ISDA receives $1.7M grant for nutrient runoff reduction efforts
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The Indiana State Department of Agriculture has received a $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help reduce nutrient runoff from farm fields, lawns, and other sources. The funding, which is earmarked for ISDA’s Soil Conversation Division, seeks to lessen the downstream impact of excessive nutrients on the Gulf of Mexico.
While nutrients, such as crop fertilizer, are necessary to grow crops, there is concern that an abundance of the nutrients are impacting the health of the Gulf by creating algae blooms and depleting oxygen from the water.
The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, their tributaries and floodplains, and the Gulf are an inner-connected system.
“Indiana is grateful to have received funding through EPA’s Gulf Hypoxia Program to continue and grow our nutrient reduction strategy,” said Don Lamb, director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. “The work done through the strategy is critical in ensuring Indiana’s lakes, streams and river’s health improves, as well as those downstream.
ISDA plans to develop a statewide soil sampling program aimed at increasing the adoption of nutrient management to minimize nutrient runoff and improve nutrient use efficiency across the state. The agency says it plans to partner with Purdue University to create an Indiana Nutrient Research and Education Program.
ISDA say the programming, bolstered by the federal funding, will ultimately improve water quality in the state’s lakes, streams and rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico.