Millions spent to keep manure out of Big Sioux River paying off, speaker says
SIOUX FALLS – Keeping cattle waste out of the river that runs through the state's largest city will cost about $11 million over the next five years, and the city will pay more than half the price.
One of the designers of the water quality program that money pays for, however, told an audience in Sioux Falls that past investments have paid off.
The Big Sioux River is polluted with dissolved soils, agricultural chemicals and livestock waste beyond levels safe for uses like fishing and swimming. City, federal and state money has been used for a little over a decade to pay landowners to leave strips of tallgrass or other vegetation in the land along the banks of a river or a tributary. The root systems in those buffer strips catch and filter out pollutants before they enter the water, and also prevent erosion.
During Thursday's Big Sioux Stewardship Summit, program developer Barry Berg, said his team and partners have enrolled over 100 stream miles into their buffer strip program since its inception.
'We finally reached the century mark with the program,' he said during a morning presentation.
The enrolled areas now total more than 4,000 acres, with an additional 250 to 300 slated for enrollment this spring, Berg said.
Under the primary model of the program, livestock are blocked from bank access from April through September. Farmers are allowed to cut the grass for hay after June 15. The idea is to keep cattle out of streams during hot summer months when they're most likely to wade in and defecate, spiking E. coli levels.
Berg said advancing the program is an arduous process that involves enrolling landowners in conservation agreements, coordinating federal and state funding streams, and adapting grazing and haying practices to better protect streambanks and riparian vegetation.
A focal point of the effort is Skunk Creek, which flows about 70 miles from Brant Lake into the Big Sioux River near Sioux Falls. Skunk Creek now contributes over half of the water that flows over the falls at Falls Park and through the city, due to a diversion upstream on the Big Sioux near the airport.
Skunk Creek historically carries a lot of E. coli into the river. But today, he said 44% of its banks in the program's footprint and 48% of adjacent pastureland acres have been enrolled. And that's making a big difference, he said. It's possible, he said, for the state's integrated water quality report to take Skunk Creek off its list of impaired water bodies if the program keeps its momentum.
'Back in 2013 and 2014, we had samples on Skunk Creek with 50 to 70% exceeding standards,' for permissible E. coli and suspended solids, he said. 'Now we're down around 10 to 11% exceeding. If we get down below 10 and hold that for two years in the integrated report, they're gonna say, 'Hey, we're passing. Skunk Creek is no longer impaired.''
For Skunk Creek, 'no longer impaired' would mean its waters would be safe for non-immersion recreational activities like kayaking or canoeing. Because it feeds the Big Sioux, that would move the river's water quality within city limits closer to what advocates want: a swimmable river.
80% of tested surface water in South Dakota fails to meet state standards
Participating farmers see financial benefits, Berg added. He described working with one landowner to calculate returns on haying the buffer land. The landowner made more through incentive payments and hay than he would have by planting corn or soybeans.
When the last five-year phase of the project wraps up this summer, the water quality investments will have supported 16 watering stations, over 4,000 feet of fencing, 12,000 feet of pipe, and four barns, built with manure-trapping pits beneath them. Additionally, the final phase also saw over 1,000 acres of cover crop planted and 900 more acres enrolled in the buffer program.
The next five years will continue that work, with $11 million already earmarked. That includes about $5.8 million from Sioux Falls, $3.2 million in federal grants and funding, $1.4 million in local cash and donations, $465,000 from Dell Rapids, and $263,000 from the East Dakota Water Development District.
Berg said his long-term goal is to enroll 75% of Skunk Creek's streambanks.
'If we can get there, I believe we'll see it delisted for E. coli,' he said. 'We're already close.'
Travis Entenmann, director of Friends of the Big Sioux River, said the effort is not only about compliance and conservation, but the city's future. A clean river, he said, is one that people can use.
'It's a huge opportunity for us for tourism,' he said. 'The idea that it could be 90 degrees outside and there's not families recreating in the river; it is kind of sad. And we should want better.'
A voluntary, incentive-based approach is how the state primarily tries to tackle the issue of E. Coli contamination in its waters, but he said more could be done.
