Podcast Episode 110

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Bridging the Gap Between Water Management Research & Application

Bridging the Gap Between Water Management Research & Application

Episode 110 | 17 min

With Guest:

Trey Allis, Application Engineer of Prinsco

Jamie sits down with Prinsco Application Engineer and frequent Water Table guest host, Trey Allis to talk how the Water Table website and podcast are helping to bridge the gap between research in water management and actually putting that research into practice. From sub-surface irrigation to saturated buffers and bioreactors, drainage water recycling, and terrace tiling, TWT website is a go-to for education.

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Prinsco has a good relationship with researchers and contractors, but they don’t always speak the same language. Maybe we can help connect them and bridge that gap in communication.

— Trey Allis

Guest Bio

Trey graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. He joined the Prinsco team as an Application Engineer in 2017 and primarily focuses on Agricultural engineering. Growing up on a farm and in the Ag community, Allis has spent a lot of his career focusing on the Flexible Dual Wall product and the value it adds to the industry. He is also passionate about education and bridging the gap between research and application.

Jamie Duininck (00:13):

Well, welcome back to the Water Table podcast. Today I have Trey Ellis, application engineer with Prinsco back with me. Trey is a frequent guest on the Water Table podcast and he is for good reason as he’s working on a lot of things that are water quality related and Prinsco related, in regards to technology, engineering, applications for the products, things like that. So it’s fun to have Trey on again, and it’s fun to have you on every so often just to get a glimpse of what you’re working on and what you’re hearing as you’re pretty connected to customers. Thanks for being here, Trey.

Trey Ellis (00:54):

Yeah, thanks for bringing me back on. It’s always good to sit down and chat with you or have the opportunity to host a couple of these as well. And it’s always fun sharing what we do within our industry and within Prinsco and all that stuff. That always keeps the job fun, get to work on some product stuff and then also get out in the field, go talk with customers, contractors, running around with our sales guys, stuff like that. So kind of been doing all of it here the last couple of weeks.

Jamie Duininck (01:18):

Yeah. Well, now that you’ve publicly said you enjoy hosting, you can’t get out of it next time when we ask you to. So, but no, we’ve been grateful that you have been willing to do that. We’ve taken the Water Table podcast on the road a few times, and those are places you’re always attending different shows and areas to really learn what’s going on and what people are asking for. And that’s really why wanted to get together today and just chat for a little bit.

(01:53):

I know recently you’ve been at different functions and in front of a lot of customers and a lot of pipe users, not just Prinsco Pipe but others. And so, one of the things we’re hearing a lot and you’re hearing and I’ve been hearing, is just the appreciation that the drainage world has for not only the Water Table podcast, and some of the younger people that they can go and listen to episodes and keep learning from it, but the education that Prinsco is doing and the education around our industry around water management and then just education around sustainability and practices. And so let’s just talk a little bit about that. But first of all, more in general, what are you hearing out there lately? What are some highlights? And I’ll ask you some questions on that.

Trey Ellis (02:45):

Yeah, I mean there’s been a lot of good conversations with a lot of folks. The coolest part is they’re interested in learning and hearing what we have to say, not just from a product side, but also what does the industry look like, where are we going? Where are we moving with some of this stuff? And not necessarily just drainage, but talking about it as water management, how are we managing our water on the ag landscaping fields and stuff like that. It’s been very good getting the perspective of the people using our products in the field.

(03:20):

That always opens my eyes for how we can do what we do within Prinsco better from a product standpoint. And that’s something that I’ve been messaging for a lot of our team members internally as well is, I’ve learned the most by getting out in the field, going out and talking with people that use this stuff all the time anyway. And that’s where I get the most feedback, bringing that more in-house. And then also now been able to grow some of that role a little bit into working with stuff like on the Water Table and some of the resources that we built out with that, going to some other conferences and speaking with other folks from a broader standpoint, again, on what’s going on within the industry, how are we managing that water? What can we be doing differently? What is working where? It’s different spots. And Iowa has kind of looked at things one way.

