A friend's observation about farmers over-mowing conservation plantings along Highway 169 in Blue Earth County had us looking again at the issue of farmers' demands to grow state-owned right of ways on state highways. Are some landowners not only making hay off public land--but damaging plantings on state highways for which the public dime has paid?
Our source noted that the forbs (flowering plants) and prairie grasses planted after some work on 169 had been mowed early and often until other grasses took over.
We grew curious about the cost of such plantings. While not all of the landscape plantings and native seeding along Minnesota roads end up being mowed, they do represent an investment on the part of citizens. MnDOT's Office of Communications looked into our question and replied in an email:
MnDOT’s Office on Environmental Stewardship reports that we spend about a million dollars annually on landscape plantings and native seeding along Minnesota roads.
Both types of plantings are installed for a variety of reasons including--but not limited to--erosion control, blowing snow control, screening, water infiltration and highway aesthetics. The majority of these plantings also provide habitat for small mammals, birds and pollinators.
While MnDOT has not planted specifically for pollinators, we do recognize the importance of our roadsides for pollinator habitat. Recently, this has become one of the considerations when determining what to plant following construction or maintenance activities.. .
Why does this matter?
On Tuesday,March 28, the Minnesota House will take up:
S. F. No. 218, (Senate Authors: Dahms, Weber, Lang and Westrom. House Authors: Swedzinski, Gruenhagen, Lueck, Backer, Davids and others. Companion to H. F. No. 124.) A bill for an act relating to transportation; prohibiting road authorities from establishing certain requirements and permits that govern mowing. Substituted for H. F. No. 124.First Engrossment.Senate printed page No. 37.
In the current engrossment, the bill states:
Section 1. DITCH MOWING PERMITS; MORATORIUM.
The commissioner of transportation is prohibited from requiring, issuing, or enforcing permits under Minnesota Statutes, sections 160.232 and 160.2715, or any other Minnesota statute or administrative rule, to mow or bale hay in rights-of-way under the control of the Department of Transportation until after April 30, 2018.
EFFECTIVE DATE.
This section is effective retroactively from January 1, 2017.
UPDATE: Two amendments have been filed for Tuesday's floor debate on SF218; one was submitted by the House author, Chris Swedzinski:
Swedzinski moves to amend. Amendment coded S0218DE2 -
Johnson, C. moves to amend the S0218DE2 amendment. Amendment coded S0218A3 -
The session should start around 4:30 p.m. [end update]
Back in our February post, All your hays are belong to us: farmer complaints about MnDOT's right-of-way mowing permits, we'd noted:
a recent Session Daily article, MnDOT, farmers on different sides of disagreement over ditch mowing, suggests that there's another element to the story: state ownership of the right of way . . .
MnDOT disagrees with potential limits on the agency’s ability to manage land it owns adjacent to highways, said Scott Peterson, the department’s director of government affairs.
He told the committee that farmers who mow and hay in MnDOT rights-of-way for commercial purposes are no different than someone digging plants out of the ground at a state park and then selling them for economic gain. Since MnDOT has purchased the right-of-way, the department has a right to manage and protect its investments, he said.
The department, he said, has a “responsibility to manage [its rights-of-way] to maximum benefit for the people of Minnesota.”
Environmental advocates who testified before the committee argued that growth in highway rights-of-way isn’t always noxious weeds that need to be controlled, but can be important habitat for wildlife and struggling pollinator populations.
Josephine Marcotty had more earlier this month at the Star Tribune in As grasslands shrink, a rural war rages over mowing ditches:
A showdown over roadside mowing in rural Minnesota has unleashed a surprisingly passionate debate at the Legislature about the culture of farming, property rights and the desperate plight of bees and monarch butterflies.
It’s put wildlife in a fierce — but so far losing — competition with Minnesota farmers for the right to the increasingly valuable grass, flowers and other vegetation that grow along 175,000 acres of state-owned roads across the state.
A bill headed for a vote on the House floor would prevent the Minnesota Department of Transportation from asking landowners to get a permit before they mow roadside ditches and grassy shoulders — something farmers say they’ve been doing for decades without government intrusion.
“I feel like we are losing our rights,” said Pat Verly, who farms on land near Marshall, at a recent committee hearing.
But a lot has changed in Minnesota in recent years, raising the profile of land that once was viewed primarily as a useless place for grass and weeds to grow. . . .
Conservation groups from Pheasants Forever to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation now see publicly owned roadsides as a critical part of their protection strategies across the country. In fact, Interstate 35 has been dubbed “the monarch highway” because of its potential to help butterflies that follow the same annual migration route from Canada and the Upper Midwest to their overwintering sites in Mexico.
Minnesota state government has adopted a similar strategy.
Managing state-owned land along roadsides for pollinator and nesting habitat is a goal of both Gov. Mark Dayton’s Committee on Pollinator Protection and the state’s pheasant action plan. . . .
In rural Minnesota, landowners adjacent to the roads largely believe they own the land to the centerline and the government has rights to use it, he said. While that’s largely true for county and township roads, it’s not so for the state. . . .
When landowners alongside state-owned road ditches mow early and swipe the bales on land that's been planted with native seeding, they're not just taking hay they're not paying for. They're also damaging an investment made at public expense.
Is there another industry in the state that's given so much slack when it disregards long-standing laws? Property rights? The Mankato Free Press editorial board weighed in:
Most farmers believed they owned the land to the center of roadways with the government only having an easement to use the land. On many county and township roads that is indeed the case. But the state, not adjoining landowners, owns the entire strip of land that includes state highways and ditches.
Farmers may or may not win this round, but the issue won’t be going away. With radical changes made to the landscape and the significant decline in wildlife and pollinators, the publicly owned ditches along state highways will grow increasingly important as the last remaining strips of non-crop vegetation. A majority of Minnesotans will undoubtedly see the benefit of managing the state-owned ditches for the public good.
Whatever happens this session, farm groups should begin working with the state to develop a permitting plan they can live with or they may likely lose any rights to use the public land.
Apparently, for some farmers, what's theirs is theirs--but in the case of public right of ways, what's ours is theirs as well.
Photo: Like the leader of CATS in Zero Wing who spawned the popular meme, some farmers would have us believe the ditches along public trunk highways (and the vegetation growing in them) belong to them, not MnDOT, which owns the right-of-way.
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