'The three things that I believe will clean our river are regulation, enforcement of regulation, and land use change,' he later said.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
18 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
How this Bay Area city is battling a goose invasion — and 300 pounds of poop a day
Welcome to Foster City, home to 24 parks and more than 160 acres of open space that collects some 300 pounds of goose poop a day. Foster City has received national attention for its troubles with Canada geese. Each goose — the city estimates it has between 300 and 400 of them — can produce one or two pounds of droppings a day, turning a park into a minefield. The goose poop requires regular power washings and has contributed to high E. coli levels in parts of the local lagoon. During nesting season the birds can become aggressive, even chasing off small dogs and children. 'We are at the front lines of dealing with this issue,' said Derek Schweigart, Foster City's parks and recreation director. Earlier this month, Foster City took its most comprehensive action yet, with the city council approving a roughly $400,000 contract with a wildlife company to deter the geese at seven 'high impact' parks. Starting sometime in the next month, the company will begin using drones, lasers, balloons and — eventually — dogs to scare or 'haze' the birds. The contract, which is active through June 2026, approved nonlethal measures only. Canada geese have long been a fixture of Foster City's grassy parks, residents say. But as the goose population has swelled, doubling between 2020 and 2022, so have the complaints. Susan Lessin, a 30-year resident of Foster City and member of the San Mateo County Bird Alliance, said she suspects the issue was also exacerbated during the pandemic as residents started spending more time outdoors — and quickly realized they have to be careful where they step. While research has indicated geese aren't a significant transmitter of disease to humans, parents have told the city council that they feel unsafe allowing their children to play in local parks. One man, according to a 2022 New York Times article, said his 2-year-old daughter became sick after putting goose feces in her mouth. And Foster City is far from alone. Wildlife experts say Canada geese are very good at adapting to humans, drawn by the green spaces humans create for themselves. Santa Clara, Redwood City, Oakland and other Bay Area communities have all reported issues with their goose populations. And unless cities want to keep spending the time and money to clean up after the birds, they may have to change, too. 'Frankly, they were here before we were,' Lessin said. 'And to a certain extent, the public has to adapt to the geese.' Once hunted to near-extinction in parts of the United States, Canada geese populations have exploded over the past several decades, thanks in large part to federal protections. In California, breeding geese have generally congregated in the northeast corner of the state. But over the past two or three decades, they've become more distributed throughout the state, said Melanie Weaver, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's waterfowl unit. In 1994, according to a partial count of California's waterfowl, nearly 99% of surveyed breeding Canada geese were in the northeast part of the state. By 2024, that had dropped to about 50%, while the share in the Sacramento Valley and other surveyed regions grew substantially. Like crows, gulls and other 'urban' birds, geese flock to cities because they offer easy food sources and few natural predators. Canada geese are also one of the few bird species that can digest grass, making Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Lake Merritt in Oakland ideal resting spots for them. And because geese tend to return to the place they were born to build their own nests, they become much harder to scare away once they become established in a city. (It also doesn't help that, despite park officials' pleas, some visitors continue to feed the geese). Geese that stay roughly in the same place year-round, known as 'resident' geese, tend to reproduce more than their migratory peers, contributing to their rapid population growth. And because they prefer man-made environments, there's generally little competition with other waterfowl over resources, though you might see the occasional squabble with a gull. 'When humans decide, 'Let's have a park with grass surrounding it,' you've created the most perfect environment for those geese,' Weaver said. 'It's unfortunate, because they are really cool animals,' she added. 'But when they get in that environment, it's not so cool.' Foster City residents and officials alike are waiting to see whether their latest efforts will make the geese think twice about nesting at a local park. Previous attempts have been mixed. When the city tried strobe lights, residents seemed more bothered than were the geese. Adding fencing around the lagoon kept geese out for a while, but the geese eventually found ways around it. Egg addling — shaking or otherwise damaging newly laid eggs to prevent the embryo from developing — keeps the population from growing too rapidly, but that doesn't affect the living geese, which can survive for more than 20 years. Still, Schweigart, the parks and recreation director, said that the city hopes that by combining approaches, the geese will decide it's not worth sticking around. Some research has shown that these multi-pronged efforts can get groups of geese to change locations, but that they often simply move to nearby parks. Even if Foster City succeeds, hundreds of geese may show up in a neighboring community. Aside from the egg addling project, which is conducted between a few San Mateo County cities, each city is tackling its goose issue independently. A longer-term solution to the problem, some officials have suggested, would take a region-wide effort. Lessin, the longtime Foster City resident, said that while she has concerns about the cost of her city's new program, she supports the plan and hopes it will lead to more long-term solutions — as long as they're nonlethal, she emphasized. Plans to euthanize some of the geese in 2022 were dropped after opposition from activists and some residents. 'Everyone is very optimistic, but I think we're cautiously optimistic,' she said. Foster City's 24 parks may look different in the future, as part of a more permanent solution. The city is building a new recreation center at Leo J. Ryan Park and replacing much of the grass with native trees and shrubs. That change, which Schweigart said the city hopes to replicate in its other parks, leaves little food for the geese to eat, forcing them to go elsewhere. In other words, the best way to moderate the goose population may be to change what attracted them in the first place. 'We created this environment for' the geese, Schweigart said. 'And now, unfortunately, we're facing the consequences.'