(04:11):

Talking with contractors in North Dakota, talking with contractors down into Illinois, and then even what does that look like? What lessons can be applied to the Southeast or other areas that drainage hasn’t been around for 120 years in some of those areas? So trying to piece together all those puzzle pieces. And it’s still kind of cloudy in my head of what it all means and where exactly we’re a;; going, but that’s some of the fun of it too.

Jamie Duininck (04:37):

Yeah, and it’s a challenge when you’re going from some days and even within a day you’re working on production agriculture, production water management, and then to things like sustainability practices, and things that aren’t even developed yet but could be and could create, maybe it doesn’t create efficiencies right away, but it creates opportunities to continue to build the network of drainage systems that maybe are right now in some areas, some of the more sensitive areas. The Prairie Pothole region is different than Illinois agricultural area and could create some opportunities for more water management projects, if we can come up with ways to have better water quality practices. So your day goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. And talk a little bit about some of the past months as you’ve been working with in Iowa in the batch and build processes. We’ve done some podcasts on that even recently, biochip reactors, what we’re seeing. We’ve been, Prinsco, has been working with Iowa State and just has a really good relationship there. And what are you working on in regards to that and what is your excitement level there?

Trey Ellis (06:04):

Yeah. Well, I was just reflecting on that a little bit last night, having a conversation with a contractor that’s done a handful of these. And I remember I went to the Iowa Drainage School when I first started with Prinsco, 2017, 2 18, somewhere around there. And one of the presenters, Chris Hay, he was giving a presentation on saturated buffers and bioreactors. And I didn’t know much at the time especially, but the takeaway that I got was his messaging was, hey, you guys, you contractors that might not be thinking about this stuff right now, but if you’re early adopters in how to figure out how to put in these practices at scale, he said it without saying it, but he’s, like you’re going to be pretty well off in the future, if and when these practices do start getting put out at scale. And the cool thing is that’s kind of coming full circle now with that batch build process, specifically in Iowa.

(06:58):

That model’s starting to get transferred into other areas as well. But being able to put together these practices at scale, bid them out as one, I guess system where you’re working in one area, throwing in a lot of these saturated buffers and woodchip bioreactors. And that got proved out in Polk County a handful of years ago, did 50, I think sites for that project.

(07:26):

And then now there’s probably four or five other ones. It’s on phase three of what’s getting put in the ground now. And we went from having maybe a couple dozen of these edge of field practices in Iowa, mostly based on research sites, mostly small scale, to now I think we’re in the hundreds just within the last couple of years. And how that’s scaling up and that mechanism for designing it, getting the funding and getting these practices installed, kind of brought that full circle. And that was kind of a fun conversation I had last night of essentially Chris A. calling the shot and some contractors that are getting on board with that too. And there’s a lot of work out there for that. Kind of the playbook has been written on that process and it seems to be working pretty decent.

Jamie Duininck (08:13):

Yeah, and that’s where I was going to go. You said the words there at the end is, the playbook is written, but it’s working. And that’s always where things start to change and get some momentum is, sometimes you can have a plan and the plan can’t be executed for whatever reason. They are executing on the plan. And it’s exciting, because I think we’re going to just see more and more of this. And yes, in some people’s worlds, 2017 was a long time ago, but in reality as the way, implementing new processes and new ideas go, it can many, many times take so much longer than that, so I’m excited now to see that we’re having scale. If you fast-forward five years and then 15 years, in five years, we’re going to have enough of these that it’s going to start making a difference. And then in 15 years, what is that going to look like from a water quality standpoint in the rural landscape? And I think it’s going to be significant and significantly positive. So when I say significant, that doesn’t mean a negative.

(09:25):

So another thing I wanted to just chat with you about was the Water Table website, and you’ve been pretty instrumental in working on a lot of that, and the education side of that. So I hope our listeners, I know I’ve heard from a lot of them over the years that they are using it, enjoying being able to go there for as a resource. It’s exactly what we want and hope we can provide to customers. But talk a little bit about your involvement, what’s exciting to you about that website right now and where it can go?

