Progress report for LNC22-465
Project Information
Constructed wetlands for tile treatment are proven effective, cost-efficient means of reducing nutrient loss from agricultural lands. Accelerating their use is particularly important in Illinois, which ranks a close #2 among Midwestern states in its nutrient contribution to the Mississippi River system and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, tile-treatment wetlands and other structural edge-of-field practices have been extremely underutilized in Illinois due to several challenges. These barriers include a lack of familiarity with the practice among both landowners and farm advisers, high up-front implementation cost, and absence of a direct incentive for the farmer (i.e., increased productivity).
Through the proposed project, the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) and our partners will work in north-central and central Illinois to overcome barriers to adoption of this practice via education and demonstration strategies that apply the latest social and decision science research. We will increase knowledge of and accelerate use of the tile-treatment wetland practice via data-driven outreach in collaboration with trusted messengers; technical assistance to get wetlands built with local farm leaders to demonstrate the practice; and dissemination of water quality monitoring results to show that the wetlands work.
Project outcomes to be achieved from fall 2022 through fall 2024 include:
- Increased knowledge/awareness of 250 farmers and farm advisers about tile-treatment wetlands.
- Engagement of 20 ag-sector advisers to help disseminate tile-treatment wetlands through farmer interactions.
- Installation of new wetland demonstration sites by at least two landowners.
Four landowners who have implemented a tile-treatment wetland have committed to participate in this project by providing regular input on outreach approaches, hosting field days, and spreading the word with their peers. Other partners on this outreach and demonstration work are the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership, the Illinois Land Improvement Contractors Association, the Marshall-Putnam and Livingston County SWCD, Illinois Central College’s Demonstration Farm, Ducks Unlimited, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program in Illinois. Education and outreach outputs will include adviser workshops, fact sheets, an infographic on water quality monitoring data, field days, and meetings that facilitate peer-to-peer learning. Progress will be evaluated by attendance of field events, number of new contacts, and written surveys.
This effort advances a little-used conservation tool for the agricultural sector that is both economically and environmentally sustainable and fits within a systems approach to nutrient loss reduction for productive farmland. TWI’s innovative outreach strategies provide a model that can be replicated in agricultural watersheds throughout the North-Central SARE region to increase use of conservation drainage practices to improve water quality.
Over two years, TWI will achieve the following outcomes in north-central and central Illinois:
- Learning: A total of 250 farmers, farm advisers, and conservation professionals will have increased awareness/knowledge about tile-treatment wetlands for nutrient loss reduction.
- Action: 20 ag-sector advisers will be actively engaged to help spread the word about tile-treatment wetlands through farmer interactions.
- Action: At least two landowners will install tile-treatment wetland demonstration sites on their properties.
The project’s long-term goal is to facilitate replication of tile-treatment wetlands across Illinois and beyond as a normalized part of a sustainable farming landscape, yielding meaningful water quality improvement.
Constructed wetlands for tile treatment are proven effective, cost-efficient means of reducing nutrient loss from agricultural lands. Accelerating their use is particularly important in Illinois, which ranks a close #2 among Midwestern states in its nutrient contribution to the Mississippi River system and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, tile-treatment wetlands and other structural edge-of-field practices have been extremely underutilized in Illinois due to several challenges. TWI’s project approach focuses on targeted collaborative outreach and education paired with local on-the-ground demonstration to overcome barriers to adoption of tile-treatment wetlands as part of the systems approach to nutrient loss reduction. Four landowner cooperators who have already installed a constructed wetland on their property are providing input to guide the project approach and helping to spread the word about effectiveness and benefits of the wetland practice via conversations with peers, presentations, testimonials, and hosting field days.
Over the reporting period (October 2022 through December 2023), the Wetlands Initiative and our partners reached a total of 133 farmers/landowners and 60 ag-sector advisers through meetings, field events, and other collaborative outreach. TWI Smart Wetlands project staff organized or participated in three field days over summer 2023. These well-attended events allowed participants to view tile-treatment wetlands first-hand, hear from knowledgeable advisers/agency staff on ag conservation topics, and talk with their peer landowners who have already implemented practices. Meanwhile, the Smart Wetlands project and constructed wetland practice were widely disseminated through 25 blog posts on the Smart Wetlands website; an article in the TWI e-newsletter and seven media articles; and inclusion in a documentary called Fluddles that chronicles the wildlife of agricultural wetlands in Illinois.
