Project name: Anderson Well Watershed size: 2,119 acres Year began: 1992 Year Complete: 1994 SWCD Contact: Fremont Phone: (712) 374-2014
Purpose: Improve water quality Soil and Water Conservation District(s): Fremont Other partners: Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Natural Resources Conservation Service

The furnace, the hot water heater, and everything else in Ruth Hutchinson’s basement was ruined. “My grandmother didn’t have drinking water after that floodwater got into her well. I think there were several houses with water in their basements and wells from water that was running off those hills,” says Brian Whipple.

That was in 1992, before the conservation project on hillsides just to the west of the small town of Anderson in Fremont County. Key practices put onto nearby farmlands were a large diversion terrace that diverted runoff from a crop field next to Ruth’s house away from the house, a grassed waterway and two floodwater detention dams in a waterway that fed water to the city’s west side.

“My grandmother Ruth didn’t have any problems after the project,” Whipple says. Whipple, who has lived in the house himself the past six years after the death of his grandmother, says he hasn’t had any flooding problems either. “We had all that rain and water this past spring, and everything held. I went up on a 4-wheeler to look at the practices and didn’t see anything that concerned me. Nothing is coming into my house from those fields behind the house. It’s good to be rid of those problems.”

The Anderson Well and Groundwater Quality Project protected other private wells and basements in the small town of Anderson. The engineering office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service drew plans for the conservation measures that kept runoff waters in check.

One in a series of summaries of watershed projects in Iowa carried out by local conservation districts, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Division of Soil Conservation, and other partners.

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