City of Silver City, Auditor of State's Report on Reaudit, For the Period July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003

City Audit Report

Cooperative Lakes Area Monitoring Project-Silver Lake, 2007

Water fact sheet for Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Geological Bureau.

Audit report on the City of Silver City, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2013

Audit report on the City of Silver City, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2013

09005-002 Silver Creek Watershed Final Report

Silver Creek is a warm water stream resource located in one of the most intensely cropped portions of Clayton County. The stream has been included on Iowa’s 303(d) list of impaired waters since 2002. Aquatic life, which should be present in Silver Creek, isn’t there. According to the Draft Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for Silver Creek, the primary nonpoint pollution sources are soil erosion from agricultural land uses and direct deposition of ammonia by livestock with access to the stream. The Clayton Soil & Water Conservation District has begun efforts to remove Silver Creek from the impaired waters list. The District has promoted stream corridor and sinkhole protection, and the installation of buffer practices along Silver Creek and its tributaries. Conservation practices have been targeted to crop fields to reduce sediment delivery to the stream. A series of news articles, newsletters, and field days have been utilized to increase public understanding of water quality issues. Landowner interest has outweighed available cost share resources. Additional financial support will allow the project to build upon its early successes, to further address the identified impairments, and to respond to a long list of landowners that are interested in conservation work on their farms.

08005-002 Silver Lake Watershed Final Report

Silver Lake is located in an 18,053-acre watershed. The watershed is intensively farmed with almost all of the wetlands being previously drained or degraded over the last 50 years. Silver Lake is listed on the State of Iowa’s impaired water bodies list due to sediment and high nutrient level. Silver Lake is also known be in the bottom 25 percentile of Iowa’s lakes due Secchi disk readings and Chlorophyll a level. Farming in the watershed is the principle concern and cause for many of the problems occurring in Silver Lake currently with 78% of the watershed being intensively farmed. There are two major drainage ditches that have been used to drain the major wetlands and sloughs that, at one time, filtered the water and slowed it down before it reached Silver Lake. With these two major drainage ditches, water is able to reach the lake much faster and unfiltered than it once did historically. The loss of 255 restorable wetland basins to row crop production has caused serious problems in Silver Lake. These wetland basins once slowed and filtered water as it moved through the watershed. With their loss over the last 50 years that traditional drainage no longer occurs. We propose to create a Wetland Reserve Program incentive project to make WRP a more attractive option to landowners within the watershed. The incentive will be based on the amount of sediment delivery reduction to the lake, therefore paying a greater payment for a greater benefit to the lake. The expected result of this project is the restoration of over 250 acres of wetland basins with an associated 650 acres of upland buffers. The benefit for these wetlands and buffers would be reduced sediment, reduced nutrients, and slowed waters to the lake.

Health consultation : Silver City petroleum release and municipal wells, Silver City, Mills County, Iowa (2005)

A resident of Silver City, Iowa requested the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) Hazardous Waste Site Health Assessment Program to evaluate the health impacts of a petroleum release in Silver City, Iowa, and the health impacts from the presence of chemicals detected in wells utilized as the source of municipal water for the citizens of Silver City and in the treated municipal water supply. This health consultation addresses exposure to residents of Silver City to organic chemicals within the groundwater and water supply and potential health effects at the levels of exposure. The information in this health consultation was current at the time of writing. Data that emerges later could alter this document’s conclusions and recommendations.