Over the past year, TWI further built out two major new collaborative partnerships with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program (PFW) in Illinois (https://www.fws.gov/partners/) and with the national nonprofit Ducks Unlimited (DU). These partnerships are aimed at reaching a broader range of landowner prospects with the tile-treatment wetland practice. A total of 10 ag-sector advisers are now actively engaged in working with TWI to help spread the word about tile-treatment wetlands with their farmer/landowner contacts. Additionally, collaborations with staff from several local Soil and Water Conservation District offices have led to the identification of several new landowner prospects for a tile-treatment wetland; TWI is evaluating their properties and has begun preliminary designs for four candidate sites. Two tile-treatment wetlands are anticipated for installation in 2024, including one that will be sited on a popular forest preserve property and will treat the surface and tile drainage runoff from adjacent farmland through a new collaboration with the Champaign County Forest Preserve District.
Cooperators
- - Technical Advisor
- - Technical Advisor
- - Technical Advisor
- - Technical Advisor
Research
Education
TWI’s project approach focuses on targeted collaborative outreach and education paired with local on-the-ground demonstration to overcome barriers to adoption of tile-treatment wetlands as part of the systems approach to nutrient loss reduction.
We have learned that most farmers need to see an unfamiliar practice “in action” locally before becoming willing to try it; however, the modern farmer also seeks information from a broad network of contacts. Consequently, TWI’s project strategy is focused on (1) Integrating knowledge and information about the tile-treatment wetland practice deeply with landowners’ trusted messengers (“training the trainers”); and simultaneously (2) showing the wetlands’ operation first-hand via local demonstration sites built in each targeted county. Today’s farmers are also very interested in the latest technology and tools to enhance farm profitability; therefore, TWI has adopted a “Smart Wetlands” project branding, offering precision conservation via a customized watershed modeling toolkit and clear data that the practice works locally by sharing water quality monitoring results.
Guided by the latest social science research on farmer decision-making and practice adoption, specific education and outreach strategies on this project include:
* Aligning with and activating farmer peer-learning groups.
Farmer watershed groups are a proven method for engaging producers. TWI is continuing to collaborate with the VRH Steering Committee, a watershed group in Livingston and Ford counties. Meanwhile, we are working with other county Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) boards and staff, along with local private and public advisers, to support the development of local peer-to-peer learning groups that meet regularly to discuss conservation practices. These groups will include farmers, ag professionals, and USDA program staff in and across those counties, using existing social structures (e.g., commodity groups, SWCD, Farm Bureau, FSA/NRCS) to connect.
The farmer-to-farmer learning groups—to launch in early 2024—will be similar to farmer watershed groups but based at the county level in order to benefit from TWI’s strong working relationships with county-level staff and boards. By working in several contiguous counties, we can address watershed-level natural resource concerns but take advantage of extant organizational systems rather than introducing new entities. We are exploring the peer-learning group model used by Practical Farmers of Iowa (an NCR-SARE grantee) and others for ideas that can be incorporated into TWI’s work in Illinois.
* Building relationships with influential public and private advisers.
Modern producers rely on a wide range of advisers’ input in choosing their equipment, crop inputs, and farm management technology. These “trusted messengers” include not only public advisers such as university extension, SWCD, and NRCS staff but also private advisers such as crop input and equipment vendors. Consequently, TWI is working to build collaborative relationships with these private advisers across our targeted counties so that tile-treatment wetlands can be part of their conversations with producers as an option.
* Reaching underserved farmers through women landowner groups.
Project staff are committed to working closely with any landowner prospects identified by our partners or through our events/outreach who are from disadvantaged/historically underserved populations. Field Outreach Specialist Jean McGuire has completed Women Food & Agriculture Network (WFAN) trainings on how to approach women farmers and is working to connect with female Illinois advisers through local groups and meetings. As these relationships develop, one of TWI’s field events under this project will be women-landowner focused if feasible.
