A field day sponsored recently by the Logan County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Land of Lincoln Soil Savers gave area farmers a look at a new stream stabilization technique, one way to control soil erosion. These two groups, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Illinois Department of Agriculture are working on projects to prevent Logan County’s waterways from carrying away its farmland.

"With three good-sized creeks in the county — Salt, Kickapoo and Sugar Creeks — it’s a never-ending job," Dickerson says. As a district conservationist for the NRCS, Dickerson works closely with Logan County’s Soil and Water Conservation District.

On Thursday he took a group of area farmers to a Kickapoo Creek site southeast of Atlanta, on farm ground owned by Dave Evans and Dan Koons, to explain a new technique called the stream barb system.

[These three rock projections are a new stream stabilization technique called barbs.  Pointing upstream, they work together to redirect the water in Kickapoo Creek toward the middle of the creek and keep it from undercutting the stream bank.]

What the farmers saw were three projections of large stone riprap jutting out into the creek, angling upstream, at a point where the creek had been cutting away the bank. The barb-shaped stone projections work together to catch the current and redirect it to the middle of the stream, away from the bank which is being eroded.

The project was completed in December of last year, and, according to the landowners, is working just as predicted.

"A few weeks ago, when the water was higher, I could see it working. I could actually see water turn and go back into the channel," Koons said.

Before the barbs were put in, he added, the bank went straight down, because it was being undercut by the creek at the rate of at least a foot a year. Now the stream bank slopes, maintaining the angle it was given by the construction crew that put in the new stabilization system. The bank is also being held in place by the natural vegetation that is beginning to grow there.

The new stream barb system is protecting about 600 feet of the bank of Kickapoo Creek, Dickerson says, preventing the loss of about one-half ton of soil per foot per year. That means 300 tons of prime topsoil is no longer washing down the creek, eventually ending up somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is the nature of streams and rivers to meander, traveling in a series of S-curves, as they slow down and broaden out their flood plains, Dickerson explains. Formerly, engineers tried to keep streams from eroding the land around them by straightening them out, a process called channelizing. Kickapoo Creek was channelized on the Koons-Evans farm in the mid-1970s, when the land belonged to a different owner.

But the channelizing couldn’t prevent the creek from reverting to its natural tendency to meander, and it soon began cutting into the land again. (It’s now against federal law to straighten a stream.)

Although it’s the newest technique, the stream barb system on the Koons-Evans farm isn’t the only system on Kickapoo Creek that is keeping Logan County soil in Logan County. Two different projects upstream, called bendway weirs and similar to the barb system, are on land owned by Rodney Alberts and Jerry Cisco. They were also installed with the help of Dickerson and the Soil and Water Conservation District.

These stream stabilization systems not only save soil, they also contribute to better water quality. They prevent streams from filling up with sediment and also prevent agricultural chemicals and nutrients from draining into waterways. Dickerson says the weirs and barbs are also good for wildlife. A degrading stream is sterile, providing little or no natural habitat. Rock bars, however, make good aquatic habitats, places for fish to hide or breed.

Dickerson explained the process of constructing the stream barb system to the group of about 30 farmers who came to the site, pointing out that the average cost of installing such a system on a Logan County farm would be about $11,000. However, the Illinois Department of Agriculture has a $1 million program in place this fiscal year (July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002) to help fund stream stabilization, and farmers who put in an approved system can get as much as 75 percent of the cost reimbursed.

Several construction firms in the area do the work, Dickerson said, and the NRCS is ready to help farmers do the paperwork. A steam stabilization project usually takes about a year from start to finish because of the permits required -- from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The NRCS has been doing stream stabilization projects for the past 10 years, along with a number of other conservation programs. These include no-till farming, which according to Dickerson has contributed more to soil erosion control than any other program, and the Conservation Reserve Program, the USDA’s most popular conservation program. CRP allows landowners to take cropland out of production for as much as 15 years, getting payments of as high as $192 an acre for the idle land. The land can be put in grass for erosion control or planted with trees. Most land in CRP is already environmentally sensitive, Dickerson says, often located on a flood plain or on sloping ground.

After viewing the stream barb system, the farmers adjourned to the Atlanta Park shelter, where they heard a program by Howard Brown, agronomist with Growmark of Bloomington. Brown walks the fields, looks at crops for indications of insects, fungus and other plant diseases, and gives farmers an update on how the season is progressing and what to look for when making decisions for next year’s planting.

Brown said the yield potential for area crops this year looks good "if the weather is good from here on out."

Anyone interested in more information about stream stabilization or other conservation practices may call the Soil and Water Conservation District office at (217) 732-2010, Ext. 3.