Summary
The South Fork Wildcat Creek-Blinn Ditch & Kilmore Creek-Boyle’s Ditch Watersheds are located within the larger Wildcat Creek Watershed in Clinton County, Indiana. The land use of the watersheds is predominately agricultural. The north-west portion of the City of Frankfort and the small community of Kilmore make up the urban and residential areas of the watersheds. Several stream reaches in the watersheds are listed on the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s 303(d) List of Impaired Waterbodies, and the South Fork of Wildcat Creek is designated as one of three State Scenic Rivers.
The purpose of the Watershed Management Plan (WMP) is to evaluate the current state of each watershed and determine where future improvements and protection should be focused. The Planning Team for the WMP includes the Clinton County SWCD Board of Supervisors, the Steering Committee for the grant, and the many Stakeholders who have attended our events and provided input.
The South Fork Wildcat Creek-Blinn Ditch & Kilmore Creek-Boyle’s Ditch WMP addresses several causes of water quality impairments in the watersheds based on scientific data and visual observations by the Steering Committee and Soil & Water Conservation District staff. The causes addressed in this plan are Atrazine; sediment and nutrients; E. coli; garbage, trash, appliances, tires, and debris; and stream corridor degradation.
Baseline water quality testing combined with stakeholder input pointed to the following sources of impairments: farm field runoff, construction site runoff, illegal dumping, lack of sufficient buffer strips, conventional tillage practices, lack of appreciation for the creek, and application of lawn fertilizer to name several.
Each cause of impairment is addressed by a goal that provides direction for specific objectives and action items that are identified in this Plan for the improvement of water quality in the watersheds. The WMP will be implemented utilizing funds from a two-and-a-half-year Section 319 Clean Water grant to install conservation practices and begin fulfilling tasks set forth in the Plan beginning in June 2008. The plan will be reviewed every three to five years.