* Finding avenues to hard-to-engage groups such as non-operating landowners.
The tenant-landowner relationship is important to consider when conducting outreach, and non-operating landowners can be particularly difficult to engage. To address this challenge, TWI and our partners are planning specific outreach about tile-treatment wetlands to farm managers and bankers—two adviser groups who work closely with non-operating landowners. Learnings from a 2022 field day focused on these groups will facilitate additional outreach efforts. Since these ag professionals work closely with multiple clients, educating them about tile-treatment wetlands can be an efficient way of disseminating the practice to a wide range of landowners.
Farmer Involvement
On this project, TWI is collaborating with a group of farmer/landowner leaders who have already implemented a tile-treatment wetland on their properties in north-central Illinois and are committed to helping disseminate the practice to their peers: Jim Fulton (Fulton Farms), Rex Newton (farmer at McCuskey Farms), and Wesley Lehman (Feather Prairie Farm). Pete Fandel of Illinois Central College, who manages ICC’s Demonstration Farm including a TWI-designed tile-treatment wetland, is also part of this group of advisors on the project.
Through regular conversations with TWI project staff, these four cooperators are providing input to guide the project approach, discuss ideas, and help hone outreach tactics. They will also provide a “test audience” for new communication materials. Additionally, each cooperator is helping to spread the word about effectiveness and benefits of the wetland practice via conversations with peers, presentations, testimonials, and hosting field days. They are being compensated for their time hosting field events.
Project Activities
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Over fall 2022–December 2023, TWI and our partners worked to increase knowledge of and accelerate implementation of tile-treatment wetlands through the following education and outreach activities. This project has a geographic focus on seven counties in north-central Illinois where there are existing farmer networks and TWI has built ag-sector relationships. Map of Project Focus Areas
- Collaborative landowner/adviser outreach informed by watershed modeling tools.
Over the past year, TWI further built out two major new collaborative partnerships with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program (PFW) in Illinois (https://www.fws.gov/partners/) and with the national nonprofit Ducks Unlimited (DU). These partnerships are aimed at reaching a broader range of landowner prospects with the tile-treatment wetland practice. DU is pursuing strategies to spread more wetlands to provide waterfowl habitat across the Midwestern Farm Belt with a focus on aiding/amplifying the existing work of local groups. Meanwhile, USFWS is interested in working with TWI to implement “hybrid” wetlands that create more wildlife habitat on marginal farm ground while still capturing and removing excess nutrients to meet water quality improvement goals.
These major collaborations made it possible to organize three different field events in 2023 and to attract a larger number of attendees than originally anticipated. These well-attended events allowed participants to view tile-treatment wetlands first-hand, talk with knowledgeable advisers/agency staff on ag conservation topics, and talk with their peer landowners who have already implemented practices. Field events included:
- On June 29, 2023, the project team collaborated with our partners to hold a “Connecting Tile to Conservation” field day at Marshall County’s first tile-treatment wetland (see attached flyer). Approximately 50 people attended the event. Speakers on current trends in agriculture, resources for farmers, and progress on a new Farm Bill were a draw for attendees. Guests could peruse a “wetland walk” with a series of banners placed along the wetland that explained its design and function. Due to a severe storm that moved through in the afternoon, a planned evening event was postponed and held in August 2023 instead.
- As part of the Mississippi River Network coalition’s River Days of Action, TWI and our partners gave a tour to members of the Midwest Caucus of Environmental Legislators at the new Livingston County wetland site on June 12.
- On August 2, 2023, Smart Wetlands project staff participated in an "Ag and Conservation Family Night" field event hosted by the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership at Illinois Central College's East Peoria campus on ICC's Demonstration Farm. Visitors got an up-close view of farmers’ many practices and technologies to improve soil health and protect water quality on their farms. Dr. Kostel presented on the Smart Wetlands project and constructed wetlands at a tent next to ICC's TWI-designed constructed wetland. Other event field stations included a rainfall simulator, soil pit and cover crop plot, and a demonstration of drain tile installation. Approximately 30 people attended the event.
