A watershed-planning meeting was help at the Greenwood County USDA Service Center Eureka, Kansas on Thursday October 3, 2002. The purpose of the meeting was to address concerns that various regulatory agencies had with the Fall River Watershed District's request to revise the districts 404 permit.

These agencies requested additional water quality data on the five-paired watersheds, comparing controlled and non-controlled watersheds. This data was collected on a frequent basis related to the seasonal hydrology of the watershed. Samples were analyzed for turbidity, total suspended solids, dissolved oxygen, fecal bacterial, and total phosphorus. This data compares the environmental quality of water from these paired watersheds. This report presents the results of the paired watershed water quality monitoring and analysis for five paired watersheds distributed throughout the watershed and five main branch locations in the Fall River Watershed District #21 during 2003-04.

This study demonstrates that controlled watersheds have the following features:

1. Controlled watersheds tend to have lower peak flows and the flow is sustained for longer periods during dry weather.

2. Turbidity and total suspended solid concentrations are lower in streams below controlled watersheds.

3. Sediment and total phosphorus concentrations and loading are lower in streams below controlled watersheds.

4. Bacterial populations and loading are lower in streams below controlled watersheds.

The reservoirs created in controlled watersheds act as a sink that captures contaminants that are stored in the sediments in the lake or degraded by time in the lake water. If the land use practices above these lakes are maintained in an environmentally proper way the lakes will continue to be a best management practice protecting and conserving the water resources that flow into and out of them.