Minnesota's Root River watershed in Houston and Fillmore counties is among 41 watersheds in 12 states selected for a U.S. Department of Agriculture project to stop agricultural runoff into the Mississippi River.

The department said it has $320 million available to farmers who want to slow runoff. The voluntary four-year project will be funded by $80 million each year.

Among the goals of the program are controlling soil erosion, improving soil quality and providing wildlife habitat while improving water quality, and managing runoff and rain water.

Emphasis will be on a conservation system approach to managing nitrogen and phosphorous within fields to minimize runoff.

Wisconsin has three watersheds in the program, all along the Illinois border in the central and eastern part of the state. Those are on the Sugar, Upper Rock and Pecatonica rivers.

The agency also is targeting watersheds in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio. In all, those areas make up more 42 million acres of land, or about 5 percent of the Mississippi River basin's land area.

Agricultural runoff leads to high nutrient and sediment levels in the river. The river's high nutrient load is thought to create an area of dangerously low oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico every summer known as "the dead zone."