Silver Creek Water Quality Project

Silver Creek Watershed is a 22,410 acre sub-watershed of the Upper Iowa River in northeast Howard County and northwest Winneshiek County. This project began in 2012 and since has invested over $8.3 million in conservation. Our goal is to reduce bacteria levels enough to remove the stream from the Iowa DNR 303(d) impaired waters list. We have not reached the goal yet, but we released 3,600 native brook trout fingerlings into the watershed in 2017. In 2019, fish surveys confirmed these trout have reached reproductive size and are naturally reproducing. The project is renowned for cover crop adoption by producers who, in fall 2022, will plant cover crops on 55.4% of row crop acres in the watershed. Over 15% of the watershed has been seeded to native prairie along the stream corridor. Without the willingness of 174 landowners to install 600+ best management practices in the watershed, it would not have been possible to see the significant water quality improvements to date.