The project will utilize innovative nutrient reduction practices and technologies in the Upper Big Walnut Creek Watershed (UBWC) to help avoid, trap, and control nutrients from agricultural operations.  Nutrients from cropland runoff and agricultural drainage systems that enter waterways can degrade drinking water quality in the Hoover Reservoir and prevent streams from attaining water quality standards. 

A diverse collaboration of project partners is comprised of governmental and private sector conservationists and include the Delaware Soil and Water Conservation (SWCD), District, Morrow Soil and Water Conservation District, Iowa Soybean Association, Environmental Defense Fund, Ohio Farm Service Agency, Ohio Natural Resources Conservation Service, and USDA-Agriculture Research Service, Soil Drainage Research Unit as well as local farmers in the watersheds.

Project work will focus on two subwatersheds within the Upper Big Walnut Creek watershed, including the mainstem and headwaters of Upper Big Walnut Creek in Morrow, Knox and Delaware counties and Big Walnut Creek below Little Walnut Creek to Hoover Reservoir in Delaware County.   

The Upper Big Walnut Creek (UBWC) watershed drains 190 square miles of predominately agricultural land across parts of five central Ohio counties. The watershed is comprised of perennial and intermittent streams that drain into Hoover Reservoir, which serves as a drinking water supply for approximately 800,000 residents in the capital city of Columbus and surrounding communities. The UBWC was identified as a priority impaired watershed by Ohio EPA (OEPA) and is included on the state’s 303(d) list (waterbodies that do not meet an established water quality standard).  The majority of headwater streams in the watershed are impaired by nutrient enrichment, siltation from sediment, and habitat degradation stemming from current agricultural management practices (Ohio EPA 2003, 2004).

The objective of this MRBI-CCPI project is to leverage existing planning and studies that partners have undertaken in the UBWC and move toward implementation and engagement with landowners and producers. The UBWC Watershed Project Office, based at the Delaware County SWCD, will serve as the Project Director/Manager for the project.

Engagement with producers will be accomplished through targeted outreach and quality technical assistance to generate higher levels of key conservation practice implementation in the two target subwatersheds.  The outreach and technical assistance will also aim to involve farmers in a nutrient efficiency network called the On-Farm Network®, which advances an adaptive management approach to nutrient management that delivers a higher level of farmer engagement, more sustained improvements in nutrient use efficiency, and increased accountability and validation of impact.

Partners will work with producers to promote and install, in key locations, conservation practices and agronomic best management practices identified by watershed partners and assessments as being most effective in delivering water quality benefits in these areas - primarily cover crops, reduced tillage and agriculture drainage water management. The project will also advance improved implementation of buffer practices (filter strips, grassed waterways, critical area plantings) offered through the USDA Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. The overall objective of the project is to achieve meaningful and documentable water quality improvements in local streams that both supply drinking water to citizens and ultimately drain into the Mississippi River basin.

To date, most of the work in the UBWC has focused on gathering information and formulating plans, and partners are now developing a strong best management practice implementation program aimed specifically at producers in the watershed that this project will support. The extensive research and work already underway in the watershed, the UBWC Watershed Project Coordinator Grant, and the strong interest Columbus has in protecting and improving the Hoover Reservoir has made the UBWC an ideal location for partners to promote greater adoption of conservation in strategic locations to address identified water quality problems.