It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Irrigation: Aquaculture and Hydroponics}

This is the fourth part in Frannie's exploration of irrigation. Check out the previous post here!

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Like Frannie mentioned in the last blog, there are two types of urban agriculture that are very unique: aquaculture and hydroponics. Both of these processes are almost solely water-based and require the farmers to be creative in the way they save water and money.

Aquaculture is usually defined as the raising fresh and salt water fish but it can include other kinds of water creatures and plants. It produces healthy, high-quality fish that can either be used to stock lakes for people who like to fish or sold directly to markets for consumption.

Fish can be raised in wide open waters or in smaller tanks depending on space availability and the species of fish. Fish-farming has a long history and has played a culturally important role for those who do it. For over 4,000 years, the Chinese have bred and raised a meaty carp and the Japanese have farmed koi that can often sell for thousands of dollars.

Hydroponics is a system that, instead of growing plants in the soil, grows them in a “nutrient solution” or water jam-packed with plant food. Plants “eat” and “drink” through a recirculating system.

At home, you can model this by planting a small plant in a 2 liter bottle with a string connecting the nutrient solution in the bottom to the plant bed.  In an urban farm, however, highly technical systems can grow many rows of crops that are layered on top of one another so that a very small area can have a high crop density.

If an environment allows, a hydroponic farm can benefit greatly from an aquaculture farm.  In an earlier blog post, Frannie demonstrated that old fish water can actually help grow beautiful gardens. Aquaponics does that on a much larger scale, repurposing the nutrient-rich water from the fishery tanks to feed the plants in the hydroponic system. The plants and micro-organisms clean the water that is then returned to the fish tank. This provides a mutually beneficial environment for both the fish and the plants, and results in two crops (the fish and the plants).

In urban environments farmers have to be creative in the way they use space and water, but ultimately they can be very productive. Share with us some of your creative ways to use water and space and check out past blogs to learn more about irrigation!

BLOG: A Family Spring Inspires Groundwater Protection

by Chris Barnett, Executive Director, Lawrence Community Development Corporation and Team Leader, Indianapolis-Marion County Groundwater Guardian Team

I wanted to share a story that is more directly related to groundwater than the last one I shared, and it explains more about my personal dedication to groundwater protection.

In 1817 my ancestors, a boy of eight or nine and his parents, came to Germantown, Pennsylvania from Wuerttemberg, Germany. The young family made their way across Pennsylvania in the ensuing years and eventually purchased a farm in eastern Ohio from the U.S. Government. Family lore says that the original wood and sod home was built into a hill, facing generally south, by the spring - so the spring has provided water for my family since the 1830s.   

After Ohio’s canal-building era ended, there were men in the region who had come to work on the Ohio and Erie canal. My ancestor hired a company of stonecutters to build a family home; by then he had many children. The stonecutters also laid up the springhouse next to it.  

The points on the stars carved next to the date represent the members of the family when the house was built.

The house and springhouse are still in use after almost 170 years. My mother and her siblings grew up there, and I grew up visiting my great-grandfather and grandparents there.  My cousin is the 6th-generation family owner today. 

In addition to providing domestic water supply for the house (a hand pump in my mother’s day, and later an electric pump), the spring trough served as the refrigerator for raw milk my grandfather sold to the cheese factory a few miles away.

Through my entire life and scores of visits, I never felt at home until I touched the cold water in the spring trough, and taken a sip:

The water never satisfied me more than it did the summer I worked with my uncle to set a fence and make hay…the house had no air conditioning and the only cool spot was the springhouse.

A second spring is found on a hill opposite the house, across the road, creek, and bottomland pasture. My great grandfather built a bank barn below the spring in the early 1900s (the family called it “the new barn”) so that water from the spring could be directed into the barn. That spring provided water for the small herd of cattle the family raised for meat and milk production, a hog or two, and the chickens that provided my grandmother with “egg money” and the occasional Sunday roaster.

Modern farmers will recognize that I’ve described a subsistence farm by today’s standards.  It’s in a hilly location with rock outcroppings, better suited to timber production than to extensive production of row crops. It will come as no surprise that the surrounding farms are mostly Amish-owned today. But when my mother and aunts and uncles were growing up there during the Depression and World War II, they never lacked for food, water, shelter (or hard work).  

