Water Programs Remain at Department of Natural Resources
During the 2011 Legislative Session the Iowa Environmental Council provided guidance to legislators on proposed policies that would promote the creation of clean energy and clean energy jobs in Iowa, state policies that would have helped reduce air pollution in Iowa cities, and legislation that would affect the state’s ability to protect water quality and conserve other natural resources of the state.
If you’ve been an Action Alert volunteer for the Council in past years you may have also noticed that many more attempts were made this year, than in other recent years, to undermine state water quality safeguards, clean air protections, habitat protection and conservation funding. A lot of our time was spent fighting bad bills. 2011 was the first of a two year session. With the same legislators returning next year, we can expect that in six months we may see many of these bills resurface.
State Water Quality Protection Programs Transfer … Bills were proposed to transfer the entire water monitoring program and other Clean Water Act programs from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. The Council opposed this legislation (which was supported by the Governor) and hundreds of Iowans wrote the Governor and their legislators to voice their opposition to these proposals. All Iowans owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who took the time to let decision makers know that caring for natural resources is key to sustaining our lives and those of future generations. THANK YOU ACTION ALERT VOLUNTEERS!
Most everything is now subject to approval or line item veto by Governor Branstad. After the Governor weighs in on this session’s legislatively approved bills, including the state budget bills, we will post a comprehensive report online.
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Farm Bill Forum Presentations Now Available
Every five years, Congress writes a massive piece of legislation called the Farm Bill, which determines how tens of billions of tax-payer dollars are spent to support farm and nutrition programs. This is scheduled to occur again next year. This year, on June 22, the Iowa Environmental Council co-hosted a public forum, in partnership with the Izaak Walton League, to facilitate public discussions about how the Farm Bill impacts our food, soil, air, water and our pocket books. The following presentations from that forum may be downloaded here:
Stewardship Farming in the 2012 Farm Bill
Sarah Carlson, Practical Farmers of Iowa
2012 Farm Bill: Stewardship, Prosperity, and Fairness
Brad Redlin, Director Izaak Walton League of America Agriculture Programs
The Farm Bill: America’s Down Payment on Environmental Debt
Duane Sand, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation
CRP and Managed Grazing
Tom Shipley, Director of Issues Management and Policy Implementation, Iowa Cattlemen's Association
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New Report: Iowa Losing Soil at an Alarming Rate
A new report, which includes video images, shows that across wide swaths of Iowa our rich, dark agricultural soil is being swept away at alarming rates, which in some areas are 12 times higher than average soil loss estimates from national studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service.
The new report, Losing Ground, released today by Environmental Working Group (EWG), is based on data collected and assessed by Iowa State University scientists, who have been tracking soil erosion in Iowa after every rainstorm that hits the state, a method that produces an unprecedented degree of precision in soil erosion estimates.
A USDA national study reported that erosion in Iowa in 2007 averaged 5.2 tons per acre per year, only slightly higher than the national “tolerable loss” rate of five tons per acre per year for most Iowa soils. But the USDA report does not consider the effect of extreme rainfall events that cause most erosion.
In May 2010, EWG, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC, set out to corroborate the ISU scientist’s alarming findings with aerial surveys over Marshall County in Iowa. They found that soil erosion and runoff are likely far worse than even the ISU studies report, because researchers’ current models do not account for the soil loss from widespread ‘ephemeral gullies.’ These gullies are created by heavy rains and form in the same place every year, and are simply “plowed in” by farmers each season.
As shown in the report’s video images many gullies empty directly into streams or ditches, becoming direct pipelines carrying polluted runoff to waterways.
Polluted runoff from crop fields is one of the leading causes of water pollution in Iowa and the nation. Farm runoff carries with it a stew of fertilizers, pesticides and sometimes bacteria (E. coli) from livestock manure that pollutes local creeks and streams and eventually flows into the Mississippi river. Ultimately it ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, generating the notorious Dead Zone that forms each year, depleting oxygen and suffocating marine life.
Voluntary conservation measures not working
Provisions in the 1985 farm bill require farmers who accept crop subsidies to implement soil conservation measures on their most vulnerable cropland, but official reports and anecdotal evidence show that enforcement has waned. According to the EWG report, “chronically underfunded voluntary conservation programs are failing.”
While conservation compliance reduced soil erosion on highly erodible cropland by 40 percent between 1982 and 1997, those gains were short-lived.
