A Lewis County project has received more than $700,000 in funding from the state's Environmental Protection Fund.

This is the first time the county has received such state funds, which will be used to install multiple best-management practices on six farms.

The systems will include barnyard roof runoff structures, stream crossings and diversions. Money also will be used for manure storage facilities, short-term rotational grazing measures, silage leachate control systems and heavy-use-area protection systems.

"I'm very happy that we're able to get some of these environmental dollars for Lewis County," said Nichelle L. Billhardt, Lewis County Soil and Water Conservation District manager.

Mrs. Billhardt said such projects will help reduce the amount of sediment and nutrients entering the Black River watershed. Soil conservation steps, in turn, are likely to produce cleaner water, better fishing and more productive farmland.

"By keeping soil on the farm, you're keeping the nutrition and everything else that attaches itself to the soil on the farm as well," Mrs. Billhardt said.

According to a press release from the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, the funding, which totaled $13 million across the state, was designed to help farmers implement voluntary conservation measures on their land.

The funds were awarded through the state's Agricultural Nonpoint Source Abatement and Control Program, a component of the Agricultural Environmental Management program.

Best-management practices are often too expensive for farmers to cover on their own, Mrs. Billhardt said, which is why Lewis County decided to apply for $777,429 in funding.

Mrs. Billhardt learned last month that the county had received its requested amount. She said she was particularly excited about the chance to work on the rotational grazing measures.

Under the grazing program, farmers fence off creeks, put in alternative water systems and create fenced lanes so their heifers can graze freely. Such a system relieves farmers of much of the work of harvesting food for their livestock, Mrs. Billhardt said.

"It's a very efficient way, as long as we get enough rainfall, of letting animals harvest their own feed," she said. "Once in the routine where they're harvesting their own feed, you don't have to get tractors out there, you don't have to bale, you don't have to store it."