- On September 14, 2023, TWI worked with the landowner and partners to organize a “Wildly Beneficial” field event at the Livingston Co wetland (see attached flyer). This unique event focused on drawing audiences with an interest in hunting and other recreational opportunities created as secondary benefits by installing a tile-treatment wetland. It featured a hunting dog training demonstration along with expert speakers on Illinois waterfowl and practices on private lands that benefit bird conservation. Approximately 75 people attended this event.
The following 10 public and private advisors are new contacts who are helping to disseminate the tile-treatment wetland practice to their farmer/landowner contacts:
- Madie McFarland (Biologist, Ducks Unlimited). Ms. McFarland is helping to spread the word about the conservation and wildlife benefits of wetland practices.
- Harrison Chumley (Agriculture Conservation Specialist, Ducks Unlimited, co-located at the IL Department of Agriculture office in Springfield, IL) works directly with private landowners to implement regenerative ag practices.
- Evan Newton and Kyle Maple of USAG LLC, a private ag investment company. USAG LLC assists with building farmland portfolios and implementation of farm management plans.
- Jessica Grissom, Resource Conservationist for the Mercer County Soil and Water Conservation District. Mercer County is a potential area of expansion for the project.
- Ryan Green, Manager at Pinion/DIGS Associates, who designs new subsurface drainage systems and is working with landowners to incorporate a tile-treatment wetland when planning new tile drainage for their properties.
- Andrew Fulton (Sangamon County NRCS)
- Andrew Philipps (Sangamon County SWCD)
- Shelly Seman (Sangamon County SWCD)
- Sarah Lindholm (Springfield City, Water, Light, and Power). Ms. Lindholm is managing Springfield CWLP's Regional Conservation Partnership Program award to accelerate the use of conservation practices in Sangamon County.
- Technical assistance to help farmers implement wetland demonstration sites in new counties or subwatersheds.
For the first wetland demonstration site(s) in each targeted area, TWI seeks to partner with farmers who are active, well-known leaders in their community. Each “first-adopter” landowner will collaborate with TWI and other partners to host field events during wetland construction and site visits after installation, facilitating peer-to-peer learning. For the six existing wetland sites, most of the landowners and/or farm managers are already actively engaged in disseminating the practice.
After connecting with TWI staff, farmers interested in exploring a constructed wetland for their property will move through TWI’s four-step process toward implementation, which includes:
- An off-site initial assessment of their property for potential suitable locations;
- An on-site visit and more detailed assessment;
- Preparation of a preliminary wetland design if there is a suitable location; and
- Final wetland design prepared with an environmental engineering firm (Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd.) with landowner and agency approval, as needed.
Through the site evaluation process, TWI works to identify the best solution for water quality improvement for each farm given its unique setting and characteristics. Landowners that are implementing the Constructed Wetland standard can enroll in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) or Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to receive federal cost-share if they wish. As an added incentive for these first adopters, TWI covers the remaining cost of building the wetland after the farmer receives their cost-share payment from EQIP or CRP.
When an interested landowner meets other eligibility criteria for a wetland but their setting does not allow for a standard implementation, TWI will investigate the potential for a non-traditional implementation of a tile-drainage treatment wetland. If a wetland proves not to be appropriate for their farm, we will work with our partners to refer the landowner to an alternative tile-treatment practice.
A previous collaboration with the Marshall-Putnam SWCD on their Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) offered a model that TWI is working to replicate across other targeted counties to connect with new landowner prospects. Landowner meetings at the Marshall-Putnam SWCD office proved successful by uniting SWCD staff’s local relationships and trusted reputation with TWI’s technical expertise in explaining, siting, and designing this little-known practice. After the Marshall County field day held in June 2023, TWI began evaluating the properties of two new landowners who attended the event from Vermilion County. Through a meeting with Mercer County SWCD staff, two new landowner prospects were identified. New collaborations in the Springfield area through the Springfield City, Water, Light & Power RCPP has led to additional farmer prospects for a tile-treatment wetland in Sangamon County. Opportunities, outreach, and meetings in these other counties resulted in 7 off-site and/or on-site assessments completed for new prospects over 2023, and several of these moved into the preliminary design phase.
