Commentary first published in the Grand Forks Herald, Dayton targets farmers with buffer-zone proposal, state representative Deb Kiel (R-Crookston) and Dan Fabian (R-Roseau) might as well serve as Exhibit A for a scathing editorial in the April 13 Mankato Free Press, Ag can't deny water pollution.
In fact, Kiel and Fabian spend much of their commentary in denial, writing passages like this:
We are proud to represent districts with a strong agriculture presence, and we know farmers are great stewards of our environment. They support clean water and best-management agriculture and environmental practices, but Dayton's plan is too strict, too overreaching and leaves little recourse for landowners losing farmland. . . . .
It's not to say that Minnesota farmers do not understand the value of targeted riparian buffers as a means to improve water quality; they do. Instead, this is about finding a balanced solution that engages various affected stakeholders.
We can enhance buffer zone utilization in a way that improves water quality without unnecessarily stripping away property owners' rights or singling out farmers.
Cutting down on pollution runoff is a goal we all share in Minnesota. . . .
The Free Press, located in the heart of agricultural Southern Minnesota, is having none of this blither. From Ag can't deny water pollution:
Gov. Mark Dayton's call for buffer strips along all streams, rivers, drainage ditches and other waterways may or may not become law this year, but it has helped focus the public's attention on the terribly deteriorated state of our water resources and agriculture's role in it.
There can be honest debate over the scope of any buffer strip requirements, but there is no debate about the human impact on water quality, particularly intense farming in southern Minnesota. The scientific evidence of nutrient and chemical pollution is broad and deep.
And while the buffer strip initiative aims at one part of the problem — nutrients leaching into waterways via surface runoff — it is only part of the discussion. Of equal, if not greater importance, is the direct role farm drainage has on increasing the water flow in rivers and streams — flow increases that rip away river banks and carry mud and more pollutants down river. . . .
A recent report from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency highlighting a mountain of studies done on the Le Sueur River watershed — the most polluting of all in southern Minnesota — lists the No. 1 problem as artificial drainage, saying it "is driving many of the problems in the watershed."
Cities and industries used to casually pipe pollutants and poorly treated sewer plant water into rivers until science proved the dangers of it. The residents of those cities and taxpayers paid and continue to pay for expensive upgrades and changes that vastly improve — albeit haven't eliminated — much of the pollution.
No one should view farmers as evil because some of the modern farm practices unknowingly cause significant problems with the public's waterways. But that doesn't mean agribusiness can ignore the mountain of solid scientific knowledge available and began to help provide solid, meaningful solutions to the problems of farm drainage and nutrient and chemical pollution.
Read the entire editorial at the Free Press. It's not just metro folks who might not know a baler from a barn door calling for agriculture to clean up its act--and our water along with it.
Photo: A manure spreader; or, as the Depression-era Farmer-Labor Party U.S. Senator Magnus Johnson called it, "a Republican platform."
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