Linn County needed to replace the “Blue Bridge” on Bertram Road. It had been built in 1876 for horse-drawn wagons. But people loved the bridge, and history preservationists wanted to save it.

Enter Indian Creek Nature Center, which needed a pedestrian span for its trail system in southeast Cedar Rapids.

In what is being termed an example of “radical collaboration,” the county, the preservationists and the nature center found the money to move the bridge — a tricky endeavor for a structure that old — to the nature center. It was moved, repainted and then christened in May last year.

The effort was considered a win-win by all and illustrates how nonprofits, individuals, governments and businesses are increasingly working together to achieve goals.

A second example of collaboration is found near the Tuma Soccer Complex in Marion, north of Cedar Rapids off County Home Road, where an underground trench of wood chips filters runoff in the tile lines beneath about 120 acres of rented farmland.

The bioreactor filters out nitrates in the water before it runs into creeks that drain into the Cedar River, the source of drinking water in Cedar Rapids.

The collaboration between Cedar Rapids, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and other agencies ended up saving $10,000 for the project.

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“When people do get together is when people start saying ‘yes,’ ” Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said in an October 2022 tour of two water quality projects in Linn County. “Then more people say ‘yes.’ Then you start to build a culture of conservation that really takes off.”

New directory

These examples of “radical collaboration” have led The Great Outdoors Foundation to launch an online directory that allows farmers and landowners to connect with others who can help them achieve their goals.

The directory — it’s called The Iowa Current for now — is an interactive website that allows landowners, agronomists, municipalities and others to connect with information and funding.

Hannah Inman, CEO of The Great Outdoors Foundation, said the directory is in its beta stage and, for now, is available only to the nonprofit’s partners. But it will be opened to the public later this year.

“Our ultimate goal is to be able to put more of the tools in the directory where you can enter your farm and where it’s located and automatically matches you to the resources available to you,” Inman said.

The launch of the directory is one way that the foundation is bolstering “radical collaboration” in the conservation and outdoor recreation work it does.

Inman said the collaborative approach to complex issues, like climate change, has been part of the foundation’s ethos for the past five years.

Whether it is with other organizations, nonprofits, government agencies or the private sector, she said, the first step to achieving “radical collaboration” is simple: listening.

“We start with really, truly, listening,” Inman said. “When having conversations with our partners — whether it is at the C-suite level or with producers and agronomists — we go in not assuming we know what their barriers are. We assume we know nothing and that we have a lot to learn.”

By meeting with Iowans in the agricultural and conservation fields, from farmers to executives, Inman said she and her team have found that funding is a common hurdle.

She said funding is available to help conservation projects, but it often comes with red tape.

“There’s a lot of hoops to jump through to get funding, and it can be really onerous for people to access some of that money,” Inman said. “So, it’s important to find a way to access that money but also find ways to leverage private capital to come in and fill gaps.”

Batch and Build partnerships

Mary Beth Stevenson, the watersheds and source water coordinator for the city of Cedar Rapids, has been coordinating and overseeing the city’s Batch and Build projects since they began in 2023.

The program brings together farmers and landowners, cooperatives, farm organizations and the Iowa Department of Agriculture to implement conservation practices on farms in “batches,” thereby keeping costs down and making installation of conservation projects more efficient.

Many of the Batch and Build projects, she said, include installing saturated buffers, bioreactors and oxbow restorations on a farmer’s property to curb nitrate runoff.

Stevenson, who has been with the city since 2019, said the Batch and Build team works with farmers to accomplish goals they have set for their land. The work includes planting cover crops, using no-till practices and adding grass waterways and prairie strips to curb runoff.

To bring those projects across the finish line, Stevenson said, the city partners with many organizations, including Heartland Co-Op, the Iowa Soybean Association, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Linn County, Linn Co-Op and the state ag department.

“I don’t believe these projects would be possible without our partners,” Stevenson said. “There’s a lot of technical assistance that goes into the projects.”

Collaborating with organizations and nonprofits has helped bring farmers into the program and provide field staff to implement new practices and programs, she said.

“The first bridge to cross is to just make people aware of these opportunities and get them in the door to come to our meetings, to come to our field days, respond to our mailings and things of that nature,” Stevenson said.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to recruit people into the project and to provide that education. (It) requires a lot of partners to just get the word out and let people know what possibilities are out there.”

Construction for the first batch of construction in Linn County wrapped up this past summer. Stevenson said. She said the program is now finishing its second batch of work in Grundy and Black Hawk counties. Stevenson said bids for the third project closed Jan. 10.

‘Culture of collaboration’

John Myers, executive director of the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, said he believes that environmental, conservation and outdoor nonprofits are inclined to work together.

“I think this work probably tends to be more collaborative because there are so many different entities that have to be involved, whether it’s land acquisition or land restoration on public or private property,” Myers said. “And there’s so much work to be done in this space, it’s hard to be able to do it with one person or one entity.”

It has been essential, he said, to build a “culture of collaboration.”

For him, it starts with saying “yes” to opportunities.

“We don’t put just put our hand out when we want something,” he said. “We make sure to have relationships that span a wide variety of types of opportunities … so when an opportunity comes up, we already know each other and that tends to help grease the wheels a little bit.”

He mentioned the collaborative effort that brought the “Blue Bridge” to the nature center, which involved the Linn County Road Department and the Linn County Historic Preservation Council.

“It’s a historic bridge so the public can still have access to it, and the county was able to get a safer roadway without having to tear down a historic structure and put it into the landfill,” Myers said. “That is a really unique example of working together with a government agency and then historic preservation commission to kind of achieve everybody’s goals together.”

Kerri Johannsen, energy program director with the Iowa Environmental Council, said radical and strong collaborations tend to kick in when there isn’t “one major, powerful voice” behind a certain project.

“Our organization is, by nature, an umbrella organization of other nonprofits and businesses, and so we have always been at that place of being a convener of other groups and bringing people together around projects,” Johannsen said. “But even in the last few years, that’s become very much a centerpiece of what we do.”

Johannsen said the amount of collaboration within the conservation and environmental space has been increasing in the past few years. She believes that is partly due to people thinking about how projects have been completed in the past.

Johannsen said newer, diverse voices are joining the conversation, too.

“We’re recognizing just how exciting it can be to really build something in your community in this collaborative way that doesn’t just build a project but actually builds the relationships that can set a solid foundation for the future of a community,” Johannsen said. “And that, I think, is growing.”

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

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