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Episode 23 | The Biennial Report - tracking progress in the state by Illinois Extension
The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast explores efforts to reduce nutrients in Illinois waterways from agricultural runoff to municipal wastewater with host Todd Gleason and producers Rachel Curry, Nicole Haverback and Luke Zwilling with University of Illinois Extension.
Read the blog at extension.illinois.edu/nlr/blog.
Episode 23 | The Biennial Report - tracking progress in the state
00:00:05:26 - 00:00:34:14
Todd Gleason
This is the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast, episode 23, The Annual Report tracking progress in the state. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Eliana Brown is a water resource outreach specialist for Illinois Extension. I caught up with her at the nutrient loss Reduction strategy Conference, which she organized, and that took place in Springfield, Illinois last December. The conference was the showcase event for the NLRS biennial report.
00:00:34:16 - 00:00:38:09
Todd Gleason
I asked her what that report was tracking.
00:00:38:11 - 00:00:49:09
Eliana Brown
Biennial reports are called for in the original strategy, and the intent is for the reports to provide an overview of our efforts and any kind of updates to reduce nutrient loss in Illinois.
00:00:49:12 - 00:00:58:06
Todd Gleason
Can you highlight the differences between the Illinois nutrient sources for both nitrogen and phosphorus with urban runoff, point sources and agriculture?
00:00:58:13 - 00:01:29:25
Eliana Brown
There are three main sector sources for nutrients. It's agriculture, point source, which is mainly most water treatment plants, and urban stormwater. Now for phosphorus, about half 48% comes from agriculture and the other 48% comes from point sources. And the remaining 4% is urban stormwater. And then for nitrogen, 80% comes from agricultural sector, 18% from point sources, and the remaining 2% from urban stormwater.
00:01:29:26 - 00:01:34:26
Todd Gleason
Can you explain how nitrogen and phosphorus losses have shifted compared to the baseline period?
00:01:34:27 - 00:02:00:12
Eliana Brown
Sure. The baseline period in the original strategy was 1980 to 1996. Our most recent science assessment that isn’t this report looked at the years 2013 to 2017. And in that time period, the statewide river flows went up 13%. Nitrogen went up 7% and phosphorus went up 26%.
00:02:00:17 - 00:02:04:12
Todd Gleason
How does Illinois compare to its pure states in the basin?
00:02:04:15 - 00:02:32:04
Eliana Brown
Oh, the, USDA undersecretary just said at our partnership conference that Illinois was among the best at implementing, nutrient loss efforts. I think this is because Illinois has excelled at our partnerships. This is called a partnership conference because we value our stakeholder partners from the very beginning, of our from the writing of our original strategy that has carried through.
00:02:32:04 - 00:02:35:09
Eliana Brown
And I think that has been a major factor in our success.
00:02:35:10 - 00:02:48:16
Todd Gleason
I did make note, Eliana, during the conference that there were all kinds of partners, including those from the government and farmer associations, and even, I guess, some partners that provide resources.
00:02:48:16 - 00:02:58:14
Eliana Brown
There is an effort at the university, supported by the Walton Family Foundation, that intends to bring out the best of all states in the Mississippi River basin.
00:02:58:17 - 00:03:16:07
Eliana Brown
It's led by Dr. Reid Christiansen, and and it establishes a cohesive agricultural BMP metric in the hypoxia Task Force states and promotes continuous implementation improvement. So we'll have a better way to know the good work that producers are doing throughout the basin.
00:03:16:07 - 00:03:25:17
Todd Gleason
Eliana Brown is a water resource outreach specialist for University of Illinois Extension. BMP, by the way, stands for Best Management Practices.
00:03:25:18 - 00:03:46:22
Todd Gleason
I caught up with a few other people that were at the conference. Some of the other partners in the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy that contributed two chapters in the biennial report. For instance, Rick Manor, he's the executive director for the Urbana and Champaign Sanitary District. I asked him about the major takeaways in the point source chapter from the report.
00:03:46:23 - 00:04:17:10
Rick Manor
The very good news, out of the point source sector for the nutrient loss reduction strategy update is that point sources being wastewater treatment plants have reduced the phosphorus discharge by 24% in the last seven years. That's a huge change. That is actually noticeable on the national scale. And, we managed in just seven short years because, a lot of treatment plants have done a lot of good work to reduce their phosphorus discharges.
00:04:17:13 - 00:04:19:07
Todd Gleason
How?
00:04:19:07 - 00:04:46:02
Rick Manor
Changing their plant operations to include a process called enhanced, phosphorus removal. In particular, the Chicagoland area, large treatment plants have installed that quite regularly. And, with that, the microbes that grow up in the wastewater plant are encouraged to take up more phosphorus than they would have before. And with that, we remove more phosphorus per pound of, what's coming in.
00:04:46:04 - 00:04:52:01
Rick Manor
And so, it's essentially a more modern version of treatment of wastewater treatment.
00:04:52:03 - 00:04:56:11
Todd Gleason
How does this play into the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
00:04:56:11 - 00:05:24:07
Rick Manor
So on the concept of, Gulf hypoxic zones, sometimes called the dead zone down in the Gulf of Mexico? The magnitude of the change, that wastewater plants have managed in Illinois is large enough that we will actually see, substantial reduction in the size of the dead zone, that it should be on a range of 100mi² smaller than it would be otherwise, because of the reductions that have been taking place in Illinois in the last seven years.
