Watershed Program Celebrates 50 Years of Success

COLUMBIA, MO, August 9, 2004 – For some people, it’s difficult to see the results of a completed watershed project. That’s because what people in the watershed don’t see – especially gullies and flooded streets, homes and businesses – is what makes the project successful.

A watershed is the land that water flows across or under on its way to a stream, river or lake. Everyone lives in a watershed.

The Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act became law on August 4, 1954 when President Dwight Eisenhower signed Public Law 83-566. Since then, watershed plans carried out in about 1,500 projects nationwide have reduced flooding, soil erosion and water pollution while creating municipal and rural water supplies, recreational areas and wildlife habitat. The program also has been utilized to buy out flood-prone properties and move people out of harms way.

In Missouri, 19 watershed projects have been completed and another 19 have been approved for construction and are in various stages of implementation. The Natural Resources Conservation Service, at the request of local sponsors, studies watersheds and helps the sponsors develop a plan to solve their local flooding problems. Once plans are approved and authorized, NRCS provides technical and financial assistance to carry out the plan.

 “NRCS’ assistance in working one-on-one with landowners to help them solve natural resource problems is well known. The Watershed Program takes that same approach, but applies it to a wider area,” says Roger A. Hansen, state conservationist. “Instead of preparing a conservation plan to one farm, we work with sponsors to prepare a plan for an entire watershed.”

While watershed activities are taking place, NRCS also works with landowners in the watershed to install soil conservation and water quality practices such as terraces, waterways, grade-stabilization structures, animal waste management systems, and wetlands restoration.

“During the early years of the program, watershed projects mainly consisted of constructing grade-stabilization structures, which collect and hold water during heavy rains and then release the water slowly.” says Harold Deckerd, assistant state conservationist. “Now it’s more common to put in dams that, in addition to holding back water from heavy rains, create a permanent pool.”

Deckerd says landowners like having the “ponds” on their property because they provide a source of water for livestock and fish. 934 dams have been constructed in Missouri thus far. Most of the resulting ponds and lakes are three to 10 acres. However, the lakes can be as large as 1,000 acres. NRCS has designed three of those large, multi-purpose dams in Missouri. Lakes of that size provide flood control, community water supplies and water recreation opportunities.

Since 1961, Missouri NRCS has provided $86.5 million in financial assistance to local sponsors through the Watershed Program. When converted to 2004 dollars, the financial assistance would be $161 million.

“The most successful projects have been the ones in which the local people came to us and said ‘We have a problem and we want to do something about it,’” Deckerd says. “When they do that, we begin studying the problem and possible solutions. Projects have to pass three tests to be approved: they have to be economically sound, environmentally defensible and socially acceptable.”

Project sponsors who have witnessed conditions before and after watershed projects, are the biggest proponents.

Jim Cole, city manager of Neosho, remembers how heavy rains used to regularly flood homes and businesses in the Newton County community before a watershed project was implemented there. Currently five of seven planned floodwater-retarding dams have been constructed in the Hickory Creek Watershed.

“In 1993, we put 50 people up in the city auditorium because their houses were flooded. This year we had three inches of rain in one hour and we didn’t have any major damage,” Cole says. “The ditches downstream were barely running. Without those structures in place, we would have had massive flooding all along High School Branch.”

In addition to the flood-control structures, the Hickory Creek Watershed Project included voluntary buy outs of property in the floodplain. To date, 150 homes and businesses have been purchased. In their place the city will have a park and hiking trail. Cole says the Watershed Program has converted one of his city’s most blighted and dangerous areas into an aesthetically pleasing asset that all citizens can enjoy.

“We had so much flooding in the past that people here were ready for this project,” he says. “It has worked very well for us.”

Like most small watershed projects, the success in Neosho can be measured by the problems that local people no longer see.