Soil & Water Conservation District given nearly $174K to help pinpoint source of phosphorous
Photo by Joanne Beck
An overload of phosphorous — a nonmetallic chemical element that becomes a waxy solid material that glows in the dark at room temperature — has gained the attention of the Genesee County Soil & Water Conservation District, Senior Field Manager Jared Elliott says.
Elliott reviewed a five-year study at Oak Orchard Creek with county legislators earlier this month, and the county Legislature, in turn, approved $173,851 in funding toward the project and an additional staff intern position.
Legislators approved funding of $151,891 and $21,960 to support the staff position during their meeting Wednesday, for the total to be paid in regular installments through Dec. 31.
“We're working with Orleans County and SUNY Brockport. The goal is to collect data, analyze the creek some more, and potentially get a watershed management plan in place for that area. Oak Orchard is extremely impaired with phosphorus, and we need to find out where that's coming from so we can do a plan,” Elliott said during his annual report review earlier this month. “Some of it's probably from point sources. There's a lot of wastewater treatment facilities. There's municipal plants, and then the Nortera facility and the U.S. chips and facilities in Oakfield. Some of it's agriculture. Some of it's natural. The watershed could just be high and phosphorus coming out of the bedrock.
“We can narrow it down between a study and some modeling. The plan that we're going to work on is going to be probably a nine-element plan, which really focuses on, it ends up focusing on agriculture and supports grants to help with the agricultural sources, because the point source is something that's already regulated, so there's already a mechanism to reduce that. And agriculture is kind of low-hanging fruit in those areas, as far as something we can actually have an impact on,” Elliott said. “The other component there is with the solar farms that are going to be in that area, we're going to be kind of finding out how that's going to impact the hydrology and different things in that watershed, too.”
Other areas of focus for the agency have been to introduce its hydroseeding program into more municipalities, he said. According to his annual report, the District provides technical assistance to municipalities and landowners with financial support from the Finger Lakes-Lake Ontario Watershed Protection Alliance.
Hydroseeding is a method of planting grass and other crops using water, seed, fertilizer, and mulch sprayed onto the soil surface using specialized equipment, often for erosion control and quick vegetation establishment.
This Alliance funding is available to the District annually, is split between technical and financial assistance, and is a consistent funding source to support staff time, supplies, and training. In 2024, the District hydroseeded projects for the towns of Alabama, Batavia, Byron, Darien, LeRoy, Pavilion, Pembroke, and Genesee County. Approximately 13 acres of disturbed soil were stabilized with the hydroseeder.
“It grows a little bit every year. We work with new towns. We do more acreage. That's really been a point of emphasis, and that's opened the door to grant projects with a lot of these towns,” he said. “So we have a culvert replacement project scheduled for this year with Le Roy; we're talking to the town of Alabama about helping them replace their salt storage. So this hydro seeding program with the machine that the county helped us buy is kind of opening those things up for other non-ag work in the county. We do a lot of work for the county too.”
The District’s workload is increasing significantly in 2025 with several new grant projects and an added Japanese knotweed treatment program, he said in his report. Revenue sources have been steadily increasing recently, and the agency currently has no annual costs for the facilities that are used, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture currently pays rent on the office space occupied by the District.
However, this agreement could change with the cuts to the federal government, which would have budget implications for the District, he said.
“So I wouldn't expect our budget from the state to go down necessarily. We've seen fairly steady increases of the last four or five years, and I would expect that to continue for expenses. We're not really planning any major changes trying to maintain that five full-time staff right now, so we would see expenses climbing slightly just to accommodate gaining staff experience and insurance costs,” he said. “And then the only real concern that I have moving forward is we are co-located with the federal government. There's a lot of uncertainty about our office space. There's talks of reorganization and a lot of things potentially happening. So there could be a scenario where we would have to be looking for office space to lease something, but that's really our only concern, budget-wise.”