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
People moved back to Pompeii after devastating eruption, excavations reveal
The once-thriving Roman city of Pompeii resembles an eerie time capsule, seemingly unoccupied since a catastrophic volcanic eruption in AD 79, with the remains of its inhabitants forever frozen under a blanket of ash. But a closer look may reveal another bleak chapter in the tragedy's aftermath, according to new research. Recently unearthed clues suggest that a number of people, including survivors of the disaster as well as transients, returned to live among the ruins after the eruption, based on discoveries made during ongoing excavations of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in southern Italy. But it's impossible to reconstruct a complete picture of exactly how many people returned and in what circumstances based on what has been uncovered so far, said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the archaeological park. Researchers currently investigating the Insula Meridionalis, a neighborhood in the southernmost part of the city, found pieces of pottery and other evidence dated to after the city's devastation over the course of the past year. The artifacts paint a picture of how, after the eruption, people sought refuge in the upper floors of buildings visible above the ash, Zuchtriegel said. Pompeii's residents ultimately abandoned the site following another devastating eruption in the fifth century, and the city remained undisturbed until excavations began in 1748. Zuchtriegel, an archaeologist and coauthor of a new study published on August 6 in the E-Journal of the Excavations of Pompeii, said the city's initial destruction in AD 79 has 'monopolized memory.' Previous traces of Pompeii's reoccupation, he added, have been known by researchers — but also largely ignored. 'In the enthusiasm to reach the levels of 79, with wonderfully preserved frescoes and furnishings still intact, the faint traces of the site's reoccupation were literally removed and often swept away without any documentation,' Zuchtriegel said in a statement. 'Thanks to the new excavations, the picture is now clearer: post-79 Pompeii reemerges, less as a city than as a precarious and gray agglomeration, a kind of encampment, a favela among the still recognizable ruins of the Pompeii of old.' During excavations of one building in Insula Meriodionalis, archaeologists determined that some of the structure's vaulted ceilings didn't collapse until sometime between the second and fourth centuries, meaning its storerooms were likely partially visible on the surface as people returned to Pompeii. Artifacts uncovered at the site suggest spaces that had once served as ground floors became cellars and caves where the latest occupants constructed ovens, mills and fireplaces. Items found in the building's storerooms also indicate that the reoccupation of Pompeii was likely more permanent than transitory, Zuchtriegel said. The researchers discovered remains of ceramics and cooking vessels, including a ceramic lamp decorated with an early symbol of Christ, all dated to the fifth century. The team also found a small, family-style bread oven from the same time period that was built with reused materials, such as bricks and tiles, within a Roman cistern. A coin among the Insula Meriodionalis haul that depicts the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, dated to AD 161, suggests people returned to Pompeii just a few decades after the infamous eruption, Zuchtriegel said. People inhabited the city until the 'Pollena eruption' of Mount Vesuvius in 472, but Pompeii failed to become the thriving, vital port town it was before. A series of additional eruptions also occurred early in the sixth century, according to the study authors. 'These events likely caused serious damage to an already weak economy and may have led to the abandonment of the settlements attested in the Vesuvian area,' the authors wrote in the study. Researchers estimate the city was once home to about 20,000 people when the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption occurred, and debate about how many died during the disaster is ongoing. So far, archaeologists have uncovered two-thirds of Pompeii and found the remains of about 1,300 people — a number that doesn't include those who perished beyond the center of town. With nowhere else to go, survivors likely returned to the ruins, living in an ash desert and looking for remnants of their homes and items — and sometimes in the process unearthing remains of victims, like the skeleton of a horse found wedged between two beams in the Insula Meriodionalis. Amid the pillaging of homes, Roman magistrates were likely sent to the city to prevent an anarchic type of existence, based on ancient literary sources the authors referenced in the study. Titus, Roman emperor from AD 79 to 81, sent two consuls to the Campanian region where Pompeii is located after the eruption to provide aid, assess the city and reallocate the property of those who had died in the eruption with no surviving heirs, Zuchtriegel said. The emperor also provided funds to help survivors, and one text even suggests he visited Pompeii after the eruption, Zuchtriegel added. Vegetation also slowly returned to the land, and Pompeii's post-eruption inhabitants dug wells to reach groundwater beneath the ash coating the city, the study authors said. The post-eruption settlers also buried their own, based on evidence of a newborn that was interred at the site during the reoccupation. 'We have to assume that although occupation was not temporary, life within the ruins must have been fairly basic although a latrine had been constructed presumably for those tending to the baking of bread,' Zuchtriegel said. 