Farm*A*Syst Can Help

If you live on an acreage, farm or ranch, Farm*A*Syst can help you protect your private drinking water wells.

"While it is important to protect all water resources, it is especially important to protect the groundwater that supplies nearly all the domestic water used in rural Nebraska," said University of Nebraska Farm*A*Syst extension educator Sharon Skipton.

Farm*A*Syst, Skipton said, is a program that can help meet the challenges of protecting private drinking water supplies in ways that other programs do not.

"It is an effective, voluntary and confidential risk assessment program. It provides an opportunity for concerned residents to evaluate how their use and management of potential contaminants can impact water quality," she said.

Step-by-step checklists help people evaluate potential risks to water quality and what they can do to reduce those risks.
"A Farm*A*Syst user keeps the assessment information for their personal records and decides what to do with the results," Skipton said.

Completing a "Simplified Rural Farmstead/Homesite Groundwater Quality Risk Assessment" form helps make a quick evaluation of the risk to groundwater quality on a farmstead or home site.

"Keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive assessment and should be considered only an initial screening," Skipton said. Worksheets available through the program provide a more comprehensive assessment.

For more information about the program, contact your local NU Cooperative Extension office. Call the Nebraska Farm*A*Syst office at (402)472-4574 or visit the Nebraska Farm*A*Syst web site at http://www.ianr.unl.edu/ianr/bse/ext/fas/. The national Farm*A*Syst and Home*A*Syst Internet site is located at http://www.wisc.edu/farmasyst/.