We’ve been neglecting the blog lately, which would be sad in
and of itself, if it didn’t also mean that we have been out of the office doing
vast amounts of outreach. What kinds of outreach, you say? We’re so glad you
asked.
You
may have noticed our many postings about the Drought
Workshop at the Governor’s Conference on the Management of the Illinois
River System. What you may not have noticed is that this workshop was developed
because of outreach requirements on a research grant. Last spring, Dr. Ximing
Cai approached us with the idea of a drought workshop, because he was
concerned that his research on forecasting and climate wasn’t reaching the
people who needed it most, namely, farmers and water resources managers. Since
the mission of the Illinois Water Resources Center is to bring watershed
science to the people of Illinois, we were excited to help Dr. Cai reach a
broader audience. And we’re happy to
report that we did host a broad audience. Members of Illinois’ agriculture,
economics, and natural resources departments joined with researchers for the
University of Illinois and the Prairie Research Institute to discuss what
information they needed to help them do their jobs during droughts. Over 30
people attended the workshop, and this was during a partial federal government
shutdown that kept three of our speakers at home. While we missed their input,
it was encouraging to see how many people are interested in managing drought
more effectively in Illinois. Stay tuned for a report and white paper on this
topic to be published on our website.
The other task that’s been keeping us so busy (including
talking about it in our sleep, by one report) is nutrient pollution. Illinois
is home to an impressive agriculture scene and a lot of people, most of whom
live in the Chicago area. These two factors mean that Illinois puts a lot of
nitrogen and phosphorous into our waterways in the form of escaped fertilizer
and treated wastewater. These nutrients eventually make their way down the
Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico, where they greatly contribute to
the massive hypoxia, or dead, zones that have been appearing there for over 30
years. The State of Illinois is now working on reducing this form of pollution
by developing a nutrient reduction strategy with the aid of a group of
stakeholders. Led by the Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the
stakeholder group includes representative from wastewater treatment
professionals, the agricultural community, and environmental groups, and has
become large. Which is where we come in. Big groups require a lot of
organization to make them run efficiently and still let everyone’s ideas and
opinions be heard. Consequently, IWRC is facilitating the working group
meetings to ensure that Illinois drafts a workable strategy to meaningfully
reduce nutrient pollution in a way that addresses everyone’s concerns and
includes the expertise of all the group members. As you can imagine, curating
the content generated by nearly 50 people has taken a lot of work, but it
promises to be a rewarding experience, and we hope to see the finished project
next summer. For more information on the Nutrient Reduction Strategy, you can
visit the IEPA website.
To round out our outreach efforts, we’ve also started
preparing for Illinois
Water 2014! If you have ideas of activities, sections, and events you’d
like to see included, please contact
us.
