Outlook: Watershed: Local agencies move forward on water quality

If you look out your window and see piles of snow, it means the outlook for winter hasn't improved much since I wrote these words in late December. And if the snow piles are still there, embedded within them will be an unappetizing message from your urban watershed it's a dirty world out there.

All that gritty, blackened snow eventually becomes gray, dingy runoff that flows toward our local streams and lakes. What impact does this have? To be honest, in spite of much study on the subject, we still don't know precisely how urban runoff affects receiving waters, but we do have some clues.

One piece of evidence is obtained by examining the macroinvertebrates, the small creatures living in the stream bottom. If we do this in Jordan Creek or Fassnight Creek in Springfield, we quickly discover that only a few kinds of organisms are present. Sensitive types normally found in cleaner Ozark streams, such as mayfly and stonefly larvae, are totally absent. We don't know exactly why this loss has occurred.

A common tendency is to assume that the water is polluted. But the answer is probably more complicated than that. In fact, other changes in urban streams, such as more frequent and severe flooding, channel scouring, temperature changes and sedimentation may account for much of their "healthy" nature.

So urban streams are unhealthy you could have guessed that, you might say. And some of the critters have disappeared so what? Unfortunately, what we see (or don't see) in urban streams is only the tip of the snow pile, so to speak. Runoff washing from our city also contains pesticides and plant nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

We have seen downstream consequences of these materials; for example, a health advisory on eating certain pesticide-contaminated fish in the James River (the advisory has now been lifted), and a buildup of algae in Table Rock Lake (still very much an issue).

Of course, problems downstream are not just caused by runoff. As most of us now know, sewage treatment plants also discharge lots of nutrients. In rural and suburban areas, many septic tanks undoubtedly still pollute groundwater.

And agricultural activities, especially those that concentrate animals and their wastes, also are an important part of the picture. But the most profound changes in our local landscape, as well as many water quality effects, can be tied to one overarching themegrowth. Our continuing growth, unless it becomes more watershed-friendly, promises to exert unwanted effects on water resources for the foreseeable future.

As previously mentioned in the Business Journal, water quality/growth-related problems are now more widely recognized, and many good things are beginning to happen.

The city of Springfield will soon have processes on line to drastically reduce phosphorus output at wastewater treatment plants.

Show-Me Yards and Neighborhoods, a program launched in 2000, is intended to raise homeowner awareness and recognize homeowners for better yard practices.

The Watershed Committee, with the city of Springfield and other partners, is working on a new watershed exhibit to go into the Discovery Center of Springfield in 2001. This interactive exhibit will help users discover how day-to-day human activities can be modified to cause less pollution.

Greene County has been looking seriously at a concept called Conservation Development, in which sensitive portions of a watershed can be set aside as open space. As with anything new, public acceptance of these potentially better development practices will take some time.

Finally, the Watershed Committee began a major project in the Little Sac watershed in late 2000, extending cost-sharing and technical assistance to landowners from northern Springfield to Stockton Lake. The James River Basin Partnership will soon begin a similar project in that critical watershed.

It is important that we advance on all of these water-quality fronts.

As the Watershed Committee discovered on kicking off its Little Sac watershed project, there is a pronounced urban/rural contrast in the perception of watershed problems.

Many rural folks feel strongly that Springfield is the major and, for all intents and purposes, only source of pollution in the region.

Unfortunately, major problems, such as the recent sewer spill, only reinforce such notions. But no matter where we live, we all need to face the truth: Water quality problems respect no manmade boundaries national, regional or local.

We all add to the dirty snow pile. That simple admission is sometimes the hardest lesson of all.

(Loring Bullard is director of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks.)