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Other Info: When people think of north Missouri water
resources, they usually picture brown-stained, sediment-laden streams,
rivers, ponds and lakes. Indian Creek Community Lake in Livingston County
sheds that brown and muddy stereotype. This 192-acre body of water near
Chillicothe shows that good planning and careful construction can result in
a high quality community lake that won't fill with sediment in a few
decades.
When they closed the valve on the newly constructed Indian
Creek Community Lake in mid-July of 1988, Conservation Department employees
were unsure whether the lake would ever provide a quality fishery. Although
the lake is nestled in a rugged, beautiful wooded valley on Poosey
Conservation Area, the lake would receive water that drained from roads,
farmsteads, feedlots, pastures, crop fields, forests, utility rights-of way,
dumps, logging trails, lawns and gardens. Given those circumstances, you
might expect the lake would be murky and contain suspended sediment, similar
to many other north-central Missouri impoundments.
The lake was slow to fill, thanks to dry weather from
mid-1988 through 1989. Finally, the spring rains of 1990 raised the lake
level 25 feet in about 10 weeks, and the lake filled for the first time on
June 15 of that year. Fisheries biologists measured water clarity and found
it to be about four times clearer than might be expected in north Missouri
farm country.
The high water quality of Indian Creek Community Lake is the
result of the Conservation Department's aggressive efforts to intercept the
sediment from the different land uses. They looked at every path the water
could take to enter the lake and where possible they took efforts to reduce
its sediment load.
Controlling sediment and keeping the lake clear seemed at
first an impossible task. The Conservation Department owned less than 30
percent of the lake's watershed. About 60 percent of the watershed was in
row crops, mostly soybeans, with no soil or water conservation practices in
place.
Of the five main drainage networks that started in the
uplands and formed a major arm of the lake, the Conservation Department had
control of soil erosion on only about half of one drainage, or about 10
percent of the total.
What's more, most of the forest land that had been purchased
by the Conservation Department had recently been harvested. Although the cut
over areas were not eroding, a network of logging roads and skid trails had
become gullies that carried tons of sediment to Indian Creek.
Other sediment challenges on the major arm included the 15
percent of the watershed that was made up of gullied and bare grazed
woodlands and road ditches that collected sediment from crop lands and
channeled it to the creeks. Herbicides used to control growth along the
roads, aggravated the condition by accelerating erosion of the ditches
themselves.
The Conservation Department worked to change land use and
stabilize soil on state-owned land. We planted warm season grasses, and
contour strips of trees and shrubs to intercept water runoff. We left little
acreage in agricultural crops, and those fields were reshaped to follow the
land contour. We also removed interior fences, since livestock no longer had
access to the property, and we closed logging roads and skid trails to stop
gullying.
Private property owners also contributed to the effort to
keep the lake clear. One private landowner was already doing an excellent
job of forest management, particularly for wildlife. We enrolled him in the
Tree Farm program and provided him with a 5-year management plan to guide
him.
An avid fisherman and an employee of the rural electric
cooperative helped the Conservation Department organize training workshops
where line maintenance employees learned better tree trimming techniques.
They also learned to identify different trees and shrubs, so that they
wouldn't waste herbicide on species that would never grow tall enough to
affect the wires.
We worked with local road commissioners to close public
roads to be flooded by the lake. When closed, those roads were worked on to
divert ditch water out onto the land, where it could soak in, instead of
following a gully to the lake.
The Conservation Department made the purchase of additional
land within the watershed a top priority and targeted the most erosive
properties for acquisition. Fortunately, the owners of some large, key
tracts of private land offered them for sale before lake construction began.
One important acquisition brought the Conservation
Department an additional 21 percent of the watershed, bringing the total in
state ownership to over 50 percent. We planted trees and shrubs, established
prairies and used contour farming on these newly acquired lands.
We also now had more opportunity to control runoff from
roadside ditches. We built sediment control structures to divert runoff.
Some of these new structures also created additional fishing opportunities
on the area. We inspected and approved sites for 22 potential structures.
Eight of the most strategic structures were completed in 1990, and the four
next most critical were added in 1991.
Adjoining private landowners also did much to help reduce
the sediment load in the watershed. Some of them enrolled property in the
Conservation Reserve Program and planted permanent cover to protect their
land. Others planted warm-season grasses in the pastures, practiced
conservation tillage, reduced livestock numbers in the watershed and
followed forest management plans.
Currently, thanks to an innovative combination of land
management practices, the sediment control structures and private landowners
contributions to soil conservation, we calculate that we have controlled the
sediment reaching the lake from 80 percent of the watershed.
The result is enjoyed by the many visitors to Indian Creek
Community Lake, who consider it the most beautiful lake in north Missouri.
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