Archived News, September 2007
2007-09-17
STILLWATER, Okla. – Agricultural drainage in the eastern United States may seem far removed from the southern Great Plains, but solutions to environmental concerns in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are being studied in Oklahoma, and that is good news for America’s heartland.
Chad Penn, assistant professor of soil chemistry with Oklahoma State University’s Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, said the connection is not as strange as it might first seem.
“The concepts being examined represent what could become an integral part of the way we approach agricultural nutrient management across the country, including Oklahoma,” said Penn, co-investigator of a nearly $1 million research project studying agricultural drainage.
The project, funded by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, is a 3-year study that will collect data at a variety of sites around the Chesapeake Bay, with the intent of designing filtration systems that will curb the flow of contaminants into the bay.
“Loss of nutrients, particularly phosphorus, in agricultural drainage waters is a priority conservation concern across the United States,” Penn said. “Open drainage ditches concentrate runoff and therefore offer opportunities for capturing phosphorus and other contaminants in runoff from large areas of land.”
In other words, development of effective filter technology potentially could dramatically reduce a major source of non-point source pollution into the Chesapeake Bay, one of America’s most important and widely used water resources.
And the science behind the development of the filter technology is likely to have real-world applications closer to home.
Penn said eutrophication – the premature degradation of a body of water leading to algae blooms, low-dissolved oxygen, fish kills and overall poor drinking water quality – is a great concern, both economically and environmentally, to Oklahoma.
“Oklahoma has homeowners who improperly apply fertilizers on their lawns, wastewater treatment discharges into rivers and streams, and runoff from agricultural, horticulture and turf industry sources; all of which potentially contribute to surface water eutrophication,” Penn said.
Penn said most currently used “best management practices” (BMPs) fail to do an adequate job of removing dissolved phosphorus.
“Oklahoma has soils that test very high in phosphorus content,” Penn said. “If we stopped applying phosphorus fertilizer to those soils and implemented current BMPs, we would still have an uncontrolled loss of dissolved phosphorus in those areas for 10 years to 20 years.”
The new technology being developed as part of the $999,683 NRCS grant has the potential to capture the dissolved phosphorus that is currently entering state surface waters.
Penn is already expanding the technology beyond agricultural drainage ditches.
“We’ve been examining applications to ponds in urban and suburban areas,” Penn said. “Our work has been drawing interest from drinking water treatment municipalities: They need to get rid of waste materials that potentially could be used in construction of quality filters. That’s taking a negative and turning it into a positive.”
The project team is led by principal investigator Joshua McGrath of the University of Maryland, and includes researchers at OSU, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and USDA Agricultural Research Service, in cooperation with Maryland Department of Agriculture and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
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REPORTER/MEDIA CONTACT:
Donald Stotts
News and Media Relations Manager
Agricultural Communications Services
143 Agriculture North
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-4079
Fax: 405-744-5739
E-Mail: donald.stotts@okstate.edu
Oklahoma State University, U. S. Department of Agriculture, State and Local governments cooperating. Oklahoma State University in compliance with Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Executive Order 11246 as amended, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and other federal and state laws and regulations, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, age, religion, disability, or status as a veteran in any of its policies, practices, or procedures, and is an equal opportunity employer.
