TY - JOUR AU - McCutchan, Hal AU - Osterli, Phil AU - Letey, John TI - Polymers check furrow erosion, help river life JF - California Agriculture JO - Calif Agr Y1 - 1993/09/01 VL - 47 IS - 5 SP - 10 EP - 11 PB - University of California Agriculture and Nature Resources SN - 0008-0845 UR - http://www.ucanr.edu/sites/calagjournal/archive/?article=ca.v047n05p10 AB - Each year, irrigation runoff from West Stanislaus County farmland carries about 1.2 million tons of sediment into the San Joaquin River. The sediment contains pesticide residues which threaten aquatic wildlife. One solution for this problem is to inject polyacrylamide polymers into irrigation water, a practice which reduces soil erosion and has economic benefits to the grower, such as increasing infiltration rates. In recent trials, this practice reduced soil erosion and runoff water from a furrow-irrigated spinach field. Polyacrylamide-treated furrows had a 10% lower outflow rate than the untreated furrows. In addition, the polyacrylamide flocculated the suspended soil particles; on average, 99.7% settled out compared to soil particles in untreated furrows.