GRDA Hosts Events on Water Quality Issues

With an eye towards maintaining a focus on water qualities issues in the Grand River watershed, the Grand River Dam Authority and other agencies continue to form beneficial partnerships. Two recent events, sponsored in part by GRDA, and bringing together water and conservation agencies from the tri-state region serve as examples of those partnerships.
In mid-June, GRDA hosted to a portion of the “Boundaries and Natural Resources” 2006 Kansas Field Conference for the tri-state region. According to GRDA Director of Ecosystems Management, Dr. Darrell Townsend II, Ph.D, that conference focused on natural resource issues that cut across state lines, and certainly, that related to the Grand River system.
“The Grand River watershed consists of nearly 12,000 square miles of runoff through parts of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and other tributaries from Arkansas also feed into Grand Lake,” said Townsend. “So it’s certainly beneficial for agencies from these states to come together to discuss watershed issues.” In fact, while the majority of the Grand Lake watershed lies in Kansas, the majority of people residing in the watershed live in Missouri. “It is easy to see why tri-state cooperation on these issues is so important for Northeast Oklahoma and Grand Lake,” added Townsend, who served as a presenter during the three-day field conference, explaining GRDA Ecosystems’ efforts to other agencies.
“The relationships we’ve been able to develop with these other agencies can only serve to benefit our efforts,” said GRDA Chief Executive Officer Kevin Easley, “and we appreciate the opportunity to come together and focus on issues effecting the watershed.”
One such issue is waste water treatment around the lake shore. GRDA and other agencies had a chance to focus on this during a late June workshop, also hosted by GRDA. Intended for professionals responsible for installing or inspecting waste water treatment facilities around Grand Lake, the “soil profiling” workshops was a cooperative effort between GRDA, Oklahoma State University, and the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. Dr. Brian Carter, professor of Soil Morphology at OSU, led that workshop.
According to Townsend GRDA will host another interstate, interagency watershed meeting later this summer with representatives from Kansas State University, Oklahoma State University, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, Oklahoma Conservation Commission and other partners, including county extension offices in the lake area.
“That meeting just represents a chance for all these people to sit down together to discuss issues that we all deal with,” said Townsend. “All these agencies are taking the initiative to work together and bring to the table as much information and expertise as possible.”
Information gained from these other agencies has proven very beneficial to GRDA Ecosystems, said Townsend. Meanwhile, water studies conducted by GRDA are also making an impression with the scientific community, he said. “I think the mutual respect we’ve seen for every agency’s efforts is really a testament to the contributions everyone is making to stewardship of the natural resources of the Grand River system.”