ATRAZINE BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: IMPACT ON WATER QUALITY

Wichita, Kansas water supply is derived from multiple sources. Unfortunately, these sources are not expected to meet the future needs of the population. This predicted water shortage led to the development of the Equus Beds Recharge Project, to investigate artificial recharge as a solution to meet future water demands. This project focuses on the Little Arkansas River as a source of this recharge water. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment set a daily 3µg/L standard for the recharged water as opposed to surface waters used directly for drinking water which can’t exceed a yearly average atrazine concentration of 3µg/L. During 2005, five sub-watersheds within the Little Arkansas River watershed were instrumented to collect water quality samples and measure flow rate to calculate daily contaminant loadings. Three of the sub-watersheds used atrazine best management practices (BMPs) applied to grain sorghum while the remaining two sub-watersheds maintained existing farm practices. During 2007, monitoring continued and additional atrazine BMPs were applied to corn grown in the treated sub-watersheds. During both 2006 and 2007, water quality monitoring was used to examine water quality parameters throughout the entire watershed. Watershed-scale monitorin