
A water supply well that was part of AgWrap (Agricultural Water Resources Assistance Program) work that provided access to suitable groundwater for livestock watering and other agriculture uses.
Members of the Sampson Soil and Water Conservation District believe there’s much to be accomplishedin 2025, and they have hopes of matching last year’s success.
According to www.sampsoncountync.gov, the Sampson Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) office is a cooperation between the SWCD and the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS). The District is a subdivision of the state government that administers and supports local, state and federal programs which provide technical and financial assistance to landowners and land users for managing natural resources such as soil, water, forestry and wildlife.
Sampson’s SWCD did its fair share towards achieving those outcomes here in the county. Evidence of that was highlighted in a report the group puts together annually that covers all they completed for the recent fiscal year.
“We do this annual report every year,” noted Melanie Harris, SWCD senior soil coservationist/department head. “Our program year runs from July to June, and so, we’ll put another one of these out this fall.”
A major portion of the 2023-24 report was the staff collaboration between Sampson SWCD and NRCS, which provided farmers and landowners in Sampson County over $5.6 million in conservation incentives.
Sampson SWCD allocated $195, 313 in funds for best management practices over three programs — AG cost share ($154,398), which addressed nonpoint source pollution on agriculture land, AGWRAP ($25,000), to address water use efficiency, availability and storage, and the remaining $15,915 was for impaired/impacted which covered nonpoint source pollution on specific watersheds in the county.
Nonpoint source pollution, according to www.epa.gov, is caused by rainfall or snow melt moving over and through the ground. As the runoff moves, it picks up and carries away natural and human-made pollutants, finally depositing them into lakes, rivers, wetlands, coastal waters and ground waters.
With funding received though the NC Agriculture Cost Share programs, Sampson’s staff enrolled over 1,600 acres in cover crops to reduce soil erosion, suppress weeds and improve nutrient cycling, along with cropland conversions to grass and installing a waste management system and water use efficiency practices such as wells for agriculture use.
Those efforts, per the report, affected 1,331 acres, irrigated 36 acres, plus saved 1,085 tons of soil and 22,335 pounds of nitrogen.
Through the NRCS Partnership, Sampson SWCD partnered with NRCS to carry out its mission with over $5.4 million obligated to be paid out to landowners and farmers for best management practices administered under the federal Environmental Quality Incentive Programs (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Programs (CSP). Sampson SWCD helped provide technical assistance on those contracts.
There were 52 contracts from NRCS, which placed conservation on over 14,000 additional acres. This gave Sampson SWCD and NRCS a combined total of 15,747 acres in Sampson County they reached, covering cropland, forestry, crops, on-farm energy, high tunnel systems and confined animal feeding operation.
The total obligated funding for said NRCS best management practices was $5,419,834.
It’s those very numbers towards conservation that Harris said was her biggest standout from the report.
“I’d say just the amount of conservation we get on the ground is the biggest highlight for me,” she said. “So in this office, when you walk in, you have county employees that work in here, and federal employees, but we all kind of work together, even though we’re paid by two different pocket books.
“We work together with these cost-share programs to put as much conservation on the ground in Sampson County that we can,” Harris added. “So, if you were a farmer or landowner that came in here, our goal is just to help you. You won’t know who we are — if we’re county or federal doesn’t matter — for us, it’s about trying to figure out the best program to help those that come to us.”
When it comes to the funding Harris touted, they’re awarded from state and federal funds.
“The county staff, we mostly work with state funds, that’s where our money comes from, and then, of course, the federal programs, that money comes through the federal government,” she said. “So again, I would say we’re most proud of the amount of conservation we’ve put on the ground, and the amount of money that we’ve been able to help with.”
She continued, “So, when looking at the report, you can see the NRCS, which is federal, the $5.4 million is the amount of money they obligated over that time period. That’s the amount of money that’s coming into the county for these different practices. Now the federal government, of course, gets a lot more money than state. But then you can see here the $195,313 is the amount of money that’s come out of state funds.”
Another highlight included efforts from the Swine and Dairy Assistance Program (SDAP).