“Enforcement of conservation requirements were weakened and in 1996 went off the rails altogether” when Congress began phasing out enforcement of conservation requirements. The few federal conservation programs in place are chronically underfunded and inadequate to counter the damage caused by federal policies that push farmers to plant their crops fencerow to fencerow,” the report said.
The report stresses the need to go back to what we know what works—full enforcement of the 1985 conservation compliance law, which requires farmers to protect soil and water in return for the billions in income, production and insurance subsidies that taxpayers put up each year.
Paul W. Johnson, an Iowa farmer and former Chief of U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resource Conservation Service provided some comments for the EWG report, lamenting that…
“…the age-old problem of poor farming persists. Drive down any back road in Iowa today and chances are good that within a few miles you’ll see some of the finest conservation and then some of the worst… We are conservation planning for averages, not extremes. But nature doesn’t seem to work that way… One of the saddest sights I’ve seen was during springtime in southeastern Iowa a couple of years ago. Field after field had dozers working up and down hills to fill in the deep gullies formed by the unusually hard spring rains. Last year, I drove through the same area and saw precious few well-constructed waterways [a conservation practice that slows runoff]. It’s as if the farmers have decided that their one-in-a-hundred-year flood was past and they don’t have to worry for another 99 years…
Frankly, I don’t think our soil erosion problems need to be what they are. Many farmers do well but are not praised for it. On the other hand, the careless ones and those who might be termed outright vandals no longer get their knuckles rapped… Our compliance laws can still work, too, but they need to be universal—applied to all cropland—and enforced.”
Simple, proven practices recommended
The EWG report does not suggest that farmers try new or untested technologies. Rather, it demonstrates that it’s important to return to and enforce simple common-sense conservation techniques that have worked for farmers for generations.
One simple and highly effective soil conservation technique is the use of buffers—strips of grass or trees within or along the edges of crop fields. Studies have found that properly designed and placed buffers reduce the speed and volume of runoff, trapping or assimilating 41 to 100 percent of the sediment runoff. Specifically designed buffers within crop fields, often referred to as grass waterways, are a proven conservation practice to prevent gullies from forming by slowing the water and stopping the water from cutting down into the field and eroding away the soil. Riparian stream buffers between crop fields and waterways are the last line of defense filtering pollutants before water runs into a stream or river.
Because these practices are a high priority to control erosion and protect water quality, financial assistance from USDA to help farmers install riparian stream buffers, grass filter strips and grass waterways is readily available through the continuous signup Conservation Reserve Program.
Iowa’s most precious asset is its rich topsoil. This study demonstrates that one badly timed storm event, when the land is bare and vulnerable, can sweep tons of topsoil off of the landscape and into our waterways. Over time this process robs our land of its fertility at rates that exceed its capacity to regenerate and will ultimately leave it barren.
“When Iowa “loses ground” everyone loses—farmers, all Iowans, people who live downstream and people who depend on Iowa for food,” said Marian Riggs Gelb, executive director for the Iowa Environmental Council.
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Lawsuit Threatens Water Quality Progress in Iowa
Lawsuit outcome will determine whether we continue to treat Iowa Waters as sewers or As valuable resources -
After two years of rule-making, citizen support, state adoption in February, and final approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in September (see article below), Iowa's new water quality antidegradation rules are being threatened by a special interests' lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed on October 4, 2010, by the Iowa Farm Bureau, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and Iowa Water Environment Association--organizations representing corporations and individuals who obtain permits to discharge pollution into Iowa waters.
At every stage these rules have faced significant opposition from wastewater dischargers who support the status quo and inflate the projected costs of doing business in a new way--a way that would stem the continued degradation of our waters. Watch this site for developments.
To get involved in the protection of Iowa's water, air and precious agricultural soils, sign up to receive our action alerts.
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Report: Trouble Downstream:
Upgrading Conservation Compliance
As the five major commodity crops reap billions in taxpayer dollars each year, nearly 75 percent of farmer requests for voluntary conservation assistance go unfunded and soil erosion rules for crop subsidy recipients are barely enforced. The result: 1.7 billion tons of topsoil erodes off agricultural fields nationwide, polluting America’s waters and fisheries with sediment and millions of pounds of fertilizer and pesticides, according to a new report from Environmental Working Group, Trouble Downstream: Upgrading Conservation Compliance. Click on the following link to learn more and download the report: http://www.ewg.org/reports/compliance.
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