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If you use a septic system or if you are buying a home with a septic system, this owner's guide can help you be sure that your septic system is used and maintained properly. This guide also provides a place to record and keep important information, such as a copy of your permit, a sketch of your system, and maintenance records.
This factsheet describes the effect of fertilizer nitrogen on water quality and the environment. It provides guidelines for managing soil fertility on farms to preserve water quality.
Runoff on construction sites often contains large amount of soil and trapping it before it leaves the site is critical in preventing damage to streams, rivers and lakes. This factsheet describes sediment traps and basins at construction sites and agricultural operations, which provide temporary pools for runoff that allow sediment to settle before the water is discharged into water.
This publication discusses the environmental benefits of planting miscanthus — a tall, perennial grass — on lands that otherwise have poor results with traditional row crops.
This factsheet for farmers describes ways to control the harmful effects of excess nutrients while maintaining healthy, productive farm crops. Steps covered include testing your soil and following the soil testing recommendations, setting realistic yield goals, choosing the most suitable nitrogen sources, applying nitrogen correctly, using manure as a nutrient source, controlling erosion, managing water flow and fencing animals away from water flow.
This publication discusses ways that gardeners can protect water quality and avoid runoff and soil erosion.
This publication offers information on water quality challenges in irrigation water.
This publication discusses how to use controlled drainage as way to to reduce nutrient losses from agricultural land to surface waters and groundwater. It includes information on controlled drainage systems, structure location and management, and water quality and crop yield benefits.
Stormwater retention ponds, or wet ponds, are common in North Carolina for managing both flooding and stormwater runoff. However, many older wet ponds fail to meet current water quality standards. Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTWs) can be a solution to enhance pollutant removal and improve water quality. This publication provides an overview of FTWs, their benefits, and installation and maintenance.
North Carolina has an abundant supply of clean water, a resource vital to our high quality of life. Rivers, lakes, groundwater aquifers, and coastal estuaries are crucial to public health, economic development, and recreational opportunities. However, our water sources are constantly threatened with degradation by such activities as imprudent development, improperly managed agricultural and industrial activities, and unsound waste disposal practices. The soil exerts an important influence on water quality. How we manage the soil and what we put on it determine, in part, the level of treatment required to make our water supplies safe and enjoyable. This fact sheet explains how soils influence water quality and why efficient soil management helps protect water quality.
The purposes of this factsheet are to identify several major pollutants that often originate in lawns and gardens, to describe the problems they may cause, and to outline some things that can be done to minimize their adverse effects on water quality. This information should benefit home gardeners, landscape developers, contract lawn care specialists, athletic field managers and others who manage soil to grow plants for food, pleasure, or profit.
This publication discusses the construction of fiber check dams on construction sites to control sediment and runoff from the site. To save money and reduce construction site impacts on nearby surface waters, how to install fiber check dams, spacing of the dams and maintenance of the dams are covered in this factsheet.
This factsheet provides a review of strategies for designing and maintaining stormwater facilities to limit mosquito populations.
Lawns are ecosystems that impact surface and groundwater systems. The grasses found in lawns clean the environment by absorbing gaseous pollutants and intercepting pesticides, fertilizers, dust, and sediment. Irrigation water properly applied to lawns remains on site to recharge water supplies. In addition, grasses release oxygen and reduce glare, noise, and summer temperatures. Proper management practices need to be developed and followed to protect this environment. The purpose of this publication is to provide you with management strategies to preserve and protect water resources.
This technical bulletin reviews earlier research that evaluates the influence of grazing livestock, primarily beef cattle, on water quality. This publication will help producers make informed choices and consider strategies to protect water quality and maintain productive pasture-based livestock operations.
This factsheet provides information on how to keep a lawn healthy and attractive and how to protect the environment by reducing runoff and trapping pollutants. Fertilizer facts and rates, a mowing guide, and watering recommendations are included.
This publication provides a review of research on submerged aquatic vegetation in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary System. It documents the benefits of submerged aquatic vegetation, the causes of its decline, and provides options for addressing its loss.
This question and answer worksheet will help homeowners focus on potential problems with drinking water or other water resources that may be caused by improper lawn or garden care. Use and storage of fertilizers and pesticides, watering plants, landscape design and soil erosion are discussed.
This publication discusses the practice of leasing estuarine waters on the North Carolina coast for shellfish mariculture. It covers how shellfish are grown in North Carolina, how shellfish leases work, what constitutes a shellfish growing area and shellfish harvest closure, and the process for reopening after a closure.
Proper application of pesticides and fertilizers, which protects water quality, is possible only with a sprayer or spreader that is accurately calibrated. Pesticides applied with equipment that has not been calibrated may be misapplied by more than 10 percent. That may lead to repeat applications, damaged plants, excess cost, and contamination of the environment.
This factsheet is designed to give a brief overview of natural and constructed wetlands and provide key information to help identify these wetlands and the functions they provide.
