The superintendent of the Pecos Valley Artesian ConservancyDistrict, Dennis Karnes, can still remember sitting on a well-pipe as a boy and being launched into the duckpond as soon as the farmer opened the valve and natural pressure spewed several thousand gallons a minute of ground water against his legs.
But a partnership among The Nature Conservancy, the University of Georgia and the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District are working to bring down the cost for Flint River farmers by supplementing their contributions with a variety of grants and federal funding sources, including the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.