Iowa Soybean Association to partner with Charles City

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve a 30,000-acre target area for an Iowa Soybean Association-partnered project.

The area is upstream of the Cedar River watershed, and includes a few creeks coming into the city.

The target acre is past city limits and encompasses an area up to Floyd and around Rudd, said Steven Diers, Charles City Administrator.

The Iowa Soybean Association (ISBA) has been working with Charles City for a few years, said Karl Gesch, ISBA watershed coordinator and resource management specialist.

“This project is specifically targeting the use of the sponsored projects program,” Gesch said.

A sponsored project is something available through a state of Iowa revolving fund, Diers said.

“If you borrow money through the state revolving loan fund you can do a sponsored project, wherein a percentage of what you pay in interest can be diverted toward another project,” Diers said. “It’s money we would be paying either way, just that we’ll have the ability to direct some of those funds back to another project.”

The ISBA has a grant to work with communities on their watersheds, and to improve water quality altogether, Gesch said.

“It’s trying to advance a bit of a unique or innovative financing mechanism to advance water quality practices in different ways in Iowa,” Gesch said.

“They’ve gotten some grant funding to do some additional projects, and they want to partner with the city to do this,” Diers said about the soybean group. “They want to do a sponsored project. Any landowners in the area would then be eligible for funding to do water improvement projects.”

Bioswales, cover-crop projects and buffer strips are eligible for an Regional Conservation Partnership Program or RCPP grant that the city is offering, Diers said.

RCPP is a federal program funded through the Department of Agriculture, and the city received $1.6 million to put in these practices to help improve water and soil quality and to help decrease flooding, Diers said.

The soybean group has partnered with Charles City for that project to help landowners implement these practices.

ISBA approached Diers and is looking to partner with three communities in the state — Des Moines, Eagle Grove and Charles City, he said.

“In the watershed plan we hope to identify practices that both retain water in terms of the flood reduction standpoint… by reducing a flooding impact you also reduce nutrient levels,” Gesch said. “We’ll also identify some practices that are more specifically intended to improve water quality.”