Drainage Water Control.

Drainage water control is a hot topic right now.  Field tiling to remove subsurface water has been a common practice for hundreds of years.  The practice was brought to the United States in the 1850's.  After John Deere perfected the steel plow and a made it practical to farm the prairie, it soon became clear that yields could be improved with drain tile.  Tile plows and smaller narrow spaced tile have made tile drainage possible even on Southern Illinois Claypan soils. 

Environmental concerns have lead to the practice of drainage water control to reduce the pollutants entering surface waters.  This article in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation fills in details.  Expect more incentives to install such practices.  The two most common ways to clean up drainage water is to control the water table depth when no crop is growing and use of biofilters.  Wetlands have also been used, but they tend to be less popular because they tend to remove cropland from production.