This publication discusses the presence of various pollutants in rooftop runoff and establishes some general guidelines regarding the use of collected rainwater in North Carolina.
This publication identifies best management practices (BMP's) that protect water quality and the environment on Christmas tree farms in North Carolina. Profitable Christmas tree production can go hand-in-hand with sustainable goals that protect land and water resources. Several water quality BMP's described here also have the potential to slow the spread of Phytophthora root rot, a dire soil-borne disease that threatens Christmas tree production. BMP's are identified for road construction, stream buffers, site preparation, scouting-based pesticide decisions, selecting least-toxic pesticides, weed and ground cover management, fertilizer management, pesticide handling and storage, and well head protection. Growers who invest in BMP’s usually show a greater long-term profit because their land is maintained at higher productivity. With a multiple choice question for each BMP, readers can evaluate their level of compliance with each practice.
Thirteen agricultural watershed projects were funded jointly by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of cropland and pastureland conservation practices on spatial and temporal trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about the selection, timing, location, and relationships among conservation practices relative to how well they protect water quality.
This publication explains how future agricultural practices must be designed and managed to protect water quality.
Although groundwater and surface waters are rarely polluted by turfgrass pesticides, turf managers should consider the potential for environmental contamination when choosing a pesticide.
Thirteen agricultural projects were funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of agricultural conservation practices on spatial patterns and trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about identifying a watershed’s critical source areas in order to prioritize conservation practice implementation for better protection of water quality and lower costs.
This publication provides an overview of how satellite remote sensing can be used to help monitor algal blooms in bodies of water. It also explains some of the limitations of using satellite imagery for this purpose.
This factsheet explains the problems related to nitrate in drinking water and how to prevent it from affecting your water supply.
This publication examines case studies of the livestock exclusion fencing best management practice to answer questions about factors that influence the efficacy of fencing, including how far from a stream fencing should be, whether the entire stream should be fenced, and the effects of limited grazing in the excluded area.
Thirteen agricultural watershed projects were funded jointly by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of cropland and pastureland conservation practices on spatial and temporal trends in water quality at the watershed scale. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about the social and economic factors within the watersheds that either facilitated or impeded implementation and proper maintenance of conservation practices.
Thirteen agricultural watershed projects were funded jointly by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of cropland and pastureland conservation practices on spatial and temporal trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about the outreach techniques that were most effective for communicating information to different audiences, achieving adoption of practices and improving management and/or maintenance of practices in different geographic settings.
This publication will help you understand hydrology (the movement of water above and below ground) and how it influences the effectiveness of management practices aimed at improving coastal water quality.
This publication discusses the challenges of accurately testing for fecal coliform bacteria in coastal waters. It includes information about fecal coliform bacteria and how they affect coast systems and provides options for sampling and computer modeling methods that help growers, regulators, and coastal communities make decisions about coastal activities.
Thirteen agricultural watershed projects were funded jointly by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of cropland and pastureland conservation practices on spatial and temporal trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about selecting and applying simulation models as evaluation and planning tools for watershed conservation projects and the relationship between monitoring data and modeling in conservation practice evaluation.
Thirteen agricultural watershed projects were funded jointly by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of cropland and pastureland conservation practices on spatial and temporal trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about the selection, timing, and location of conservation practices and relationships among them relative to any effects on water quality.
This publication discusses how the Nitrogen Loss Estimation Worksheet Tool can be used to account for agricultural nitrogen levels as an alternative to water quality monitoring.
Thirteen agricultural watershed projects were funded jointly by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of cropland and pastureland conservation practices on spatial and temporal trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as part of the overall Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). By synthesizing the results of all these NIFA-CEAP projects, this publication explores lessons learned about developing agricultural watershed projects to investigate conservation practices in relationship to water quality changes.
This factsheet explains how wetlands type and location influence water quality, and it reviews the cases for development or preservation.
This publication will help you care for your lawn in ways that prevent and reduce contamination of our water resources by sediment, fertilizers, and pesticides.
This publication describes the best management practices (BMP) to reduce sediment and keep nutrients and pesticides applied to turf from contaminating North Carolina's water resources.
Most water in North Carolina is suitable for drinking and other home uses. There are, however, circumstances which can lead to contamination of water supplies. The question of whether or not to test your water is a serious one which concerns the health of you and your family. The purpose of this factsheet is to give you general guidelines to follow when deciding to test your home water quality.
This question and answer worksheet will help coastal homeowners focus on potential problems with the pollution and health risks of water protection practices and the effects on water sources from stormwater management. Car/truck wastes, yard/garden wastes, animal wastes, rain gardens and rainwater runoff are covered.
While research has shown that pollution of surface and groundwater supplies from turfgrass pesticide application is uncommon, the turf manager should still strive to avoid potential environmental contamination when choosing a pesticide.
