sand and produce sand-free manure suitable for anaerobic digestion. Energy produced by an anaerobic digester is utilized on the dairy and at the on-site cheese making facility. Construction is underway for an additional sand separation/digester facility to handle consolidated manures from three other 3,500-cow operations on the same farm. Public visitors to the dairy see the 72-cow rotary milk 3,500 cows three times a day, the restaurant, cheese factory, ice cream, birthing barn, and bus tours.
Your contact is Beth Clarizia, NRCS agricultural engineer, at 317-290-3200.