'Most of the comforts of first century Roman life had been eradicated.' The study demonstrates that contemporary archaeology is not about hunting for treasure, but reading signs in the sediment and understanding relationships among all the surviving physical evidence, said Daniel Diffendale, postdoctoral researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He was not involved in the new research. Diffendale noted that scattered evidence for human activity at Pompeii post-eruption existed prior to the new study, but this latest research uncovers a previously unknown level of detail. 'This is more evidence of stable post-eruption habitation,' Diffendale wrote in an email. 'These are people carving out residences from utilitarian spaces, not living in luxurious atrium houses. On the other hand, this could also represent a part of the population that wasn't living in those luxurious houses prior to the eruption either, and whose lives are scarcely visible elsewhere in Pompeii.' Future excavations could reveal how the people reoccupying Pompeii supported themselves, whether it was through salvaging remains of the city, trying to live off the land agriculturally or creating some other form of commerce, he said. Dr. Marcello Mogetta, chair of the department of classics, archaeology and religion at the University of Missouri, said the Archaeological Park of Pompeii's staff should be commended for bringing the afterlife of the Roman town into sharper focus through its excavations and exhibitions. Mogetta was not involved in this research, but he is leading a project that investigates an area near the one discussed in the study. One of the authors of the new study is the officer responsible for the sector of Pompeii that Mogetta is studying, he said. 'This study ultimately highlights the resilience of the inhabitants of the wider Vesuvian region and their active role in the economic recovery of the area over periods that have been largely removed from the site's long-term history,' Mogetta said. The findings shed light on the 'invisible city' of Pompeii that rose again after AD 79 — one that is just beginning to be investigated, the authors wrote in the report. 'In these cases, we archaeologists feel like psychologists of memory buried in the earth: we bring out the parts removed from history, and this phenomenon should lead us to a broader reflection on the archaeological unconscious, on everything that is repressed or obliterated or remains hidden, in the shadow of other seemingly more important things,' Zuchtriegel said. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
San Francisco Chronicle
6 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: S.F. firefighters answer call when alarm sounds. That's why they deserve what they're paid
Regarding 'S.F. firefighter overtime pay is over the top. Why does the city allow this dubious practice?' (Letters to the Editor, Aug. 8): When I was 9 in the early '60s, Mom made the mistake of showing me and my three sisters what Dad did for work at his firehouse in the Mission District. We heard the sirens start, and we followed the noise to a burning building. Mom never took the family to watch Dad work again. The nightmare of flames and the immediacy of death their father confronted was not something she wanted her children to know about. One Thanksgiving, long after Dad had retired, a fire broke out near our home in the Excelsior. Dad was just about to carve the turkey. As the sirens approached, he went out to observe. The firefighters responding were shorthanded, and all were busy. Dad noticed a hose wasn't connected to a hydrant. He stretched it and linked it to the hydrant. Dad got a big smile and thanks from the firefighter who noticed. I was never prouder of my dad. Dad died in 1983 from cancer due to inhalation of smoke on the job. Letter writer Beth Brown should realize that the pay for San Francisco firefighters she decries as an 'insatiable appetite' and 'greed' is well-deserved. These heroic men and women work shifts of 24 hours on, 48 off, with death tugging at their elbows each time the alarm sounds. John R. Wallace, Mill Valley Hold PG&E accountable The primary reason is the lack of any accountability in the rate-making process from the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the investor-owned utilities, like PG&E. The state's utilities have done everything they can to increase their profits by building capital-intensive, and in many cases, unnecessary transmission and distribution infrastructure. At the same time, the utilities have used their political muscle to suppress the use of grid-enhancing technologies, methods to expand the capacity of the grid with much less capital-intensive strategies. Because utilities get a guaranteed rate of return on capital deployed, they have no incentive to use less expensive methods, so ratepayers end up taking it on the chin. And despite what the story said, we can do something about it by supporting consumer advocacy groups like The Utility Reform Network and the Solar Rights Alliance. Rick Brown, Petaluma Dems have to fight Regarding 'California can never win a race to the bottom with Trump on redistricting ' (Open Forum, Aug. 10): Taking the high road, as Michelle Obama once stated, has always been a losing political strategy for Democrats. Stating that 'turning the other cheek would be real gangster' shows that it's time for Joe Matthews to retire from political writing. He's not reading the political landscape. Republicans, conservatives and corporations have been beating the Democrats and progressives over the head with name-calling and falsehoods for decades. The right wing is winning at the ballot box and in the courts. Look who controls the U.S. Capitol and most statehouses. It's time Democrats fight back, even if it requires getting dirty. Michael Santos, Antelope, Sacramento County Spread the music
