Jordan Jobe

Author Jordan JobePosted on September 12, 2019September 12, 2019Categories News

On July 8th, several dozen partners came to the WSU Puyallup Campus to discuss the Floodplains by Design funded work to support agricultural viability in the area. The goals were to discuss how FbD funding has used multiple tools and collective action to understand and support agricultural viability in the Clear Creek area and discuss efforts within the broader Puyallup Watershed. We also shared how WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center, WSDA, and the work of the Farm Committee of the Floodplains for the Future partnership are supporting agricultural viability in the Watershed. Finally, we discussed many ideas about opportunities to better meet the needs of the agricultural community in the region.

The main focus of the day was visiting several farms in the Clear Creek area: Wild Hare Farm, Zestful Gardens, and Early Bird Farm. At Wild Hare, we heard from farmers Mark and Katie Green about how an agricultural conservation easement  allowed their family to purchase and continue farming on a locally-beloved farm. At Early Bird, Rawley Johnson shared how he has participated in the Floodplains for the Future partnership, and how that group is advancing efforts towards agricultural viability, and shared many of the on-farm and local challenges he faces. At Zestful Gardens, Holly Johnson discussed more challenges of farming in Pierce County, but also expressed tentative hope that partnerships such as Floodplain for the Future can advance agricultural viability needs.

Since 2015, Floodplains by Design (FbD), via the Puyallup Watershed’s Floodplains for the Future partnership, has funded over $2,500,000 of projects and program-level work towards understanding, documenting and improving agricultural viability and farmland conservation. At the same time, this work is integrated into local floodplain management and habitat improvement efforts. FbD funds are leading to an understanding of what the Puyallup Watershed agricultural community needs to be viable in the future given the complexity and challenges facing the diverse farmers and producers.

Author Jordan JobePosted on May 2, 2019Categories News

In the past few years, one consistent question from farmers and residents in the Clear Creek area has been: How much water is coming off the hillside from Waller and surrounding areas? We know a lot of development has occurred, and it seems like there is an increasing flow of water onto our land!

The excess water- some of it stormwater runoff from development upstream– ponds on agricultural land, making it dicey for farmers to get onto the land in time in early Spring to plant a first round of crops. Poor drainage in the Clear Creek area exacerbates the situation, meaning that farmers often find themselves with soggy land much later in the season than they’d like!

The water is likely coming from different sources- precipitation, of course, but also high groundwater levels, poor drainage throughout the system, and some proportion of the water is running off the hillside’s impervious surfaces, entering the four creeks (Canyon, Clear, Squally, and Swan) and flowing into the floodplain below. This last piece is one question we’re interested in answering!

In April 2019, a team from WSU Puyallup, South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group, and Pierce County explored possibilities for placing stream gauges on each of the four creeks. Combined with a stream survey, data from the gauges could be used to calculate approximately how much water is flowing off the hillside onto the land below. This information will be used to help the Floodplains for the Future partnership determine whether sediment ponds or other flow-control methods (like installing sediment traps or large woody debris to trap material, slowing flow downstream) might benefit the land below. The end goal, from an agricultural perspective, is to minimize the impact of stormwater runoff on agricultural lands, allowing our local farmers to use their land more productively to produce our food! 

Installation of gauges will be happening soon, and data should start rolling in thereafter- we’ll need about a year’s worth of flow data to get a sense for the answers we need. Building a better picture of the hydrology of the Clear Creek system will help all of us understand specific actions we can take to improve drainage!

Author Jordan JobePosted on February 19, 2019September 10, 2019Categories News

In the Puget Sound Region, it’s clear that climate change impacts will involve changes in precipitation that will impact agriculture, especially agriculture in floodplain areas (Mauger et al. 2015). However, it’s not yet known how precipitation pattern changes will combine with changes in stormwater run-off and sea-level rise… and how these changes might differ between different watersheds. Flood risk reduction folks want this information so that they know how to properly size new culverts. Fish folks want this information to place and design salmon habitat restoration projects.