00:05:24:10 - 00:05:26:23
Rick Manor
So that's a pretty substantial improvement.
00:05:26:26 - 00:05:38:22
Todd Gleason
Rick Manor is with the Urbana-Champaign sanitary district. Mary Beth Falsey is with DuPage County. She also took up point source nutrient loss as it relates to the biennial report.
00:05:38:23 - 00:05:57:19
Mary Beth Falsey
So today I talked about some of DuPage county's efforts in tracking nutrient load reductions throughout our county. Our component in, in the strategy has really focused on, at a local level, our efforts and then also how we have tracked those efforts and sharing that with the statewide group.
00:05:57:21 - 00:05:59:06
Todd Gleason
How do you track those efforts?
00:05:59:10 - 00:06:22:29
Mary Beth Falsey
So with our BMP tracking, we focus on identifying over 3000 detention basins in the county. And that's all throughout the county, within all the municipalities and townships, for which watershed plans we have worked on. And we have also tracked all of the water quality improvement program, which is our grant. The grant funded water quality projects throughout the county.
00:06:23:03 - 00:06:49:21
Mary Beth Falsey
A lot of these ponds were built in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and so a lot of them at this point are pretty poor quality. They have eroded shorelines, they're degraded and they're actually contributing nutrients to the to our waterways. We can identify the poor quality ones. And this this allows opportunity for retrofitting the basins into constructed wetland detention ponds, which are actually good for water quality and can remove nutrients.
00:06:49:24 - 00:06:51:18
Todd Gleason
Are folks happy about the retrofits?
00:06:51:18 - 00:07:12:17
Mary Beth Falsey
I think so some of these can be an eyesore when, they're, they're not maintained and even become a sink for, for trash and, and debris and things like that. And so when you do put the time and effort to retrofit it and then maintain and manage it, they can actually become, aesthetically good point in the neighborhood.
00:07:12:19 - 00:07:36:23
Todd Gleason
Again, that's Mary Beth Falsey. She's with Dupage County, and like Rick Manor was discussing point source nutrient loss or that which can be identified from a source. On the other hand, in the agricultural world, it's called non-point source losses. And Lauren Lurkins with the Illinois Farm Bureau was at the conference to talk about this report. She's with the Illinois Farm Bureau.
00:07:36:25 - 00:08:10:25
Laura Lurkins
My major takeaway on this second biennial report that we're seeing, the nutrient loss reduction strategy with regard to ag is just the amount of activity. It's almost overwhelming, I think, for someone who is familiar with what's going on. But certainly folks who are not as intimate with all of the details, with just how many organizations have come together in different innovative partnerships, thinking about new ways to, sort of move beyond that education and outreach component and into helping farmers implement.
00:08:10:25 - 00:08:32:18
Laura Lurkins
So obviously we still have, the education outreach that's always going to happen and always going to be important. But you're seeing so much more of partnerships with, for instance, university researchers and grad students. And, you know, that is a huge asset for our state. It's a lot of work, from on the part of researchers themselves.
00:08:32:18 - 00:08:47:20
Laura Lurkins
But, as a stakeholder who works on, on the part of farmers that is incredibly valuable. So I would just say it's a bit overwhelming, but it's very powerful when you look at all of the moving parts and the different interest groups that are are really working on one environmental issue.
00:08:47:21 - 00:08:49:00
Todd Gleason
Is the effort on target?
00:08:49:00 - 00:08:54:22
Laura Lurkins
So we kind of look at this issue in, in general with the nutrient strategy in a couple different ways.
00:08:54:22 - 00:09:14:23
Laura Lurkins
We look at the amount of resources that are committed. We look at the outreach component. We look at the activity on the land and then ultimately the water, the water numbers are a little bit off of where we wanted to be. In an ideal world. But we always knew when we sat down and we looked at the science that was put before us.
00:09:14:23 - 00:09:34:23
Laura Lurkins
Even back in 2013, from researchers out of the University of Illinois, that this was going to be a major challenge. And we were looking at a very long term effort with five year averages. The water is different and the rainfall is different every year. So, I'm not discouraged by those numbers. I think we all sort of anticipated ups and downs.
00:09:34:25 - 00:10:02:04
Laura Lurkins
But really, I want everyone to sort of think about very long term efforts, and I don't want our momentum to slow down in everything else that's happening. So we do have to address that. You know, the director of agriculture here, of the Department of AG, stood up and talked about cover crop incentives that were offered in this past year, that kind of information and the results of that for water quality are not even reflected in this report.
00:10:02:04 - 00:10:25:19
Laura Lurkins
So, I feel like there's a lot of work, there's a lot of momentum in the education and people involved. And the other thing that we heard a lot today was really, you know, you're not having ten farmers do everything on every one of their acres. You're actually because of this effort influencing many, many farmers to do even a small amount on a manageable number of acres.
00:10:25:19 - 00:10:43:14
Laura Lurkins
And to me, that's true. Incremental progress that's ultimately going to help us get to our goal. So we all just have to be a little bit patient. And also celebrate how far we've come. When we were all sitting there sort of looking at this daunting environmental challenge. So I encourage people to celebrate.
00:10:43:15 - 00:10:47:19
Todd Gleason
Lauren Larkins is the director of environmental policy for the Illinois Farm Bureau.
00:10:47:19 - 00:11:01:01
Todd Gleason
She and others, in this 23rd episode of the Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast, were discussing the Illinois biennial report on nutrient loss. I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.