In 2022, data from the report stated that the SDAP was a one-time assistance program for swine and dairy producers who suffered a loss due to the shutdowns following the COVID-19 pandemic. $30 million was appropriated to N.C. Department of Agriculture to provide financial assistance for eligible swine and dairy farms that lost contracts or were forced out of business due to the pandemic.
Through that funding, Sampson Soil and Water is assisting swine producers with lagoon sampling and closures, closing out the first SDAP lagoon in the spring of 2024.
Sampson SWCD continued its work with the Coharie Tribe and the Friends of Sampson County Waterways to keep rivers and streams in Sampson navigable and flowing freely. In 2024, those entities were awarded $263,266 towards that effort, which has been ongoing since 2017 to remove fallen trees, beaver dams and other debris.
The Streamflow Rehabilitation Assistance Program (StRAP) awarded those funds, which are intended to support projects that restore and protect drainage infrastructure of both natural streams and small watershed structural projects to prevent future flooding, restore streams, and reduce risks to life and property.
“We’ve been working with the Coharie Tribe and the Sampson County Friends for Waterways for a while,” Harris said. “Those two entities actually hold the contract to help clean out the rivers and streams, but we help them with the paperwork and all that to get that done. Then we line up the checkouts for the engineers to go out and make sure things were cleaned out properly and the trees were moved off like they needed to be, that kind of thing.
“The clean-up, itself, that’s a ongoing project — it will never end,” she added. “That’s because once you get a section clean, all it takes is a little bit of wind or weather, and then something else falls right back in. Regardless, that’s been a long time coming. So we’re glad that the state has finally put some money out there to help clean out those streams.”
All those achievements haven’t gone unnoticed. In Oct. 2023, Team 17 (Sampson, Duplin and Pender NRCS) was awarded the FY2023 Outstanding Team Award for NC NRCS Area 3. And Sampson’s own Dwayne Faircloth, Sampson NRCS, was awarded Conservationist of the Year for Area 3. Meanwhile Sampson SWCD and NRCS staff were awarded with the NC NRCS Partnership Award for FY 2023.
While these didn’t earn them flashy awards or involve massive projects, the Sampson SWCD and NRCS staff worked a Soil and Water Conservation booth at the NC State Fair, participated in Sampson County Ag Day with an interactive booth where attendees planted sunflower and squash seeds in peat pots to take home, attended the annual Conservation Employee Training (CET) in Greensboro and toured a water treatment facility located in Burlington, N.C.
They even got a great opportunity for staff to participate in community outreach, attending the 2024 Area VII Envirothon competition at Jones Lake State Park in Elizabethtown, N.C. There, three teams from Sampson County, Midway High School and two teams from Union High School got to participate in the competition.
Midway High School had two teams ranked in the top five, with one team in second place. The two Midway teams who placed advanced to the State Envirothon competiton, where one team placed third overall in the FFA Division.
“We’re trying to get more active in our outreach, like with education groups or getting into the school,” Harris said. “We do try to get in with some of the high schools. We have what’s called an Envirothon, where high school teams go out and compete against other high school teams on environmental issues and things. So that’s something we want to do more of.”
After breaking down the annual report, seeing all the accomplishments and resources available to Sampson County, one of the remaining questions people have is ‘How do I utilize these resources?’
“We have a Facebook page, so we try to get information out on that,” Harris said. “Sometimes we put stuff in the Farm Service Agency that’s also in our building — sometimes we’ll have stuff in, maybe a newsletter that they sent out — and then the county’s got our web page that we try to keep updated.
“As for final thoughts on the report, like I said, we put one of those out annually, and so we just kind of share all the work that goes on in that time period and the different things we’ve got going on,” she added.
The district is governed by a five-member supervisory board which consists of Chairman Henry Moore III, Vice Chairman James Lamb, Curtis Barwick, Tommy Hobbs and Craig Thornton.
Sampson County Soil and Water is located at 80 County Complex Road, Suite 110, Clinton. For more information or to see the full breakdown of the 2023-24 annual report visit www.sampsoncountync.gov/Government/Departments/Soil-and-Water-Conservation-Services.
Reach Michael B. Hardison at 910-249-4231. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.