TWI has partnered with the Illinois Land Improvement Contractors’ Association (ILICA) or an ILICA operator to build six constructed wetland sites in north-central Illinois. We will continue to collaborate with ILICA on installation of new wetlands. ILICA associates (another group of trusted farmer advisers) have built a familiarity with treatment wetland installation over the course of our partnership.
In 2023, we identified that increasing demand from prospective farmers for wetland design had outpaced TWI’s staff capacity on the Smart Wetlands project. Consequently, in fall 2023 TWI hired a full-time Engineer to assist in designing new tile-treatment wetland sites. Brendon de Rosario has a degree in Civil Engineering and comes to TWI with significant experience as a water resources engineer with several environmental engineering firms, where he managed projects and developed design plans for green infrastructure, including stormwater drainage improvement and constructed wetlands. This key new staff member added to the team will help facilitate further project growth in the years to come. Brendon is already working on several preliminary wetland designs and conducting on- and off-site assessments.
Two new tile-treatment wetlands are anticipated for installation in 2024, including one that will be located in a new county for the project. A collaboration with the Champaign County Forest Preserve District developed after FPD staff visited the Livingston County wetland construction expo in 2022 and were interested in siting a wetland to address water quality on their property. The target location will receive the surface and tile drainage runoff from adjacent farmland, which is run by a well-known local farm operator who is enthusiastic about the project. This will be the largest Smart Wetland built so far, on a highly visible public site that is located near a major university and state agency offices. The Champaign County FPD, TWI, and the USFWS Partners for Fish & Wildlife Program are all contributing toward the installation costs. Construction is anticipated for summer 2024 as part of a conservation expo.
- Dissemination of five-plus years of water quality monitoring results.
Local proof that tile-treatment wetlands are effective is critical to spreading the practice to “middle-adopter” landowners who are more risk-averse. From 2016–19, TWI partnered with the University of Illinois-Chicago to gather water quality monitoring data using autosamplers at the two Bureau County wetland sites. This robust dataset shows the practice’s effectiveness at capturing and removing excess nutrients from tile drainage. Meanwhile, project manager Dr. Jill Kostel continues to work closely with partners on water quality monitoring at the Illinois Central College (ICC) constructed wetland site, a TWI-designed wetland installed on ICC’s Demonstration Farm in 2019.
Through a separate SARE grant, Illinois Corn Growers and ICC are funding water quality monitoring on the farm; Waterborne Environment is responsible for operation and maintenance of the automated equipment and collecting all flow and water quality data; ICC staff/students collect the samples, which are currently being analyzed at Illinois State University; and TWI is assisting with sampling methodology, compiling and analyzing the data, and determining the results for the in-field and tile-treatment practices. Rigorous data collection began in 2021 for the ICC tile-treatment wetland, and to date data has been analyzed through April 2022. Findings thus far show that overall, the nitrate levels leaving the wetland are much lower than the inlet concentrations. In some cases in 2021, we observed zero nitrate leaving the system, as evaporation was greater than flow into the wetland. Further data analysis is needed to assess trends through 2022–23.
TWI project staff are disseminating all these monitoring findings via presentations and on the Smart Wetlands website. This blog post is one example of how findings are being shared: https://www.smartwetlands.farm/smart-blog/2023/2/8/the-proof-is-in-the-wetland-water-quality-monitoring-shows-smart-wetlands-effectiveness. In 2024, we anticipate working with a social media and web consultant to update content on the farmer-facing Smart Wetlands website and create visual tools such as infographics to make the water quality monitoring data gathered from these three existing wetland sites accessible and understandable to landowners.
