Project Summary

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is a branch of federal government that provides financial and engineering assistance to agricultural operations in order to help mitigate environmental impacts from the operations. The NRCS helps agricultural producers to design and implement best management practices (BMPs) on their operations in order to achieve environmental goals.

One type of environmental impact sometimes associated with animal feeding operations (AFOs) is contamination of stream water from manure. A BMP that has been shown to be effective in reducing this contamination in some cases is installation of vegetative filter strips (VFSs). This is basically a separation (or strip) between the operation and the stream which is planted with vegetation to absorb and capture some of the contaminants that come from the feeding operations.

Animal Feeding Operation before Vegetative Filter Strip	Suspended Solids Entering Stream from Animal Feeding Operation

New Vegetative Filter Strip	Established Vegetative Filter Strip

Montana State University Water Quality Extension is currently involved with the NRCS in a project to test the effectiveness of the filter strips on a few animal feeding operations. The project will last 3 years and look at the water quality at these sites before and after VFS installation. Some of the components which are being studied are bacteria, suspended solids, and nutrients. Some other components of the study include soil sampling, shallow groundwater sampling, assessment of channel bottom disturbance effects on water quality, and simulated rainfall event effects on water quality.

The basic outline of the study is to collect water quality data at sample sites in and around the stream reaches near the AFOs. This sampling is done before the VFS are installed and then the measurements are repeated for the 2 years following the VFS installation to determine the effectiveness of the VFS at reducing stream water contamination.

This is an ongoing project through 2007. As the project develops, this page will be updated with additional information. Comments, questions, concerns may be addressed to W. Adam Sigler (asigler@montana.edu)