Agricultural runoff impacts on total maximum daily loads and water quality
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Location: : North Escambia County farm of
Martin Heibert The goal of the project is to evaluate the effectiveness of a grass filter strip best management practice (BMP) in removing nutrients and suspended solid from overflow of a catfish aquaculture pond. The catfish pond is equipped with a 12" PVC standpipe that will allow overflow to be directed as a sheet flow onto a grass filter strip that is approximately 10 meters wide and 100 meters long. Autosamplers have been positioned at the head and end of the filter strip; the samplers will respond to overflow resulting from rain events and will collect samples for analytical work. The parameters analyzed will be total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and total suspended solids. The downstream autosampler will be repositioned as necessary to gain information on the length of the filter strip necessary to clean overflow. This project deals with control of agricultural runoff water quality in response to the Clean Water Act requirements to establish total maximum daily loads for polluted water bodies. The project is in collaboration with a number of state and regional regulatory and extension agencies, including the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Institute for Food and Agricultural Science, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Data Collected over several months at the Catfish pond site shows some interesting trends in nutrient concentration change as water passes through the filter strip.
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