Nancy’s Ditch, a key agricultural ditch in the Puyallup Watershed’s Clear Creek area, is consistently slow-flowing and full of water. Photo: J. Jobe.

But, it turns out that this information will also dramatically impact what to do about agricultural drainage, a current challenge. Getting surface water off of fields early enough to plant spring crops can be tricky, and often the fall rains saturate fields before farmers can plant winter cover crops. Farmers need to know what to expect from precipitation changes in the future so that they can adapt to those changes. Crop selection, cover crop timing, and maintained agricultural drainage infrastructure will be critical for future agricultural viability, as much or more than it is today. So, it is important that farmers also understand and have the ability to use climate change information.

In the Puyallup Watershed, floodplains host a diverse array of farms and agricultural businesses that benefit from the rich floodplain soils. They also are under pressure of development, suffer frequent flooding, and provide inadequate fish habitat. Recognizing the conflicting pressures, the Floodplains for the Future Partnership  of 22 partner organizations are working to support the recovery of floodplain functions. The key is to achieve that by balancing farm, fish, and flood interests and needs.

The Partnership’s Farm Committee has taken the lead role in understanding, researching, and advocating for agricultural viability in Pierce County so that the agricultural community’s needs are met whenever possible by this multiple-benefit effort. Since 2015, their efforts have focused on the Farming in the Floodplain Project (now affiliated with the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources), working to identify agricultural viability needs and support actions that could improve the ability of farmers to successfully farm in Pierce County.

The first three years of this work led to some not-terribly-surprising conclusions and next steps for Pierce County: agricultural drainage, often the biggest physical barrier to agricultural viability, has been inadequately maintained for decades, and now is worsening flood risk (Environmental Science Associates 2017). In addition, as our Partnership works to improve agricultural drainage (at a landscape scale, as well as through policy), we’ve recognized that there are serious gaps in our understanding of how to address future agricultural drainage needs, because these will change with a changing climate.

We are not alone in this. As we wrestled with the best way to get robust data around future precipitation changes and sea level rise, we realized that our counterparts working on the flood and fish habitat side of things—the other two legs in this integrated management stool—needed very similar data to understand things like what vegetation to use in restoration efforts, and how tall to construct levees. We were all using different reports, baseline data, and models to understand how our shared landscape might be impacted by climate change… so how likely were we to find solutions that work for farms, fish and flood?

In order to meet the need for solid, relevant, and specific climate change data, we decided to collaborate, pool resources, and design a shared approach. We have partnered with the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group to collate available data, determine what we should use as shared baselines, identify data gaps, and define a path forward to collaboratively develop new models for the Puyallup Watershed.

Farm, Fish, and Flood folks meet on a farm in the Puyallup Watershed to better understand how this farmer successfully farms with the existing high groundwater levels and agricultural drainage systems.

This approach is unique, but logical: collaboration will lead to a greater understanding of the specific predicted changes for our Watershed, it allows us to pool our resources (time and money) and we will create better-quality models with a higher degree of buy-in from the many partners involved in this work.

Working collaboratively, the Floodplains for the Future Partnership’s shared development of climate change data will allow us to continue to build trust between interests that sometimes are at odds—between agricultural landowners and the County, between fish biologists and farmers. We will have a clearer idea of how precipitation changes may impact the land use decisions that face our Partnership. By the end of 2019, this work will have taken shape: we’ll have a shared path forward to fill in the critical gaps for climate change data needs to inform better decisions for farm, fish, and flood-focused efforts.

References:

Mauger, G.S., J.H. Casola, H.A. Morgan, R.L. Strauch, B. Jones, B. Curry, T.M. Busch Isaksen, L. Whitely Binder, M.B. Krosby, and A.K. Snover. 2015. State of Knowledge: Climate Change in Puget Sound. Section 8: How will Climate Change Impact Agriculture?Report prepared for the Puget Sound Partnership and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington, Seattle. doi:10.7915/CIG93777D

 Environmental Science Associates. 2017. Final Drainage Inventory Memorandum. Memo prepared for the Farming in the Floodplain Project and PCC Farmland Trust. Accessed Nov. 28, 2018.

