 Water can be your best friend, it can also be very deadly. We've had a few pretty bad samples come up and once those kind of hit the news then people were like, yeah we should probably sample our water, you know. There's concern though, I mean, their livelihood is at stake. Our dugouts are near empty or they are empty and they do have water in that we've got water quality issues as far as sulfates, high TDS. We know that livestock water quality can be impacted by drought, especially our surface waters. As those surface waters evaporate, the salts in those waters become more concentrated, specifically the total dissolved salts and sulfates, which can be potentially toxic to livestock when they reach different thresholds. NDSU Extension agents have been screening water sources across the state and helping producers determine if they're potentially toxic. We do have a couple of different water testing devices, we've got sulfate testing strips that we can just show the producer a little bit of what they're dealing with. Check the water quality, see how murky it is, if there's possibly any blue-green algae there and then work with the producer. If I do notice something that's amiss or if something doesn't look right, to work with that producer to figure out a good plan. I guess a lot of the testing too has been preventative. They're doing it before they're putting livestock out there. So they want to know ahead of time what do I need to be planning for, and I'm hoping they'll continue to call me and have me come out here out this summer and I told them we should be doing this at least once a month, especially if you get really hot and dry, that way we know for sure and if they need to get cattle out, they can. Extension agents have helped monitor or evaluate over 700 livestock water sources. Of those sources, 48 have had elevated levels of totals as all solids and 72 have had elevated levels of sulfates. What's really interesting is if you look at the maps for these levels and correlate it to projects funded through the State Water Commission, a lot of the projects funded are in areas where extension agents have been sampling and screening water samples. Dealing with people, you know, telling producers, for example, that they can't put cows out on a certain pasture and it might be the only pasture they have, isn't exactly the easiest thing to do. Give the straight information with maybe a little bit of optimism and sometimes people just want to talk. This is why call your local extension agent. We're sympathetic. We understand and we want to help you any way we can. We're not miracle workers. We can't make it rain, but we'll do what we can.