Land Treatment
No Till | Soil Protection | Ground Water Runoff Program | Citizens Monitoring Committee | Conservation Awards Program
In 2007 the South Platte NRD, North Platte NRD, Upper Niobrara-White NRD, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and Panhandle RC&D formed the Panhandle No Till Parnership to bring continuous No Till education opportunities to western Nebraska producers. The Panhandle No Till Partnership has hosted winter workshops that have provided information on the opportunities offered through continuous no till farming.
Team member and NRCS No Till Educator Mark Watson, a no till farm operator from Alliance, has held a number of workshops and field days throughout the Panhandle. Watson works with no till farmers from beginning to experienced to make suggestions regarding their operations. In addition, Watson writes a weekly column, No Till Notes, sharing his knowledge and experiences.
When soil erosion becomes a threat to neighboring property, Districts have the legal authority to mediate a solution under the Erosion and Sediment Control Act. The Act was developed in 1986 when the Nebraska Legislature recognized serious erosion and sedimentation problems throughout the state. At the time a number of land-disturbing activities had caused excessive wind erosion and water runoff and accelerated the process of soil erosion and sediment deposition. That resulted in the pollution of the waters of the state and damage to domestic, agricultural, industrial, recreational, fish and wildlife, and other resources.
The state’s goal was to strengthen and extend erosion and sediment control activities and programs of the state for both rural and urban lands, to improve water quality, and to establish a statewide, comprehensive, and coordinated erosion and sediment control program to reduce damage from wind erosion and storm water runoff, to retard nonpoint pollution from sediment and related pollutants, and to conserve and protect land, air, and other resources of the state.
Implemented through the Director of Natural Resources and the Nebraska Natural Resources Commission, the legislation specified the program would be carried out by the natural resources districts in cooperation with counties, municipalities, and other entities.
In 1987, the SPNRD board of directors adopted the District Erosion and Sediment Control Program, designed to reduce soil erosion in the District to tolerable levels.
Established in 1978, the SPNRD Ground Water Runoff Program is in place to prevent improper irrigation runoff and maintain ground water supplies.
In order to conserve water and to prevent inefficient or improper runoff, each person who uses ground water irrigation is required by the Nebraska Ground Water Management and Protection Act to prevent the runoff of water used in irrigation.
The SPNRD program, which meets the Act requirements, addresses the standards of inefficient or improper runoff of ground water used in irrigation, procedures to prevent, control, and abate such runoff, measures for the construction, modification, extension, or operation of remedial measures to prevent, control or abate runoff of ground water used in irrigation.
Citizens’ Monitoring Committee
The Clean Harbors Citizen’s Monitoring Committee, a special committee overseen by the South Platte NRD, provides third party oversight of the Kimball incinerator’s operations. The consultant that the committee works with is Jacque Hughes of MILCO Environmental Services, Inc. (McCook, NE). Hughes keeps the committee up to date with quarterly reports, reviews permits and compliance issues with the facility and NDEQ and EPA.
The Kimball CHESI facility serves the entire United States as a storage and treatment facility for a variety of industrial waste utilizing a 45,000 ton-per-year fluidized bed incinerator. The state-of-the-art thermal oxidation unit ('"TOU") is capable of maximum destruction efficiencies of hazardous waste and is able to handle an extremely wide variety of feeds.
Citizens’ Monitoring Committee members include Larry Stahla, Jim Cederburg, Duane Janicek, Peggy Sanders, Will Brown, Jim Johnson (SPNRD Director, Subdistrict 2) and Rod Horn, SPNRD General Manager. The committee meets about 6-8 times a year in Kimball.
We've all heard it for years: Conserve natural resources for future generations. It's just the right thing to do.
It's a noble goal most all of us strive for. And since the mid-1950s, the NRD, NRCS and the former county soil and water conservation districts have been recognizing those southern Panhandle residents who do it best.
In 1995, the District awards were expanded, and those who excelled in planting and caring for trees, managers of grassland, and educators strong in environmental teaching could also be nominated. The award format was altered again in 2010 to recognize efforts affecting natural resources in the District's urban areas.
Each year staff members from the South Platte NRD, Natural Resources Conservation Service and UNL Extension gather to nominate people within the District who excel in the areas of caring for natural resources and also sharing with others the information they’ve gleaned as stewards.
The nominations are forwarded to the SPNRD Board of Directors for approval, and those chosen are honored each fall at the SPNRD/NRCS Conservation Awards Banquet. In addition, winners are nominated for state-wide awards given either by the Nebraska Association of Resources Districts or the Omaha World Herald.
