The role of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, known as the Soil Conservation Service when it was created in 1935, has expanded. But its mission remains rooted in earth-related projects.
Long gone are the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s when the soil agency was created to remedy the effects of drought and detrimental farm practices.
The NRCS mission today runs from animal feeding through grazing practices, healthy forests, relations with tribal government, protection of watersheds and wetlands and maintenance of wildlife habitat, said Sterling Moss, director of the NRCS office in Durango.
“We work mainly in La Plata County,” Moss said. “We may spill out a little, but not much.
“We work with private landowners,” Moss said. “We probably have 400 to 500 contacts a year, which reminds me that Jan. 17 is the deadline for applying for grants for conservation projects.”
Eighty percent of NRCS work involves water management, Moss said.
Irrigators with an open ditch get 20 to 30 percent efficiency, he said. With a sprinkler system, irrigation approaches 75 percent efficiency.
Bruce Fassett can attest to the ease, efficiency and increased production resulting from irrigating with sprinklers.
During fall 2012, Fassett, 83, who irrigates hay and pasture on the greater part of 160 acres on Florida Mesa, installed a center pivot – with the expertise of the NRCS – to be ready for the 2013 hay season.
“I got a lot more hay last year,” Fassett said. “There was a big difference.”
A center pivot is a wheeled irrigation pipe attached to a central water source. A motor drives the assembly in a sweeping arc.
Until 2012, Fassett took his allotment of water from a common ditch and used gravity-fed flood irrigation to sustain his operation. It was a practice he learned at his father’s side as a 12-year-old.
“It got to be too much work and required help,” said Fassett, whose only break from the farm was seven years he spent in the military.
Fassett’s operation represents the tail end of the water cycle. It begins with the snowpack in the high country of the San Juan Mountains.
The NRCS has a role there, too. The agency installs, operates and maintains SNOTEL, an automated system that gathers snow data in the western United States, including Alaska, to develop water-supply forecasts that are vital to farmers and ranchers.
SNOTEL, an acronym for Snowpack Telemetry, consists of 750 automated stations and 1,200 sites visited in person to record snow depth, snow/water content, precipitation and air temperature. The information is the basis of streamflow forecasts for about 750 sites in the West.
Data gathered at the automated sites is available almost immediately for use by government agencies, private industry, researchers, water managers and recreation interests.
“The drought has brought water conservation ever more to the forefront lately,” Moss said.
The agency also works closely with the Colorado State Forest Service, the Colorado State University Extension and the La Plata and Pine River conservation districts, Moss said.
Conservation districts, of which Colorado has 76 in 10 watersheds, promote protection of natural resources and jump into the political arena when needed to represent landowner views.
The conservation districts operate on tight budgets. One of the La Plata Conservation District’s main sources of income is the sale of seedling trees for wildlife habitat or windbreaks.
The district sells 5,000 to 8,000 seedlings a year.
Moss, who has a degree in range and forest management from Colorado State University, is one of four full-time NRCS employees in Durango. The office also has an employee in Ignacio, who in part is liaison to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, and a wildlife biologist who is shared with sister offices in Cortez and Pagosa Springs.
daler@durangoherald.com
How to apply
The Natural Resources Conservation Service will accept applications for 2014 conservation projects from private landowners until Jan. 17. For more information, call 259-3289, ext. 3.
