 The Belfouche Irrigation District, or Belfouche Dam, was a project back in the early 1900s. It was completed in about 1910. It diverts water from the Belfouche and Redwater Rivers and delivers it to the Belfouche Dam. From the Belfouche Dam, it's delivered through approximately 450 miles of canals and laterals to 57,183 irrigatable acres within the boundaries of the Belfouche Irrigation District. The project's been in existence since, I believe, right around 1911. Out of that 57,000 acres, there's approximately 520 farmers ranging in acres from 5 to upwards of 960 acres. In the Belfouche River watershed, there are three conservation districts in South Dakota, three in Wyoming and one in Montana. And I guess it was pretty much out of frustration that we called all of the districts together and decided that we'd like to try to do something as a group and deal with the whole watershed rather than deal with specific little pieces. The partnership has been very successful in working with a number of different partners, but the main funding that the partnership has pursued and has successfully won and invested within the watershed is through two sources, mainly through USDA NRCS and then also through the South Dakota Department of Ag and Natural Resources. The partnership has been very successful with utilizing and investing section 319 funding, which is a section of the Clean Water Acts from EPA, and also utilizing USDA NRCS funding through their EQUIP program and also the RCPP program, which is the Regional Conservation Partnership Program. I had heard about the EQUIP program from the NRCS just from, I guess, neighbors and people who had utilized it. At that point, I made a call to the office and spoke with Justin about it. He explained the process. We got together and filled out my application, channeled it up. It found out if it got approved or not, and then it went through the contracting process. At that point, once I knew it was funded, I was able to go out and get quotes on putting pivots up and kind of start the whole process. When my great-grandpa and grandpa and dad, it was all flood irrigation, open ditches, tarps, shovels. By conveying water through ditches, we aren't always able to get that water to where it needs to go, and so we can have issues with drowning out or increasing salt levels in areas of fields, even when we're not irrigating them. They're just getting a lot of that excess water, and we're having losses in efficiency and getting water delivered to the intended producer. So by doing projects like the CIS and the Conservation District Grant, we're able to get that water into pipelines, and those pipelines don't have the issues with water loss, and we don't have those problems where we affect producers in a negative way upstream or up the system from our intended project. Now we've stepped up, we have a couple pivots that we irrigate with now, and we do have a little bit of gated pipe that we will irrigate with. I need to order water. I work with the Irrigation District. I make a call to the ditch rider, and within three days at the maximum, he gets water from the canals and laterals to my irrigation point. From then, it's kind of up to me to do with it what I will, and then when I'm done with the water, I try to give him two days notice, that way he can kind of put it together, and then if somebody else is going to be wanting water at the same time that I'm turning off, he doesn't have to just send it on down the river. He can actually have another producer pick the water up. NRCS has been extremely helpful. USGS early on was very helpful, but we've worked with a wide variety of partners, agencies in the state. Right now, our board consists of one member of each of the three conservation districts and a member of the irrigation district here. All of the partners just try to work with those producers and get the job done on the ground to address their resource concerns. It doesn't matter if NRCS does it, if the partnership does it, or another partnership, we kind of throw it all in one basket and say, you know, we've got that done and we're going to move on to the next one. The nature of utilizing open ditches in these irrigation systems is we're experiencing at least a 33% loss in water to its intended destination, whether that be seeping into groundwater or seeping into fields along the way that is in our intended target. The soils that are experiencing water erosion are ending up downstream and impacting our fisheries and recreation areas that thousands and thousands of people use every summer. By converting these open ditches into gated pipe like we do with CIS and with the conservation grant, we're able to reduce that water loss by at least 33% there and then on soils that are suitable for pivot irrigation, we're able to improve that number to where once we're running it through a pivot, we're experiencing about 80 to 90% of effective water placement and water usage and that has great benefits for people downstream where we have cleaner waters and better conditions for recreation and everything for the general public. It's always been the partnership's goal is to conserve the land and water resources within the Belfouche River Watershed. And so as part of doing that, they've been able to implement projects in partnership with both livestock producers and irrigators to conserve both that soil and the water. One of the first goals is to get the Belfouche River to attain the water quality standards that the state has set for that for both sediment and bacteria. Recently through the river assessment for the state, they've delisted portions of the river and also a portion of Horse Creek from that impaired list of water bodies for the state of South Dakota. So we're making progress. Eventually our goal is to have no listed or impaired waters within the watershed and I think we're on track to do that probably in the next 5 to 10 years. The most important aspect is the conservation, the being more environmentally friendly. So if we can demonstrate how we can be very proactive in conserving that resource, I think that's a huge plus, not only for us as farmers, but for all of society.