A $1.1 million program will try to get more Amish and Mennonite farmers in Lancaster and Chester counties involved in conservation measures to reduce pollution in local streams and the Chesapeake Bay.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has awarded a $500,000 grant to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for the group and partners to provide financial and technical assistance to mostly Plain Sect farmers in the Conestoga, Pequea and Octoraro watersheds. More than 100 will be contacted.
"The productivity of farms here is unparalleled, with hard work, thrift and rich soils sustaining families for generations," said Lamonte Garber, agriculture program manager for the CBF's Pennsylvania office.
"At the same time, many area farmers are hesitant to participate in government-sponsored conservation programs, and this is a barrier to reaching some producers. The partners in this project," Garber said, "have deep connections to the farm community — including Plain Sect communities — and these relationships will be crucial to the success of the project."
CBF is working to raise another $600,000 in public and private funds toward the three-year project.
Three other projects have received funding from the NFWF and the federal Chesapeake Bay Program to improve cleanup of Lancaster County streams, the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay. They are:
• Penn State University was awarded $750,000 to coordinate the Conewago Creek Collaborative Conservation Initiative, a public-private partnership formed to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution to Conewago Creek in Lancaster, Lebanon and Dauphin counties.
• Penn State will use a second grant in the amount of $786,384 to work in the Conewago Creek watershed to increase implementation of new technology that applies dry manure on farm fields below the soil surface, rather than on top of the ground.
Placing dry manure, which is used as fertilizer, beneath the soil surface improves crops' ability to uptake nutrients while reducing surface nutrient runoff by 90 percent and virtually eliminating ammonia emissions.
• Lancaster Farmland Trust has received $215,000 to research, develop and implement a program that links nutrient credits to conservation easements used to preserve farmland in Lancaster County. It is hoped that linking nutrient credits to the 80,000 acres of preserved farms in the county will give the fledgling nutrient credit trading market more stability and increase the confidence of potential credit purchasers.
Staff writer Ad Crable can be reached at acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029. 