With grassroots cooperation, growers and a commodity organization work to clean up a lake.

Smithville Lake, a 7,200-acre impoundment on the Platte River, just north of Kansas City, Mo., sits in a sprawling watershed. And much of the watershed is occupied by corn/soybean farms. Half a decade ago, atrazine levels in the reservoir had climbed to more than 6 parts per billion (ppb), prompting EPA to add Smithville Lake to the agency's 303d list of impaired waters.

"We were in danger of losing atrazine as a weed- control tool across the entire state," said Gary Marshall, chief executive officer, Missouri Corn Growers Association (MCGA).

"We knew we had to do something to halt and reverse the build-up of atrazine in Smithville Lake and other watersheds."

Understanding that most rural landowners are more readily led than pushed, Marshall and the elected leadership of MCGA approached EPA with a novel plan.

"We pitched this project to EPA on the basis that farmers will do the right thing, once they have good information and good tools," said Marshall. "EPA picked up on our lead, once we got things going."

MCGA enlisted help from federal and state government agencies, the University of Missouri, crop protection companies (including Syngenta Crop Protection, the primary manufacturer of atrazine) and corn growers in the Smithville Lake watershed. In 1999, a partnership was forged, called the Watershed Research, Assessment and Stewardship Project (WRASP). U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) became interested and helped secure more than $1 million in federal funding to help the project.

"I attended those early meetings to set up WRASP, and I don't mind admitting that I was skeptical, especially when they told me that EPA would be monitoring runoffÑnot just in waterways but from our fields," said Dan O'Connor, who grows corn upstream from Smithville Lake. "But I became less skeptical the next spring, when we got three inches of rain at my farm, just after we had applied atrazine. That let us know how much atrazine we could lose in the wrong situation."

For years, atrazine (registered in 1958) has been a mainstay weed killer for corn and sorghum growers. The herbicide is effective and is less costly than some other corn weed chemicals. But on the ground, atrazine doesn't behave as most other herbicides do. Atrazine is only weakly adsorbed (attached) to soil particles and leaves the field primarily in runoff water rather than with eroding soil particles. Therefore, it's possible to lose atrazine from a field even where there is no soil erosion.

"But when we started with WRASP, there was practically no data on what we began doing," said O'Connor. "Scientists had theories and had run computer models, but there wasn't much hard information to take to the field."

That was WRASP's first order of business: to find out exactly what was happening to atrazine in corn fields. More than 50 water quality monitoring stations were set up to collect about 1,000 samples each year at both the field and stream levels. Based on what they learned, WRASP partners drafted recommended Best Management Practices (BMP) that would have the greatest impact on both water quality and farm profitability.

"We started alternating applications of atrazine; making split applications to avoid putting so much herbicide on at one time," said O'Connor. "We also do tank mixes of atrazine and Cinch [a custom blend of Dual and Bicep], which lets us use much less atrazine. We are using half or less of the atrazine per acre that we used 5 years ago."

O'Connor, who grows corn with a preplant tillage system, also incorporates atrazine in the top 2 inches of the soil, to leave less atrazine on the surface where it is most vulnerable to runoff. Some WRASP cooperators planted buffer strips along the downslope ends of fields, to intercept runoff and help curtail soil erosion.

Meanwhile, Mark Twain Lake, in northeast Missouri, was running into atrazine problems and had been placed on the 303d list. The WRASP partners helped corn growers in the region establish management practices to help curtail atrazine runoff without cutting into farm profitability.

How well did the cooperative, voluntary approach work in solving these problems? Pretty well, as evidenced by the fact that both Smithville Lake and Mark Twain Lake in late 2003 were removed from EPA's "least wanted" impaired waters list. By mid-year 2004, atrazine levels in Smithville Lake had dropped to about 1 ppb. To celebrate, MCGA and its WRASP partners last summer announced the improved water quality situation at an open meeting on the shore of Smithville Lake. On hand to applaud the work of the group was Mike Leavitt, EPA administrator.

"This kind of approach improves the quality of our air, water and land, and keeps us competitive in the bargain," said Leavitt. "It's a prime example of using neighborhood solutions to meet national environmental standards.

"EPA is an enforcement agency; we are charged with enforcing the environmental laws enacted by Congress," Leavitt added. "But compliance, not enforcement, is our goal, and I see a greater spirit of cooperation, especially in agriculture. We need solutions that protect our natural resources, and at the same time keep farmers competitive and prosperous. That way, farmers will be better able to do those things that protect the environment. Nothing promotes pollution like poverty."

"Citizens, farmers, farm groups, businesses and governments came together to share information, share costs and work hard to save Smithville Lake," said Sen. Bond. "People want proof that voluntary solutions will help the environment? Just look at Smithville Lake. People want proof that federal and state agencies can work cooperatively with local communities? Just look at Smithville Lake."