Nebraska Nitrate Working Groups Tackle Persistent Drinking Water Contamination

Over the past four decades, partners across Nebraska have worked to address rising nitrate levels, and while improvements have been made, levels continue to worsen across large portions of the state. As of 2017, 349 of Nebraska's towns and cities serving 1.4 million people (about three-fourths of the state's population) still had nitrate levels above background levels. Nitrates in drinking water have been linked to increased lifetime risk for cancer, thyroid disease and adverse reproductive outcomes. Nitrogen is a fertilizer critical for crop growth, however when it is lost to the environment it becomes a hazard. In water, nitrogen moves easily as nitrate.

In January 2020, to accelerate progress toward the mitigation of nitrate contamination in the state, DWFI, the Nebraska Water Center (NWC) and Nebraska Extension brought together 85 Nebraska agriculture and water management leaders from 31 organizations to strategize new approaches to this old problem.

The coalition is coordinated by Katie Pekarek, Water Quality Extension Educator, School of Natural Resources, UNL, and Crystal Powers, Research and Extension Communication Specialist for NWC, DWFI and Nebraska Extension. The collaborators would like to improve communication and coordination both internally and externally among the many partners.

At the initial meeting, the partners committed to the goal that "all Nebraskan will have access to safe water." To achieve this goal, three working groups were launched to address nitrate challenges from different perspectives: awareness, education and policy. The groups are focusing on relationships and connections to create a broad coalition that can address drinking water contamination in a comprehensive way. Through several facilitated ideation sessions, each group identified initial proposed activities to help accomplish the statewide goal. These proposals will be initiated over the next year.

Last year, Powers and Pekarek created a nitrate website (water.unl.edu) to provide a source for peer-reviewed educational content. This website serves as a connection point for the research and outreach being developed by dozens of DWFI faculty fellows and supported students.

As one example, DWFI initiated support for programming to better understand and control the fate and transport of vadose zone nitrogen. The institute provides partial support for NWC research assistant professor Arindam Malakar. Malakar is using data (both new and historical) from multiple vadose zone locations and state and federal databases to validate models for predicting and reducing nitrate leaching beneath irrigated crops. Using an experimental approach, he is working to understand how nitrate moves through water and how farmers can more responsibly use fertilizer in shallow groundwater areas.

These are just the first steps to renewed effort in tackling this long-standing challenge. Lessons learned through this collaborative process can be used to guide future efforts to address resource challenges in high production agriculture areas throughout the world. The Nebraska Nitrate Working Groups are a good example of how DWFI can use its resources and convening experience to bring stakeholders together and create coordinated plans to better understand and solve water quality and crop production challenges.