ABOVE: A map of the Fairmont Chain of Lakes Watershed. Martin Soil and Water Conservation District has received a grant to improve water quality within the watershed.

FAIRMONT– Martin Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) was one of several groups in the state to receive a Clean Water Fund grant from the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources. The grant SWCD received will specifically aim to improve the drinking water quality for Fairmont.

All in all, $9.5 million in grants was given and SWCD’s share is $260,000. Jesse Walters, Outreach Coordinator for SWCD, explained that the organization often applies for grants and this was one of the recently significant ones that it received.

“Now we’ll work with the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources on what they call a work plan. So we’ll take the things we said we’d be able to do with the grant and lay it out in more detail,” Walters explained.

SWCD is actually calling this grant phase two of a multi-phase water quality project. The first grant was received in 2016, after the city of Fairmont exceeded the drinking water standard for nitrates.

“The majority of nitrates in the Fairmont lakes at this time are from a number of natural sources but the one that we can impact the most, and the largest land use, is agricultural,” Walters said.

In the Fairmont Chain of Lakes Watershed, which leads into Budd Lake where the city of Fairmont pulls its drinking water from, there are 26,000 acres and over 75 percent of those are cropland.

All of the funds from phase one have been used up and this time around, SWCD plans to leverage federal funding and focus on providing targeted incentives and installing agricultural best management practices to reduce nitrogen as well as phosphorus and sediments in the Fairmont Chain of Lakes.

The overall goal, over 10 years, is to reduce nitrogen by over 6,000 pounds per year, reduce total suspended solids by over 15 tons per year and reduce phosphorous by over 60 pounds per year.

By leveraging federal funds, Walters said that it will allow them to cover projects costs at up to 100 percent cost-share rates.

For example, if someone owns land in the Fairmont Chain of Lakes Watershed and they have erosion issues or a site that could be used to treat tile water, SWCD could potentially cover 100 percent of the cost with an ‘OK’ from the landowner.

“There’s quite a few practices that could be done to reduce nitrogen and to reduce sediment,” Walters said.

To further explain, he said some of these practices include providing incentives for nonstructural, or ecological, practices, like converting ag land to perennial vegetation.

“We’re going to incentivize new CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) contracts. It’s a program that will reimburse a landowner for taking marginal agricultural land out of production and planting it into native grasses and flowers. They’re then paid a rental amount on the acres they take out of production to have it be native prairie for either 10 or 15 years,” Walter explained.

He said that SWCD will also do a good amount of structural practices, some of which they’ve talked to landowners about. These include installing saturated buffers, which will treat tile water and remove some of the nitrogen prior to it going into the lake.

“The plant uptake will use the excess nitrogen water and the water going into the lake will have less nitrogen,” Walters explained.

He said a project like that won’t take up any agricultural land and it won’t affect yields or add anything to a planting schedule.

“It’s something that’s happening without any additional efforts from the landowner,” Walters said.

While some of the projects are ready to go, SWCD is looking for additional projects and is asking that landowners step up and volunteer to partner for a project. SWCD is planning to send mailers to people who have property within the watershed and hope to start some projects this coming summer.

“Most projects we’re doing are for agricultural practices,” Walters explained. “Our money will be best spent assisting landowners in the rural landscape at this point if our goal is to reduce nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment strictly because of the sheer number of acres they have compared to a small lot in town.”

However, Walters said those property owners can still have an impact on water quality, but that SWCD is not yet at that phase of the project.

“This could end up being a five or six phase project to get us to where we want to be for reducing nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment and having our water quality be to a point where everyone is happy and healthy and it meets standards set up the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency,” Walters said.