And when my ancestors settled there nearly 200 years ago to carve a farm out of woodland, they knew what Groundwater Guardians like me know today: without a source of clean drinking water, there is no life possible. I certainly wouldn’t be here now, nor would I have such a passion for protecting groundwater, if not for that spring.

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Chris Barnett is the Executive Director of the Lawrence Community Development Corporation, as well as the team leader for the Indianapolis-Marion County Groundwater Guardian Team, the Marion County Wellfield Education Corporation. Chris also serves on The Groundwater Foundation's board of directors. Reach Chris at cbarnett.lcdc@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of The Groundwater Foundation, its board of directors, or individual members.

BLOG: A Joint Approach to Source Water Protection

by Tim McLelland, Manager, Hamilton to New Baltimore Groundwater Consortium

The Hamilton to New Baltimore Groundwater Consortium (Consortium), which was originally formed in 1967, currently consists of seven independent public and industrial water suppliers in southwest Ohio, including Greater Cincinnati Water Works; Southwest Regional Water District; City of Fairfield; MillerCoors, LLC; City of Hamilton; Butler County Water and Sewer; and Southwestern Ohio Water Company. The Consortium is a multi-jurisdictional collaboration of water suppliers to protect their source water from pollution and overuse through a single Source Water Protection Program (SWPP). In 1991, the Consortium began working on the development of a joint multi-jurisdictional, multiple wellfield Wellhead Protection Program (WHPP) known today as the SWPP. 

The water producing members of the Consortium operate wellfields throughout southwest Ohio. Together, Consortium members operate a total of 53 production wells supplying a combined average daily output of 62 million gallons of groundwater to over 315,000 people and hundreds of businesses and industries throughout the region. The members of the Consortium draw water from the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer, which extends from the headwaters of the Great Miami River north of Dayton to the confluence with the Ohio River near Cincinnati.   

The Consortium has pooled resources and employs me to oversee the overall SWP-related activities of the Consortium members and SWPP management strategies. Consortium members collectively fund all SWPP activities. 

Benefits of a Joint Approach
Developing and administering a joint SWPP has proven beneficial for all members through:
1. Cost efficiencies for the overall program; 
2. Ability to account for the inter-relationships between eight independent but closely located wellfields;
3. Coordinated regional network of early-warning monitoring wells, including the pooling of financial and technical resources which allows for a more cost-effective monitoring program;
4. Development of a consistent public education message about the importance of protecting the local drinking water supply with guidance and support from the Groundwater Foundation and Groundwater Guardian Program;
5. For six out of seven members, the ability to establish and administer protection ordinances outside of their home jurisdiction; and.
6. Ability to maintain a strong coordinated communication and networking relationships among Consortium members.

Potential Contaminant Sources
In 2007, we collected hydrogeologic information to update the original source water delineation from 1991. The updated delineation included SWP areas and maps depicting the new time-of-travel (TOT, the time it takes water to travel within the aquifer towards discharge points, including pumping wells, throughout the region) zones for each of the Consortium members. These zones are also considered to be the most vulnerable and sensitive areas. We have identified a one-year, five-year and 10-year TOT zones specific to our area. We also created a potential contaminant source (PSC) inventory for facilities in each of the three TOTs. PCSs include known releases, such as leaking underground storage tanks or potential sources of contamination, such as aboveground storage tanks or active rail lines. PCSs are not limited to manmade facilities - for example, naturally-occurring processes such as the dissolution of minerals in the aquifer may also be classified as PCSs. Just because a site is identified as a PCS does not mean it actually is polluting source water, only that there is a risk. By creating an inventory of these sites, we can determine where best to use our resources to minimize risk.

Effective Management and Controls
For a source control strategy to be truly effective, the strategy must reflect the types of potential pollution sources identified in the assessment. Our PCSI identified 704 potential pollution sources in 28 categories in the one, five, and 10-year TOTs. The most predominant sources were aboveground storage tanks, underground storage tanks, bulk chemical storage sites, automotive repair shops and small quantity generators.

