By DEBORAH BEHRENDS

Indiana Correspondent

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky Agriculture Development Board approved $1.7 million for 15 agricultural diversification and rural development projects across the state at its most recent monthly meeting.

Among the projects funded was a grant of more than $1 million over three years to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Water Science Center to continue monitoring nutrient loads entering and leaving Kentucky.

“There are two or three things we hope to accomplish,” said Biff Baker, project manager with the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy. “Kentucky was grouped with all the states in the Mississippi River basin, and it’s been implied that all the states are contributing equally to the problems in the Gulf.

“This came from the federal level, and that started the discussion in Kentucky,” he added. “How do they know what each state is contributing?”

That’s where USGS National Water Quality Network (NWQN) monitoring efforts can help. Project chief Angie Crain, water quality specialist for the Water Science Center, said funding will continue for another three years on a study already underway.

“As part of this new agreement, we have four (monitoring) sites – one on the Ohio River at Ironton, Ohio, measuring incoming nutrients and sediment; one on the Licking River around Cincinnati; a site on the Kentucky River; and one on the Green River,” she said.

There are four sites in the Ohio River basin: at Cannelton, Ind.; another at Olmstead, Ky.; on the Tennessee River; and on the Wabash River in New Harmony, Ind.

“We’re getting a better picture of nutrient and sediment loads entering and leaving Kentucky,” Crain explained. The study allows evaluations of contributions from all sources – agriculture, urban and industrial.

“No one likes to be on the red list, so to speak, so that got the Kentucky agricultural community involved,” she said. “Their approach is, if we have an issue, we want to solve it. We want to help improve the water quality.”

She said the biggest concerns from Kentucky was that raw data wasn’t available to refute claims that the state was just as much responsible for pollution in the Gulf of Mexico as every other state that feeds into the Mississippi River. To collect that data, continuous monitoring sites are set up.

“In a nutshell, we have continuous monitoring to monitor nitrates, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductants and turbidity.” But Crain said her team also collects samples at various locations all the way across the river and all the way to the bottom of the river from a boat on a monthly schedule.

“That gives us a whole picture of river conditions,” she said.

“We will be able to take that information, if we find there’s an area where there’s a lot of agricultural animal waste, we can work with that area with other state entities to develop best management practices,” Baker added.

“We don’t want to identify an individual farm, but maybe we can work with extension and other entities not only to reduce runoff, but to help your soil, your crops, get better yields. The are just some of the things we’re looking at.”

“If we’re not doing anything wrong we can say it’s not an agriculture problem. That’s why we feel very strongly this information is really important to the state as a whole,” he noted.

Crain said Ohio is not providing any funding for the Water Science Center at this time, but in a separate USGS funding agreement, Indiana will be funding a USGS Super Gage (continuous water quality data) on the Wabash River at New Harmony, which it hopes to install this summer.

She added the NWQN has been collecting traditional, discrete water-quality samples at this site since 1996, and that the continuous data being funded by Indiana will help better characterize nitrate and phosphate loads leaving Indiana.