What's the problem with Bear Creek?
What's being done to help Bear Creek?
What can I do to help?
What is the future of Bear Creek?
Meet the project coordinator
What's the problem with Bear Creek?
Bear Creek landed on the state's impaired waters list in 2005 after a number of fish kills occurred along the stream. High bacteria levels and high levels of nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, threaten water quality in Bear Creek, located in Delaware County.
High nutrient levels can lead to poor water quality and cloud the water. It can also create low oxygen and high ammonia levels, which are harmful to fish and other aquatic life and lead to potentially toxic algae blooms, as well as a variety of other problems.
Bear Creek is a tributary to the Maquoketa River, making its watershed a smaller portion of the larger Maquoketa River watershed. Of all the smaller watersheds that make up the Maquoketa watershed, the Bear Creek watershed has the highest levels of bacteria, nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment following a rainfall.
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What's being done to help Bear Creek?
Mike Freiburger, watershed project coordinator, can work with you to evaluate your property and identify practices that can help both the creek and your property. Freiburger can also help find financial assistance to install those practices. Landowners participating in the watershed project can generally get improved financial assistance opportunities.
The four objectives of the Bear Creek Watershed Project are to improve livestock waste storage, to improve use of livestock waste, to decrease the loss of sediment, and to improve community education and outreach.
The watershed project has helped numerous landowners in the Bear Creek watershed use conservation practices to improve water quality. The project has helped create water and sediment control basins, grassed waterways, terraces, buffer strips, filter strips and no-till.
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What can I do to help?
Landowners can consider installing conservation practices to control the amount of sediment,
nutrients and other pollutants reaching Bear Creek.
Financial assistance is available, and the benefits extend beyond cleaner water - often conservation
practices can produce financial benefits, create recreational opportunities and provide habitat for wildlife.
Residents of Bear Creek can volunteer as part of IOWATER. Monitors collect
information on the levels of nitrates, nitrites, dissolved oxygen, pH, chloride and phosphate in creeks,
steams and the lake. Monitors also report on the water's temperature and color, and on biological life in the
monitoring area, which is often an indicator of water quality.
Monitors report their data to the IOWATER online database, where the public can view water
monitoring results from across the state at IOWATER.
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What is the future of Bear Creek?
By adding conservation practices to their land, residents will help improve the quality of the water and the aquatic life in Bear Creek. Working together with the project, landowners can ensure that future generation will be able to enjoy the creek for years to come.
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