Stormwater Runoff Prevention

Overview

Managing agricultural lands to prevent the generation of surface runoff at its source is an effective way to increase rainfall infiltration and reduce erosion.

Stormwater Runoff Prevention Quick Facts

• Rainwater harvesting systems are an ancient technology utilized in drier areas of Africa, the Middle East and Europe as solutions for managing water resources and controlling related problems.
• Within the Basin appreciable runoff can be generated from rangeland and grain fields, particularly in the eastern portion of the Basin. Runoff from these fields can result in the export of large volumes of water from the watershed; managing lands to prevent such runoff in the first place can increase rainfall storage in the Basin.
• A key consideration in this management is that only normal agricultural conservation practices are applied to farmland, thus unlike efforts to extract stormflow once it has already entered a waterway there are no complex and expensive permits required to perform such work.
• Many of the concepts for reducing storm runoff losses from farmland have been part of general soil conservation practices in use for decades; since surface runoff is the key process causing erosion, the prevention of runoff generation at its source provides both increased water capture and soil conservation benefits.
• Contour plowing is one of the most fundamental practices in conservation tillage, in which the machinery passes follow the topographical contours of sloped land resulting in rows which are oriented perpendicular to the slope direction.
• Grazed rangeland is typically not tilled, but common tillage tools like the Yeomans Plow can be used occasionally to help break up restrictive hardpans, create vertical infiltration pathways for water, and create shallow surface berms which impede the generation of runoff.

Stormwater Runoff Prevention — Summary