Kennebec County Success Stories
(Augusta Field Office)

The Kennebec County Soil and Water Conservation District and the Natural Resources Conservation Service  hosted a forum on Farmland and Open Space Protection. Nearly 100 people gathered at the Bessey Municipal Building in Albion to talk and learn more about the tools that are available to help towns and landowners to conserve open space and to keep Maine agriculture working and growing.

The panel of presenters included farmers, conservation experts, tax specialists, legislators, and representatives of various public programs used for open land conservation. The group discussed the programs and technical assistance available for farmland protection like the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, Land for Maine's Future, Improving Farms profits, Farm and Open Space Tax Rules, FarmLink, assistance for farmers to develop a diverse business plan, and current legislative efforts to provide funds for and assist dairy farmers in Maine.

Plans are to have future meetings to continue discussion of the issues.

Slotted Dewatering Fence Constructed in Corner of Pit

Darrell and Sarah McKeen manage a 100-head dairy operation in Albion .  The McKeens are high-level managers and place a high value on overall farm aesthetics.  Prior to the development of a conservation plan in 2000, on-farm manure storage consisted of an older 3-wall concrete pit loaded by a gutter cleaner.  The semi-solid manure was then bucketed into a scavenger type box spreader and land applied.  It was found that when the manure reached a height of 3.5 feet in the pit, it would begin to flow out of the pit and on to adjacent hay and pasture ground. A 2000-foot, 8% slope was between the pit and Fifteen-Mile Stream, a non-point source priority watershed.   Darrell and Sarah worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to obtain Environmental Quality Incentives Program funding and technical assistance to protect water quality, maintain a semi-solid manure situation, and sustain a high-level of aesthetics on their farm.

The McKeens’ decision to enclose the existing pit presented another choice – how to maintain the consistency of the manure coming out of the barn in order to continue to handle the manure as a semi-solid.  The addition of any rainwater would require that the manure be handled as a liquid.  The objective became how to eliminate or remove an average of 1.5 feet of precipitation (after subtracting annual evaporation) each year from a pit totaling 80,000 gallons.  A roof was decided against due to cost, thus a situation presented itself to remove the excess water using the old technology of picket dams in a new way.  Working with the McKeens, the Natural Resources Conservation Service designed an expansion to the existing pit and two picket dams to remove accumulated liquids.   

The two dams in the McKeen pit were situated behind one stabilizing wall on the existing pit, adjacent to the ramp, and at the far corner of the newly constructed pit.  The dam adjacent to the ramp keeps liquids away from the bottom of the ramp, which would interfere with the bucketing of the manure.  The dams are engineered to withstand loads of a full pit of manure and the worst case scenario of the dam plugging up.   Two weeks prior to unloading the pit in the spring the solid riser will be removed, draining the liquids accumulated in the pit and into the filter area, capturing the peak nutrient-uptake of the filter area grasses.  Each of the dams is removable to allow for ease of cleaning. 

< Back to Features...