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Wetlands policing needed
Outdoors Editor A year ago on Dec. 19 a meeting took place in Morris that changed how wetland drainage is monitored.
At the behest of Stevens County farmers, the meeting included officials from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the agency that determines if the Swampbuster provision of the 1985 farm bill is adhered to. Swampbuster has limited the acres of wetlands that are converted to cropland, reason being that farmers who drained wetlands after Dec. 23, 1985 were ineligible for federal farm payments.
Before 1985, wetlands were drained at a rate of 235,000 acres per year, according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. That dropped to 27,000 acres per year from 1992 through 1997. Swampbuster didn't stop drainage, but it slowed it down.
But farmers in Stevens County - they showed up 200 strong at the Morris meeting - didn't like the length of time it took the NRCS to analyze their drainage projects. Farmers have a short window of time in which to install drain tile - in fall after the crops are harvested and before the ground freezes, and in spring after the ground thaws and the crops are planted.
"When the crops came out we'd get 50 producers in here wanting us to look at their projects," said Jim Ayers, NRCS assistant state conservationist for field operations in Fergus Falls. "But with our limited staff we couldn't get to everybody in a timely manner. The producers said we were holding them back. They got upset."
U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson was at the Morris meeting. As the soon-to-be chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Peterson naturally sides with farmers. At the meeting he took a shot at environmentalists, President Bush, even former Gov. Arne Carlson, for pursuing no net loss wetlands legislation that he said "complicated" wetlands draining for farmers.
"People get all zealous about saving wetlands and a lot of wetlands aren't worth a damn," Peterson was quoted as saying in the Morris Sun Tribune.
How any wetland, even the smallest, isn't worth a damn is an issue to discuss with Peterson on another day.
After the Morris meeting things changed. NRCS field offices no longer checked drainage applications. Instead, farmers were allowed to go ahead and drain at their own risk.
"It's like when you file your taxes," Ayers explained. "You can file whatever you want, but you run the risk of an audit. If you don't get audited it's no big deal."
In many people's minds it's no big deal if you aren't caught draining a wetland.
"In the past," Ayers said, "we checked all kinds of drainage work - ditching, dredging and tiling. We were the up front protectors of the producers and the wetlands. Now the burden is on them. If they put in more tile than they should and somebody reports them we'll go out and check it."
And therein lies the flaw of the current policy: Unless somebody blows the whistle, illegal draining won't stop. It would be nice if all farmers did the right thing and left their wetlands intact, but farmers are in business to make money and cropland is more profitable than wetland. Even with the specter of lost subsidies hanging over their heads, some farmers will go ahead and take the chance and drain.
"My gut feeling is that there's questionable draining going on," Ayers said, "but unless it's turned in.....
"What I don't like in the new policy is that the drainage laws have been around for 20 years and for (a farmer) to say he doesn't know about them is ridiculous. It was better for the resource and the producers when we had the horses up front. We weren't the police. We did the analysis, but it was still up to them. We'd tell them if they were converting a wetland, but it was still their choice to drain or not to drain."
So if it isn't the NRCS' job to "police" our wetlands, whose job is it?
Yours, mine and ours.
VINCE MEYER, outdoors editor, can be reached at vince.meyer@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5862.
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