Project name: Camp Creek Watershed size: 26,264 acres Year began: 2004 Year Complete: Ongoing SWCD Contact: Polk Phone: (515) 964-1883
Purpose: Improve water quality Soil and Water Conservation District(s): Polk, Jasper Other partners: Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Iowa Department of Transportation, Metro Waste Authority, Polk County Conservation Board, Iowa Farm Bureau, Heartland Cooperative, Farmers Cooperative, Isaac Walton League, Southeast Polk Schools

Don Soutter didn’t want his ground going down the creek. The retired dairy farmer became a leader by example when the Camp Creek Watershed Project offered cost-share to help him keep his soil in place on the farm.

Soutter built 3 water and sediment control basins and one grade stabilization structure, tiled along new waterways established in the Conservation Reserve Program, and established a filter strip. He also requires tenants to no-till cropland.

“I think soil erosion is pretty well controlled on my land now,” Soutter says. “The practices fit what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t have done it without the cost-share funding from the project.”
That sentiment is shared by John Olmstead, who set up a pasture rotation system along Camp Creek that gies his cattle feed year round, protects rolling land, and keeps sediment out of Camp Creek.

Soutter and Olmstead are two of a number of landowners who are reducing sediment and nutrient loading and loss of in-stream habitat in the Camp Creek Watershed. More than $100,000 has been contributed by landowners, and more than a million dollars has been invested from Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and partners for conservation practices. Practices installed have exceeded project goals in many cases.

Improvements include 500 acres of prescribed grazing, 9 grade stabilization structures, 4 pool and riffles, 2400 acres of nutrient management plans, and 75 acres of grassed waterways and conservation buffers.

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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