Congratulations to our past and present award winners, and thank you for helping protect our natural resources.
2011 Conservation Farm
The Conservation Farm Award has been given to deserving farm families since before the beginning of resources districts. Criteria for the award is based on a totalfarm plan which incorporates conservation and best management practices.
This Conservation Farm Award was awarded to a pair of brothers who began farming when they were youngsters. They began driving tractors before they were teens and learned at an early age the need to take care of the land.
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| South Platte NRD Board Chair Keith Rexroth, left, and SPNRD Assistant Manager Galen Wittrock, far right, present aerial photos to Ron, left center and Weldon Tremain for their long time stewardship on the family farm north of Sunol. |
Although Weldon has retired from farming, Ron and Weldon Tremain had farmed together for nearly 30 years, raising dryland wheat and millet in rotation north of Sunol. They began an intensive conservation program in the mid-1990s, using their own equipment and time to install or improve several thousand feet of terraces.
The first terraces were installed in the mid-1950s due to washouts – some so deep that you could bury a tractor in them. Over time, they built more than 25,000 feet of terraces to protect the land they farmed. They also convinced a landlord of the value of terraces on rented ground.
Today, those terraces catch water which would otherwise carry valuable top soil away. Some are v-channels, but many are flat channel terraces, which they feel hold more water than V-channel terraces and they hope to convert more to flat channel in the future.
The Tremains also practice conservation tillage to maintain good residue and are careful to farm on the contour, with their terraces. While some producers may complain about farming around terraces, the Tremains recognize them as a necessary part of farming. Other acres are strip-cropped, where terraces aren’t necessary.
Weldon also approached the NRD to enroll in the Buffer Strip Program to prevent erosion where some of their terraces drain under a county road. The buffer was over one mile long and comprised six acres.
Trees are also a part of their conservation plan. In 2003, Ron planted 243 conservation trees where elms died out to complete a farmstead windbreak plan. Another 2,195 trees and shrubs were planted in 2006 when Weldon installed a field windbreak and wildlife planting.
The Tremains have treated there most sensitive lands by enrolling those portions into the Conservation Reserve Program. Wildlife food plot areas have been added around the CRP acres for habitat. Also, a 5-6 acre farmed wetland area was left to revert back to natural habitat, without cost-share incentives. Over time the wetland has begun to naturalize, and wildlife now frequents the area, taking advantage of this important habitat.
2011 Tree Planter/Caretaker
Everett and Dorothy Johnson, who farmed north of Kimball until their recent retirement, were presented the Tree Planter/Caretaker Award for their long-time practices including trees.
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| South Platte NRD Director James C. Johnson of Dix, left, presents the Tree Planter/Caretaker Award to Everett and Dorothy Johnson of Kimball. |
When the Johnsons started their life together in Kimball County in the early 1950s, their plans were interrupted when Everett was called to duty in the Korean Conflict. Ev served his country in Korea from 1952 to 1954, and when he returned from the service the couple began building their lives on a small place north of Dix. Later they moved to what has been their home place north of Kimball for many years. There, they took an old garage and walled off the bedrooms and living spaces to make their home.
At that time, they began to plant a shelter belt, fencing in the tree rows and hauling water to establish and protect them. Their son Jeff, who also attended the banquet, remembers a lot of work in hauling water to those first trees.
Unlike today, there were no tree programs when the Johnsons planted their first trees. But they knew those trees would provide the protection from the wind and sun they needed to make a comfortable home in our western Nebraska climate.
In the winters of 1961 and 62, Everett and Dorothy, with the help of friends including Wayne Manning and Burdette Gustafson, built a larger, more comfortable place that today sits as the centerpiece of the home place.
There are many sets of trees around the property today, from older, informal groups to multi-row mixtures of trees and shrubs. More than 58 acres of trees have been planted on the Johnson property since 2000 through the Continuous Conservation Rreserve Program.
The Johnsons have taken out the worst areas of their farm ground and planted trees to prevent erosion to the soil. They have continued to replant trees for all these years to maintain the integrity of the plantings. They use tree fabric to give the trees a strong start, and in many areas mature and young trees together as evidence of their continued protection of the ground, where more than 10,000 trees dot the landscape.
2011 Environmental Educator
In December 2010, the call went out for communities across the U.S. interested in holding design competitions to fly real experiments aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. Student teams submitted 530 proposals, from which 11 experiments were selected for flight. One of those successful proposals came from Potter-Dix students, under the direction of High School Science Teacher Joette Wells.
