Something’s Better Than Nothing

Alternative Stream Fencing Pilot Project Offers Compromise to Shenandoah Valley Farmers

Andrew Jenner
Virginia Correspondent

KEEZLETOWN, Va. —  Bob and Susan Threewitts keep about 60 cows on their 90-acre pasture, which lies just north of Keezletown on the western slope of Massanutten Mountain and is transected by three streams. Cub Run, which has earned mention on Virginia’s impaired waters list for bacterial violations, flows right through the middle.

Protecting these streams’ water quality had always been a priority for the Threewittses, who began managing this farm in 1995, but the unique geometry of their pasture, property lines and streambeds presented a serious challenge.

Bob figured that 35-foot buffers (required by both the federal and state stream-fencing assistance programs) would have taken up to 16 acres out of production — close to one-fifth of their entire pasture. The fence specifications themselves — either 5-strand high-tensile wire or woven wire —weren’t particularly appealing, either. Cub Run often floods across their pasture, and Bob didn’t want to spend all his time repairing and maintaining the fence.

“I didn’t think it fit me,” said Bob, of the existing stream-fencing projects. “I knew I wanted to [protect the streams], but it had to be practical as well.”

Impracticality remained a stumbling block, and cattle had the run of the their streams, until a recent Farm Bureau meeting, when Bob heard a technician with the local soil and water conservation district talk about a relatively new, privately-funded and —most importantly — flexible stream-fencing program that offered a compromise.

This program, supported by a Chesapeake Bay Funders Network grant, would allow the Threewittses to build fence right along the stream bank (they’ll have about two miles of two-strand, high-tensile electric fencing, altogether), keeping the cattle out of the water and keeping almost all of their pasture in production. The grant money, managed by the Shenandoah Soil and Water Conservation District and the Shenandoah RC&D Council, would pay for the materials. The Threewittses would pay for the labor.

“They were willing to make a project fit me, rather than [rely on] a rule book,” said Bob, who was immediately interested, and, soon thereafter, signed up.

The alternative stream-fencing project also pays materials costs for associated improvements on the Threewitts farm: three culvert crossings and one hardened crossing, and the development of a spring to pipe water to the pasture’s several paddocks. These projects quickly get expensive; while the Threewittses declined to discuss the full amount they’re paying, the materials cost, funded by the alternative fencing grant, accounts for somewhere between 50 and 75 percent of the total (with construction still underway, it’s hard to make a more precise estimate).

Bob plans to have the watering system, crossings and fence installed by the end of the winter. The process has been an exciting one, he said, and even better, the technicians he’s worked with have been flexible and adaptable to a few changes he requested for the culvert design. “They’ve been so easy to work with,” he said. “They’re the ones that are making it happen.”

Proponents of this alternative approach to stream fencing have taken a something’s-better-than-nothing, pragmatic approach to watershed protection, in an area where the state and federal water quality cost-share programs have been met with something less than wild enthusiasm.

“At least this gets them somewhere,” said Kathy Holm, NRCS coordinator for the Shenandoah RC&D council. “We think you’ll see the biggest impact in terms of water quality just by getting livestock out of the streams."

Holm oversees the alternative stream-fencing project, which is just finishing its second year. It all began in early 2007, with a $158,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Funders Network to fund alternative fencing projects like the Threewittses’. So far, the project has helped fence 60,433 feet of streambank in Augusta and Rockingham Counties (that’s nearly six miles of stream, fenced on both sides) excluding 851 livestock from the counties’ streams.

Fifteen different landowners have signed or pending fencing contracts, and three - all of them in Augusta County - are already complete, Holm said.

“I’m totally for it. I would like to see 35-foot buffers, but I realize that we’re gonna suffer a long time if we wait for that,” said Jeff Kelble, the Shenandoah Riverkeeper with the environmental advocacy nonprofit Potomac Riverkeeper.

Kelble said he’s certain that simply excluding cattle and other livestock from the stream beds will go a long way toward improving regional water quality, and has encouraged state officials, all the way up to the Secretary of Natural Resource’s office, to consider offering a new cost-share fencing program similar to the privately-funded Shenandoah Valley pilot project.

Water quality aside, state and federal consideration of a similar practice is one of this pilot project’s major goals, said Connie Musgrove, a University of Maryland environmental research coordinator who works with the Chesapeake Bay Funders Network. By showing that the private stream-fencing project can be successful, she said, the Shenandoah pilot project presents state and federal cost-share programs with the opportunity to offer another, appealing best-management practice that can still improve water quality.

At this point, it’s unclear if that will be the case any time soon. “We’ve been looking at [alternative fencing programs] internally, but we don’t have anything to announce at this point,” said Gary Waugh, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, which oversees the state’s agricultural best management practices cost-share program.

Ken Carter, Virginia’s NRCS assistant state conservationist for programs, also said his agency is considering offering a similar best-management practice for stream fencing. He emphasized, though, that the 35-foot buffers required by public stream fencing cost-share programs play an important role in watershed protection.

“The technical literature has shown and proven that you need wider buffers to reduce the sediment, nutrients and bacteria [in the streams],” Carter said, adding that creating buffers is the main purpose of the CREP program (the fences are simply for keeping livestock out of the buffers). Nevertheless, Carter said alternative stream-fencing practices, like the one now under construction on the Threewitts farm in Keezletown, could play an important role in regional watershed management.

Whether or not the DCR or NRCS ever adopt a stream-bank fencing program themselves, they and everyone else seem to agree on this: something is better than nothing.