Proper management of potential contaminant sources within SWPAs is critical to the success of any SWPP. We decided to implement a wide variety of available source control strategies and have worked carefully to balance the importance of an effective plan that meets the protection objectives of SWP while maintaining public support.

As we all know by now, SWP offers communities a great deal of flexibility in developing appropriate strategies for protecting groundwater resources while promoting the economic viability of the community. In general, we chose a combination of regulatory and non-regulatory management options for the SWPP Source Control Strategy Plan. The regulatory approach relies on local ordinances and enforcement to initiate changes in the SWPAs but also to protect property from contamination. On the other hand, the non-regulatory approaches rely on voluntary actions from the community and partnerships with organizations that have similar priorities. 

The Value of Education
Public education and the promotion of best management practices are the cornerstone of an effective SWPP and play a significant role in the SWPP during the implementation of the regulatory source control strategies. We have been actively working on groundwater public education for over 20 years with the assistance of a Public Education Committee. We are proud to be designated as a Groundwater Guardian for 20 consecutive years. We typically implement around 12 Result-Oriented Activities (ROA) each year. 

The most consistent and successful ROA to date is our children’s water festival, Waterfest. The Soil and Water Conservation District and Storm Water Districts assist with financial support and planning the event. Over the years we have had presenters from the Cincinnati Zoo bring endangered cheetahs, fishing cats, and various other cats. We have also had the Newport Aquarium present, Cool Critters who bring reptiles, and other organizations that bring rescued birds of prey. Many different watershed, wetland, and water quality presentations are given by local, state and federal agencies. Two years ago, a well driller installed a well at Waterfest. Since then, we have used the well as part of demonstrations to show kids how a well is purged, how we collect elevation data and sample groundwater quality. 
  
We are very fortunate to have Miami University Hamilton campus host our Waterfest each year, and has been an awesome partner for our event! We are very fortunate and thankful to our presenters and volunteers, and to have learned from other water festivals around the country to get fantastic ideas to make ours even better.

If you would like to learn more about the Groundwater Consortium, please find us online at www.gwconsortium.org, follow me on Twitter or like us on Facebook!   

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Tim McLelland is the Manager of the Hamilton to New Baltimore Groundwater Consortium and the Team Leader for the Consortium's Groundwater Guardian team. Reach Tim at tim.mclelland@hamilton-oh.gov.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of The Groundwater Foundation, its board of directors, or individual members.

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Irrigation: Urban Agriculture}

This is the third part in Frannie's exploration of irrigation. Check out the previous post here!
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If you have a garden at home, think about what kinds of things you grow. Do you grow pretty bushes and flowers? Maybe some fruits and veggies to eat?

If you don’t have enough space for your garden at home, you might take part in a community garden.  A community garden provides a space for many people to grow fresh produce or raise small livestock like chickens and ducks on shared land. While each person is responsible for their own plot, they may choose to assist their neighbors and split their products or sell surplus at local markets.

Many communities, especially cities, are looking to take community gardening to the next level.  A food desert is a region within a city where it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh produce.  Many people who live in cities either choose not to have or can’t afford a car and the only locations to buy food within walking distances are convenience stores, bodegas, or gas stations.  Most of these places carry cheap, processed foods that aren’t healthy compared to fresher fruits, vegetables, and meat.

Urban agriculture is a part of that solution. While community gardens are a part of urban agriculture, the term more broadly includes things like beekeeping, farming, raising animals, aquaculture, and growing orchards all within an urban setting.

Just like in rural agriculture, urban farms need water sources to irrigate the plants. Many of these come from hook-ups to city wells or pumps. Cities can’t usually allow big irrigation systems like center pivot sprinklers for obvious reasons. Can you imagine one of those huge sprinklers rolling through the streets?

In relatively large plots of land, some sprinkler systems can be adapted to move or be moved through the field. Many smaller lots find drip irrigation or use of rain barrels to be a better, less expensive, more efficient solutions.  The labor-intensive irrigation methods that are so impractical on huge tracts of farmland can be more easily applied in urban environments.

Two very different and interesting kinds of urban agriculture are aquaculture and hydroponics.  Join Frannie as she learns more about them in her next blog!  In the meantime, share pictures of your garden or your community’s garden with us or check out previous blogs to learn more about irrigation.