Other dissemination of tile-treatment wetlands:
From fall 2022 through 2023, TWI’s Field Outreach Specialist Jean McGuire “road-tested” a multi-modal communication strategy to raise awareness and increase understanding about the Smart Wetlands project with ag audiences. This included generating a regular blog series on the Smart Wetlands website, producing videos on key elements of the tile-treatment wetland practice and success stories to date, and cross-posting on social media. These communication efforts were partially funded by Mississippi River Network. An example video can be viewed on TWI’s Smart Wetlands YouTube channel here: Siting, Designing, and Building a Smart Wetland. The blog series can be found here: https://www.smartwetlands.farm/. In total, 25 blog entries have been posted on the Smart Wetlands website since November 2022.
Over the past year, the Smart Wetlands project was featured in the TWI e-newsletter, which has a reach of nearly 3,500 subscribers, and seven media articles:
- TWI’s May 2023 e-newsletter article – “Smart Wetlands: Coming to a farm near you!”
- “Smart Wetland Featured at Field Day,” AgriNews, June 10, 2023
- “Lawmakers See Wetlands’ Benefits,” AgriNews, June 26, 2023.
- “River Days of Action Tour Visits Wetland,” AgriNews, June 26, 2023.
- “Smart Wetland Highlights Farm Conservation Efforts,” AgriNews, July 21, 2023.
- “Wetland, conservation farming efforts are a group project.” AgriNews, July 21, 2023 (Q&A with Dr. Jill Kostel)
- “ ‘This place wanted to be a wetland’: How a farmer turned his fields into a wildlife sanctuary.” The Guardian, October 22, 2023.
- “How Tiny Wetlands in the Midwest Are Combating the Gulf of Mexico’s ‘Dead Zone’,” Reasons to Be Cheerful, November 6, 2023.
Meanwhile, TWI Senior Environmental Engineer Dr. Jill Kostel and TWI Field Outreach Specialist Jean McGuire gave the following presentations on the Smart Wetlands project to ag advisers, conservation peers, and other audiences:
- “Innovative Approaches to Scaling Up Conservation Practice Adoption in Tile Drained Landscapes.” Co-presenter with Adrienne Mario of The Nature Conservancy and Keegan Kult of the Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition, Illinois Association of Drainage Districts Annual Meeting, January 20, 2023, Bloomington, IL.
- “Smart Wetlands.” Innovation Station: Chesapeake Bay, Secretary’s Office of Global Woman’s Issues, U.S. State Department, February 9,2023, Webinar. This presentation was recorded and can be listened to on Apple Podcast here or on Spotify here.
- “Growing Relationships and Partnerships for Accelerating Tile-Treatment Wetland Practice Adoption.” Co-presenters with Livingston County wetland landowner Wes Lehman. Fishers & Farmers Partnership, April 20, 2023, Webinar.
- “Tile-treatment Wetlands from Outreach to Implementation.” Association of Illinois Soil & Water Conservation Districts Annual Meeting, July 17, 2023, Springfield, IL.
- “Making the Case for Expanded Use of the Ag Conservation Planning Framework in Illinois.” Co-presenter with Adrienne Mario of The Nature Conservancy, Association of Illinois Soil & Water Conservation Districts Annual Meeting, July 17, 2023, Springfield, IL.
- “Growing Partnerships and Relationships for Increasing Wetland Practice Adoption.” Presented by Dr. Kostel. 78th Soil and Water Conservation Society International Annual Conference, August 6-9, 2023, Des Moines, IA.
- “Applying Social Science to Motivate Farmers and Landowners to Adopt Water Quality Practices.” Presented by Jean McGuire. 78th Soil and Water Conservation Society International Annual Conference, August 6-9, 2023, Des Moines, IA.
- Fluddles premiere at Illinois Central College, November 8, 2023.
Attendance: 40 people. Wes Lehman and Jean McGuire participated in a panel discussion following the premiere showing of the Fluddles documentary, which includes interviews with TWI Executive Director Paul Botts and landowner/cooperator Wes Lehman about the Smart Wetlands project. Fluddles was created in 2023 to chronicle the wildlife of agricultural wetlands in Illinois (https://www.turnstoneimpact.com/fluddles.html). The film is being screened throughout Illinois over 2023–24 at libraries, colleges, and nature centers.
Learning Outcomes
- Tile-treatment wetlands
- Edge-of-field conservation practices