Mrs. Wells encouraged students in grades 5-12 at Potter-Dix schools to participate in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. SSEP provided an opportunity for students to take part in a minds-on, hands-on real science experiment destined for space.
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| South Platte NRD Board Chair Keith Rexroth, left, presented the Environmental Educator Award to Joette Wells of Potter-Dix High School. |
Fifty-four energetic students in grades 5-12 designed the experiment selected for flight, to assess the effects of microgravity on wheat. David Baltensperger, Ph.D., head of Texas A & M University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, and Joe Larson, soil conservationist at Nebraska Natural Resources Conservation Service, assisted students with choosing the type of wheat to use in the experiment. They decided on Goodstreak, a hard red winter wheat developed cooperatively by the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station and the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service. The wheat seeds used for the experiment came from a farm operation in Kimball County.
Students challenged themselves to think about the development of seeds in microgravity. The small size of the experiment test tubes that would contain the wheat and water surprised the students, and the term "mini-lab" took on a whole new meaning.
Teams of students, led by seniors, brainstormed research questions. As part of that, they had to insert wheat kernels into blocks which would hold part of the experiment in tight confines allotted for space within the space shuttle. Part of their learning experience in critical thinking also came in the form of trouble shooting – when they found that the kernels of wheat would not fit in the holes in the experiment block.
While students were working on the science experiment, others were taking on a second part of the program, which allowed participating schools to develop a mission patch that would accompany the experiment on the space shuttle. The design was formed and brought to life by Devan Baker. The patch incorporates the state of Nebraska, with Potter’s distinctive silhouette in the center, and a coyote track marking the town’s location. Wheat is another design element, as is a representation pointing out the town’s duck-pin bowling alley.
All phases of the schools’ elements were eventually completed, and they were sent to NASA to be part of STS-135, the final flight of the 30-year-long space shuttle program. On July 8th, the shuttle lifted off with five astronauts and the Potter-Dix experiment.
This school year, Wells and students re-created the experiment, comparing the on-earth results with those on the space shuttle.
2011 Community Environmental Impact Award
The Big Springs Pond Project was recognized for the impact it has on the community’s natural resources, in particular a huge drop in the amount of water being taken from the town’s water well.
Built around 1927, the Big Springs Pond had, for many years, served the community as a local fishing hole and later a place for school students to go for observation of environmental and science interests. The pond, fed by precipitation, runoff and a city water well, eventually came into disrepair.
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| South Platte NRD Director Larry Rutt of Chappell presents the 2011 Community Environmental Impact Award to Curtis Brown and David Spencer from Big Springs. |
In 2009 the Village of Big Springs secured a grant from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality to renovate the pond area. Volunteers spent several days identifying dead trees and brush. After that community members and students performed a cleanup of the area, cutting down and removing the trees and brush and getting the area ready for construction. Several locals helped catch the last of the fish, prior to draining the water. Myers Construction from Broken Bow, Ne. came in with heavy equipment and removed stumps, deepened the pond area and cleared and leveled the surrounding beach area and installed a handicap accessible ramp area.
The pond was lined to help with water conservation. Fish habitats where installed and the pond was refilled, reaching the full mark one cold winter morning.
In the spring of 2011, Nebraska Game and Parks stocked the pond with: bass, bluegill, and channel catfish. Soon afterward, community members began trying their luck at the new fishing opportunity, with very pleasing results in a number of instances.
The area, which covers a little more than an acre, will be utilized as an educational worksite for water quality studies, and plant and wildlife habitat development. Students from South Platte School will help with the maintenance around the pond in the future.
In years past, the pond was filled on a regular basis from the town’s water well. With a two-inch line, the town’s maintenance man ran water into the pond for about a week, once every six weeks to maintain the water level. Since the refurbished pond was finished and filled in February, the pond has had to be filled just once to maintain the water level, resulting in an estimated savings of almost 12 million gallons of water being taken out of the town’s well field.
Previously, the tangled dead trees and brush were hazardous for residents and students wanting to use the pond area. Because it is in close proximity to the school, it has been used by some classes for an outdoor learning area where students have taken water samples and observed various forms of wildlife and plants. The cleanup provided a safer environment for those and other outdoor activities.
With the cleanup, parts of the area will be developed for wildlife habitat. While that development has not been started, the change in the area has already become evident in that for the first time, the town maintenance man says he has seen geese at the pond on a regular basis. The expectation is that with the improved habitat, students using the area for outdoors studies will be able to observe greater numbers and varieties of birds and wildlife.