Farmers

As farmers consider ways to maximize their productivity and profitability, their focus also needs to be on protecting water quality. Farmers can do their part to protect the Reservoir and its tributaries by:

  1. Incorporating Best Management Practices (BMP’s) into your farming operation.
     
  2. Getting a conservation plan or following an existing one.
     
  3. Keeping livestock out of streams and riparian zones where their waste can pollute the water and their movements can cause erosion.
     
  4. Managing manure for maximum crop nutrient value and minimum runoff.
     
  5. Leaving vegetative buffers along stream banks to control erosion and to filter pollutants.
     
  6. Not allowing water used to wash out animal confinement areas to enter waters of the state. Facilities for treatment or disposal of wastewater generated at animal confinements should seek a permit from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, 601-961-5171.
     
  7. Disposing of dead animals in an approved manner. Composting is preferred to burial for small animals such as chickens.
     
  8. Applying chemicals at the proper rate and not when rainfall is imminent. Dispose of pesticides, containers and tank rinse water in an approved manner. Encourage a pesticide container recycling program in your community.
     
  9. Plugging unused wells and caping artesian wells.
     
  10. Using proper logging and erosion control practices on your forest lands by ensuring proper construction, maintenance and closure of logging roads. Retain trees and shrubs on the edges of drainage channels, streams and rivers.
     
  11. Recycling waste oil generated in farm use.
     

Read EPA’s Protecting Water Quality from Agricultural Runoff

More Information:

60 Ways Farmers Can Protect Surface Water
http://www.thisland.illinois.edu/60ways/60ways.html