R2008-87 AUTHORIZING AGREEMENT - Laserfiche WebLink

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> �► On August 4, 2002 the City of Decatur entered into an agreement with the Macon County Soil and Water Conservation District(SWCD)to implement the Finley Creek Sediment Reduction Inventory Report. The City of Decatur gave the SWCD $75,000 to cost-share with landowners willing to put erosion control practices on their property. The SWCD agreed to implement the plan without an increase in administration funding so that all of the $75,000 could go to actually stopping sediment from entering Lake Decatur. The first thing that we did after receiving the money was to go over the Finely Creek Report with the City,Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and SWCD personnel, to determine what practices would work best to solve the problems in the watershed, and to what extent should the practices be cost-shared. The small committee determined that several conservation treatments could be used. These practices included Terraces, Water and Sediment Control Structures, Waterways, Filter strips, Grade Stabilization Structures, Ponds and Stream Bank Stabilization. The committee also determined that landowners would receive 75% cost-share for each project. For example, if a landowner signed up to build a pond the SWCD would cost-share with the owner on 75% of the project. The remaining 25%would be at the landowner's expense. The committee also determined that there should be a cap on the dollars to be allocated for each project. Taking the example above,the landowner would get 75% of the project up to $5,000. If there where several practices on that particular piece of land, then the landowner could receive up the $15,000 but only $5,000 per project. While this may seem very confusing, this is pretty typical on how we run our federal, state and city cost- share programs. Most landowners and operators are aware of these limits. After we determined our procedures for the Finley Creek Watershed, we started to advertise the program. As a kick-off, we held a press conference at our office. We had good coverage by WAND, Herald & Review and the Decatur Tribune at the press conference. We also sent out a mailing to each landowner and operator in the Finley Creek Watershed. After promoting the program through the above means, we had several different landowners contact us to participate. When a landowner or operator came into our office and wanted cost-share money in the Finley Creek watershed, we did not just sign them up for the Finley Creek program. We met with the landowner, looked at the problem with them, and then steered them to the program that would both accomplish our needs and give them the most dollars. The Federal programs that were most used were Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentive Program(EQIP). Federal CRP provides funds for waterways, structures and buffer areas (ie. Filter strips, Riparian Buffers, wetlands, etc.). The Federal EQIP provides funds for waterways, terraces, structures, Nutrient Management Systems,No-Till, Strip Till, Rotational Grazing Systems, etc.