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County receives $527K grant for local clean water projects

Lycoming County has been selected to receive a $527,391 grant to implement clean water projects in the county to eventually improve the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Conservation district officials, as well as a representative from the Department of Environmental Protection, discussed three projects that grant money that will allow for best management practices that officials say will benefit local watersheds.

However, the impact is not limited to the local community-the state funding poured in specifically to help counties meet time-specified reductions of nitrogen, sediment and phosphorus pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

“You can do a local project and see an immediate impact on a small, local stream,” Megan Lehman, community relations coordinator for DEP, said. “It also happens to meet state obligations for the Chesapeake Bay watershed.”

Officials touted the no-till drill equipment rental program first. The county farm has a $40,000 Haybuster 77, a tool that plants seeds and presses soil back on top of them using a disk apparatus.

Small farm owners can rent the device, which is capable of planting seeds faster than regular plows, prevents runoff, and results in less gas used.

“Most of the people using it have day jobs,” Tim Heyler, an agricultural conservation technician, said. “It saves soil, money and time. Farmers can run over a field once instead of three times.”

The rental program will be expanded with the acquisition of a Haybuster 107, that is 10 feet wide instead of 7 feet wide. This will expand the conservation district’s ability to rent out two machines at one, and while three feet may not seem a huge difference at first, it adds up,” Heyler said.

The Haybuster is able to be rented on a first come, first serve basis, which at times gets busy because its use is clustered in the spring and fall. The conservation district can have it delivered to farms, according to Chesapeake Bay Technician, Don Morehart. Interested farmers should call the conservation district at 570-433-3003.

County officials then discussed the Fish and Wildlife Service’s plans at Pine Run, which has been ravaged by sediment erosion.

Dave Putnam, a Fish and Wildlife Biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, who is overseeing the project, said the Fish and Wildlife Service has wanted to launch a restoration project of Pine Run for years, and now has the funding to do so.

The project will focus on a mile stretch of Pine Run that travels under a culvert on South Pine Run Road. According to Putnam, the culvert dams with sticks and logs easily due to its size.

The culvert, as well as a railroad bridge, chokes the stream, according to Heyler. This causes a “garden hose effect” on the rest of the stream, where the water attempts to find ways around the bridges.

This is compounded by the fact the stream is deeper than it historically was, which means the banks are too high to be reinforced by planting trees.

The project aims to replace the culvert with a bridge, as well as adding “mud sills” underneath the banks of Pine Run which will armor the banks. This helps chop up a circular flow of water that is eroding the banks away.

By completing this project, the Fish and Wildlife service hopes to reduce sediment runoff and support fish habitat structures in Pine Run.

Putnam said erosion is detrimental to most aquatic organisms in a creek or stream. When erosion occurs, the sediment ends up on the bottom of the body of water, which smothers aquatic insects out from under the rocks, according to Putnam.

Morehart said losing the thickness of a dime across a mile of stream totals five tons. Erosion happens over the course of months and years, meaning it is difficult to notice it happening at first.

“If you can see the erosion, it is bad,” Heyler said.

The Pine Run watershed is considered a 303(d), meaning it is impaired by agriculture sediment. The goal of the conservation district is to use best management practices to eventually take Pine Run off that list.

The conservation district’s third demonstration showed off the effects of incentivizing cover cropping fields during off-months on a farm field on Level Corners Road.

Under normal circumstances, weather pushes fertilizer off fields and into watersheds, according to Morehart. However, planting grain crops or other covers help absorb and hold fertilizer in place. When the cover crop is killed when it is time to plant crops for harvesting, the fertilizer is absorbed back into the ground for the next season. Additionally, the cover crop helps hold top soil in place.

The conservation district will use part of the grant money to incentivize farmers to plant cover crops.

Heyler said that sometimes farmers are reluctant to adopt new practices because that can affect a year’s harvest and income.

“Farmers are risk-averse,” Heyler said. “We take the risk out by incentivizing its use. Cover crops are the cheapest thing you can do, while returning the most.”

Lycoming county stood apart from other counties as the largest county in Pennsylvania that also had the largest number of stakeholders invested in seeing its projects through-around 150, according to Jared Dressler, the northcentral region’s acting director for DEP.

The conservation district does not have a line-by-line allocation for the grant money. Instead, it is slotting funding in where it is able to push existing projects that already have partial funding over the threshold to see them started-and completed.

The grant money is able to be used until 2025. However, most of the projects work on a long-term basis, meaning the results will not be able to be seen immediately, according to Dressler. However, the conservation district intends to continue its projects long past that date.

Pennsylvania’s share of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed covers half the state and includes more than 12,000 miles of polluted streams and rivers.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Stewardship Fund allocated $15 million, and the Environmental Protection Agency allocated $2.4 million to support coordination of countywide action plans, which include best management practices as described by members of the conservation district.

Gov. Tom Wolf said the state has begun to see improvement in the health of the watershed thanks to county-level governmental groups as well as nonprofit and private-sector partners.

“It’s crucial that their unprecedented momentum be sustained by broad support,” Wolf said. “Their actions will benefit our drinking water, protect the long-term viability of our farms and outdoor recreation economy, and help our communities reduce flooding and attract business.”

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