Trey Ellis (10:01):

Yeah, just the infrastructure built out for it is definitely set up for what we want it to. Having that place for educational resources within agriculture, within water, with all this stuff. So kudos to you for seeing that a handful of years ago and putting those pieces in place. Also with the podcast, I think that’s a new media for education that’s being used a lot and hopefully is continuing to be used here. Now we got cameras rolling on us and everything and putting in video, audio, all this stuff for the podcast. But as far as the website, we also wanted to have more education materials built out there. So been working on developing short summary sheets and landing pages for some of these edge of field or best management practices that can be fairly easily understood. And just give a quick snapshot of what is subsurface irrigation, where does it work, what is the benefits of it?

(11:05):

Same thing with saturated buffers, bioreactors. I believe we also just added on terrace tiling. I know that’s not very big here, Minnesota up in the Dakotas, but you go down south, Southern Iowa and some river valleys, that’s kind of all they do. Talking with some of the customers is, “Yep, we don’t do much pattern tiling, but we do a lot of terrace work or we do a lot of WASCOBs.” And just trying to put some more information out there for what those practices are and what they look like, how they function, some design considerations for them. That’s a new one that’s getting put up on the website.

(11:42):

And then also kind of a newer practice that conceptually makes a lot of sense and starting to get more funding and more infrastructure built out with that is this drainage water recycling, which is essentially if you have too much water in the spring, which we usually do here in the upper Midwest or throughout the Midwest, if you’re able to hang on to some of that water, be able to reuse it for irrigation water later in the season, that has a lot of yield benefits, has a lot of water quality and water quantity benefits, as well as you’re not having all your water as well as your sediment and nutrients going downstream. You’re able to capture that, reapply it to your land, hang on to what you got. And so that’s another practice that we put up on the website there too.

(12:31):

So again, sheets on a lot of these little practices, but then also trying to comb through some of the research that is being developed by a lot of land grant universities and reading through some of that stuff. I, for whatever reason, I kind of like reading through research. I know it’s not the most fun thing, but it’s all interesting. And being able to tease out some of that stuff. And I guess my goal was to try to translate those studies to what does it mean to the contractor, to the landowner, the farmer. That’s like, yep, cool that a study comes out on something, but all you really get is abstract or a headline from it. Well, can we dig into the data? Can we look at some of these graphs, point out, hey, what does this data mean? How can it be used? And that’s something else that we’ve been working on the Water Table website is to house some of that information too.

(13:24):

So I think we’ve had a lot of progress and we’ve seen a lot of good things with this site with the podcast. But I think there’s also more that can be done is working closer with these universities and having more, I guess, translated information out there. That’s something cool that I like about Prinsco is, we have a good relationship with these researchers with the universities, as well as with the contractors. And those audiences don’t always speak the same language, but maybe we can help connect those back and forth and being able to bridge that gap in understanding and communication that way too. So that’s some of the stuff that gets me thinking big scale and fired up about some of the stuff that we’re working on.

Jamie Duininck (14:11):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. And it is exciting. There’s a lot there. And I think what I get excited about listening to you share all of that is, the fact that we are in a place where we can continue to educate and continue to help contractors with just knowledge. And there’s a lot has changed and a lot is going to change when it comes to sustainability and practices that we can either look at as being cumbersome or we can look at as being opportunities for our industry to continue to do more of what we do, because of practices that maybe our adversaries are going to allow us to do it, because we’re adding these types of practices, structures, whatever it might be. So it’s exciting.

(15:04):

Thanks for your leadership on that. And as this summer, we’re going to be, as all summers, Prinsco is going to be out at different shows, kind of running the circuit of shows that we do. And just encourage people that are listening to stop by. You’ll be at some of those and our sales team for sure will. I’m not sure about if the Water Table is going on the road or not, but the point is, talk to us about what we’re doing, the resources we have. And also we get a lot of our great ideas from our customers around what else they need to know, and then we can do some research or add it to that library on the website. So thanks for what you’re doing and for joining the Water Table today.

Trey Ellis (15:50):

Yeah, thanks a lot for having me on again, appreciate it.