Managing land to meet water quality goals

Excerpt

PLANS to control nonpoint sources of pollution developed under Section 208 of Public Law 92-500 define approaches to protecting water quality and desired stream uses. An important issue in the 208 planning process is the type of land management approach used to control sediment problems.

One approach is to continue traditional soil erosion control programs at higher levels of funding. The objective: Reduce erosion to Soil Conservation Service t-values, which are standards for protecting the soil's long-term productivity. The approach is applied regardless of how severe sediment problems in streams might be.

This approach might be referred to as source control. The Illinois Task Force on Agricultural Nonpoint Sources of Pollution recommended its use in 1978, but did not project what changes in water quality would occur (13). The task force assumed that desirable changes in water quality would take place.

A second approach relates the choice of land management practices and their locations to water use and water quality goals. This approach has been called instream water quality management, but it might also be referred to as water-based land management (WBLM).

WBLM tailors land management to problems in specific watersheds. Planners can thus …