Land Management Guidebook – Best Practices in Vernon County

Your options for conserving soil and keeping your downstream neighbors safe

Welcome!#

This is a web resource provided for the farmers of Vernon County, Wisconsin to demystify land and water conservation practices, and make it easier for you to understand your options. Collectively called “BMPs” or Best Management practices, the documentation and naming for these different conservation options can be bewildering. Our goal here is to make it plain and straightforward.

Background#

Farming has always been a bit more of a challenge in the Driftless. Southwestern Wisconsin has steep hills, fast-eroding soil, and flat valleys that flood. Farmers in our region have long been at the forefront of innovative land conservation practices, and we have invested in flood control measures.

In recent years, aging infrastructure and intense weather have changed the equation. Established ways of doing things are no longer going to be enough to ensure future prosperity. Farmers in Vernon County and the rest of Southwest Wisconsin are going to have to once again be at the forefront of innovation.

History of Flooding in Vernon County#

Flooding in lowland valleys has always been an issue in the Driftless region. It’s acutely dangerous for those who live in the valleys or farm the valley bottoms. Flooding also affects farmers who live in the uplands because the water rushing downslope erodes their soil and degrades their land. The whole community suffers when pollution chokes our rivers, and floods wipe out towns and cropland.

Major public investment in the 20th century created the county’s set of 20 tk PL566 (Public Law 566) flood control dams. These dams were placed at critical points in the Kickapoo, Badaxe and tk other rivers to hold back flood water and allow it to release slowly.

However, dams have a limited life span, and in tk 2018, two unprecedented rainstorms overwhelmed tk 5 of our county’s PL566 dams, destroying them and causing catastrophic flooding. The remaining dams were inspected, and ultimately, the federal government has decided to decommission all the dams.

The current situation#

There is no funding to replace this aging flood-control infrastructure. In the coming years, as these dams are removed and their streams restored, we will lack any traditional flood control infrastructure.

Our community must now rise to the occasion, and figure out new ways to prevent floods if we can, and guard against them when we cannot.

One of the most effective and proven methods of preventing catastrophic large floods is to slow water down before it reaches the stream. Many small interventions spread across the county can have the same effect as a single large dam placed in the river. These interventions also benefit you by slowing soil erosion, replenishing groundwater, and keeping the environment healthy.

This guidebook is a resource made just for you to help de-mystify the different methods available for flood mitigation and soil conservation.

This guidebook and resource#

The purpose of this guide is to list out some good ideas to common challenges in our Hill and Valley (Driftless, Coulee, Seven Rivers) area. This book is an effort to take the dense and unreadable NRCS documents and provide a reource of the main ideas in practical terms.

This is not a how-to guide that you can take and implement with step-by-step instructions. Some of these practices and strategies really need to involve your local NRCS and/or Land & Water staff. For many of these, you could hire a private consultant or other professional. Some of these options might cost too much for the benefit. You will have to make that decision for yourself.

However, your local Land and Water staff want to help you make the right choice. Please consider involving them in your land management, because they can help you find federal, or state money to support changes and upgrades to your farming that you already wanted to do. They can also help you choose between and give you a lot of information about all the different options you could choose.

We’ll talk a little bit about cost. Not in dollars and cents, but we’ll point out which practices are more expensive, which ones are less expensive. It’s up to you to know whether you can afford something, and we’ll point out where common practices have less expensive alternatives.

With that in mind, this guidebook is going to be a broad overview. It will not get into the nitty-gritty. It will be direct, blunt, and simplified to be as clear as possible. We will offer assessments and a pro/con list for each practice.

If you think something could be more clear, or you want more details, reach out to your land and water staff so that they can clarify it for you. We will also link to the relevant NRCS so that you can learn more on your own.

How to use this guide#

This guide can work two ways.

If you already know what you are looking for, just look in the table of contents, and go directly to the page describing a BMP to read a short and sweet description. If you want to learn more, we provide the links to the NRCS documentation. If you want to try it out, Vernon Co land and water conservation wants to help make it as cheap and easy for you to do as possible. Get in touch to ask how we can help you.

This guide can also work like a “decision tree.” If you click the “start here” button, you’ll be presented with a set of choices, and eventually once you’ve passed the big decisions you need to make about your property, and as you keep answering questions, it will end in a list of potential management practices to suit your issue.

Additionally, there is a search function at the top-right of the screen that you can use to look for keywords to find the information you need.

Start Here

Overview

BMPs