Need Money?

​See, I know how to put in a title that will get your attention.  Now that I have it, I will tell you that we may have funds that can help you out.  No, we can’t help with any of the everyday things.  We are the Conservation District.  Our job revolves around clean water.  Mine, in particular, has to do with the Ag sector.  However, we do have people down here that specialize in stream issues and forestry and such.  Streams, as most of you are aware, are a whole different topic and very hard to explain what we can and can’t do.  I will leave that to someone else.  We live in a very unique area with unique topography.  It is complicated.

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​The Conservation District is here to keep clean water clean, or try to clean some of the “dirty” water.  We have some funding to help pay for things like that.  My forte is Ag, so here is the Ag information.  We have money for soil samples.  We have money to get animals out of streams.  Yes, there are some hoops to jump through and there are some regulations to follow, but if you have animals in the stream and you want to do the right thing and get them out of it, we can help you.  Can they be in the stream?  The answer is yes, if all areas around the stream are vegetated and soils are stable.  If it is where they hang out and they tear things up, no.  That is not legal.  I have used the phrase 100 times lately, we can fence out the stream (gives the stream a buffer), give you a clean supply of water (spring or well) and even get you some concrete or something to get the animals on when condition require that they should be on something beside soil (wet, muddy, no pasture growth so they are just destroying things, etc.).  And we always forget to talk about the animals.  We are so focused on the environmental things that we lose focus on the animals.  There are many reasons to not have the animals in the stream.  If you have them there, you are not helping them.  Dirty water to drink, flies, mastitis, feet issues, etc.
We have money for planting cover crops.  We used some money to buy a very small no-till drill for people to use instead of plowing and tilling the soil.  It will be good for food plots and pasture renovation and things like that.  If you need a large field planted, we can try to hook you up with a custom guy, or maybe a surrounding county to help you with that.  If the small one goes over well, we will buy a larger one for the larger projects.  Are there other things that you can think of that would either prevent water from getting “dirty” in the first place, or clean what is “dirty” (buffers)?  Let me know.  Maybe we can help you with that. 
I have also applied for funds to put in grassed waterways and take some diversion ditches out.  Taking these out is a bit controversial so I am not sure I will get that.  We put diversion ditches in for a reason, and they worked well for what we wanted to do with them at the time.  However, we did not outlet them properly and now we have major issues at the end of them (erosion).  Also, with more people using reduced tillage and cover crops, or pasturing in general, it is not nearly as important to keep all the water off the field. The grass field will infiltrate most all of the water that will ever fall on it anyway.  Put the water where YOU NEED IT- in the ground.  Not flooding the neighbor’s property.
So, do you need money (for anything like this)?  We are here to help.
The Bradford County Conservation District is committed to helping people manage resources wisely.  You can visit the Bradford County Conservation District at 200 Lake Rd in Wysox across from the Wysox Fire Hall. Contact us at (570) 485-3144 or visit our web page at www.bccdpa.com.