Also published on the Perspectives on Sustainability blog at the WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources and the Agricultural Climate Net blog. 

Author Jordan JobePosted on January 9, 2019September 12, 2019Categories News

PSRADC Agenda

Author Jordan JobePosted on November 13, 2018November 5, 2018Categories News

Pierce County Roads division has been expressing interest in understanding how better to support improved agricultural drainage by re-visiting their maintenance schedule and methods. Typically, their crew visits a few times a year, mows down the grass (mostly reed canarygrass or blackberries) and departs. However, this leaves piles of debris in ditches, which may eventually make their way to a culvert, and may only partially decompose, therefore blocking water from draining from the ditch. They’re now seeking a few locations to try out alternative methods, including cutting grass shorter, removing debris, and/or placing a mat down to block weed growth. They’re also open to conducting a survey of the ditch to remove high/low spots to improve flow!

Let us know if you know of any ditches that drain agricultural fields AND are maintained by Pierce County Roads department, and we can connect you with the right folks!

Author Jordan JobePosted on November 5, 2018Categories News

The Floodplains for the Future partnership is awaiting funding from the third round of Floodplains by Design funding, but the partners are already working hard to move projects ahead. One project that the Farming in the Floodplain Project is excited about is the opportunity to improve agricultural drainage in the Clear Creek area by reconnecting floodplain and restoring Clear Creek on a ~30+ acre parcel of property now owned by the County. Drainage District 10 will be a part of this effort, and in order to make informed, data-backed decisions about how to restore this property, we’re collaborating with flood and fish interests to collect information that will point this effort towards success.

This means collecting data about:

• surface and groundwater levels in the Clear Creek basin- what do water levels look like over the course of a year?
• the hydraulic grade line- what’s the slope from one end to the Puyallup River- is it enough to drain the basin?
• the amount of water the four tributaries (Swan, Squally, Clear, and Canyon Creeks) contribute off the plateau onto the floodplain- how much water is coming off the plateau and draining through the floodplain?
• salinity- is saltwater water from downstream making it to this system during high tides?

We’re all working to figure out how to share resources and existing equipment in order to collect this data. The end result will be a way better understanding of how water moves around Clear Creek, which will give us all a better path forward to integrating agricultural drainage elements into this restoration project. For example, “re-meandering” Clear Creek by un-pinning it from the railroad tracks could improve flow and water storage. Understanding the slope of the floodplain within the creek/ditch system can show us where to focus efforts to clear, widen, or alter the ditches.

For more information about this effort, or about the Farming in the Floodplain Project, email Jordan.

Author Jordan JobePosted on March 22, 2018March 22, 2018Categories News

The Farming in the Floodplain Project has officially moved to WSU in Puyallup. We’re affiliated with the Washington Stormwater Center and the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The Floodplains for the Future (FFTF) partnership- the group that received the first Floodplains by Design grants- continues to successfully collaborate, and received several recent large grants that will be used to further this work. Floodplains by Design funding will be arriving shortly, and the Farming in the Floodplain Project is planning for the next two years worth of work! Our work continues to be guided by the FFTF Agricultural Committee, comprised of staff from WSU-Puyallup, Forterra, PCC Farmland Trust, Pierce Conservation District, and Pierce County (Planning and Lands Services and Surface Water Management), as well as several local farmers/growers.

For the next two or so years (June 2018- June 2020) we will continue to work within the Clear Creek community on the following tasks:

• Explore the feasibility of separating agricultural drainage from the Clear Creek system, including examining alternative drainage infrastructure for the near term and long term;
• Support the local drainage district and others within the county to determine what it takes to make a district viable and functional;
• Participate, and advocate for agricultural perspectives, in Pierce County’s Clear Creek Strategy Process;
• Collaborate with Flood and Habitat Leads to co-design a project on 40-80 acres of SWM-owned property that will restore habitat and improve agricultural drainage.

We are also continuing to collaborate with many partners to look at drainage problems within the Puyallup Watershed, and seeking options to support improved physical conditions and policies that will lead to improved agricultural drainage.

To learn more about our work, email us!