The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship has partnered with Boone County and the Boone County Soil and Water Conservation District to launch a “batch and build” project aimed at improving water quality in Iowa’s waterways. The project’s first phase includes the installation of more than 20 edge-of-field conservation practices, such as bioreactors, saturated buffers and multipurpose oxbows, which have been proved to reduce the loss of nutrients into Iowa’s waterways. The aim is to streamline the project management process by installing batches of conservation practices on multiple farms at once. This project builds on the success of similar efforts in other Iowa counties. The project agreement is in place through June 30, 2025, and the first phase is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.