Bloomberg BNA

Snapshot: Conservation Compliance to Reduce Runoff
         
Key Development: Coalition wants farmers receiving crop insurance subsidies to reduce nutrient runoff from their lands.
        
Impact: Farmers who are currently exempt from the conservation compliance mandated for all other federally subsidized farming programs will have to comply.
      
————————————————————————————————————
      
 
By Amena H. Saiyid

      
A coalition of state and municipal water and wastewater officials and conservation advocates urged Congress on March 6 to require farmers receiving federal crop insurance subsidies to comply with basic conservation practices to reduce nutrient runoff from farmlands.
      
Such practices are required of all farmers with highly erodible lands enrolled in the Agriculture Department's conservation programs and commodity crop programs. However, farmers who receive only federal crop insurance subsidies are exempt from the conservation compliance mandate.
      
The Healthy Waters Coalition said it is seeking to remove the exemption in the upcoming Farm Bill so that more farmers engage in conservation practices, such as planting stream buffers and preserving wetlands to reduce nutrient runoff from farmlands.
      
The recommendation was one of three that the coalition has developed to show Congress how to leverage existing agricultural programs to achieve “real reductions in nutrient runoff.”
      
The coalition also called upon Congress to prioritize nutrient runoff control as a primary goal in watersheds impaired by nutrients in Farm Bill conservation programs. It also sought to monitor and measure real-time nutrient reductions at farmlands in partnership with ongoing state and federal water quality monitoring programs.
      
The coalition cited state water quality reports that show 80,000 miles of rivers and streams; 2.5 million acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds; 78 percent of assessed continental U.S. coastal areas; and more than 30 percent of estuaries are impaired due to excessive levels of nitrogen and phosphorus.
      
Lower Incentive for Farmers
       
Nutrients consist of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds that enter the nation's lakes, streams, rivers, and estuaries from farmlands. Excessive nutrient levels in water cause algal blooms that lead to hypoxic, or near-zero, oxygen conditions in waters, leading to fish kills. It also leads to high levels of organic nitrogen compounds in drinking water supplies that, upon reacting with chlorine in water treatment plants, leads to creation of disinfection byproducts that are costly to remove.
      
Brad Redlin, agricultural programs director for the Izaak Walton League of America, said many farmers prefer to enroll in the federal crop insurance subsidy program, authorized under Title XII of the 2008 Farm Bill, as opposed to receiving direct payments under the commodity crop program because they are exempt from having to reduce soil erosion or preserve wetlands found on their properties.
      
Redlin said farmers received $7.4 billion in federal crop insurance subsidies during crop year 2011. He said these subsidies should be tied to improving water quality and reducing soil erosion.
      
The American Farm Bureau Federation expressed a different view. Don Parrish, the federation's senior regulatory relations director, told Bloomberg BNA that crop insurance subsidies are a risk-management tool used by farmers to protect against disasters.
      
“If they tie this program to some sort of government mandate then there will be a disincentive for farmers to rely on this program,” Parrish said. He added that farmers would then have to rely on ad hoc disaster funding that Congress appropriates in times of drought, floods, and other unforeseen disasters.
      
Nutrient Removal from Wastewater
       
The coalition also released a report prepared by National Association of Clean Water Agencies, a coalition member that represents publicly owned wastewater treatment plants and is funded by the Water Environment Federation.
      
The report, Controlling Nutrient Loadings to U.S. Waterways: An Urban Perspective, concluded that the cost of removing a pound of nitrogen or phosphorus from wastewater is typically four to five times and sometimes 10 to 20 times more than the cost to control nutrient runoff from farmland, NACWA Executive Director Ken Kirk said at a press briefing.
      
Also present at the briefing was Benjamin Grumbles, president of the Clean Water America Alliance, who emphasized collaboration among farmers and state and federal agencies. Focusing on monitoring, Grumbles said, farmers ought to be able to measure progress they are making through conservation programs in improving water quality.
      
“We can't adequately manage something if we are not monitoring it. That is why we believe that the Farm Bill and those who are agricultural stewards need the tools and need to be managing what the status is of their water quality,” said Grumbles, whose group also is part of the coalition.
      
Alexandra Dunn, executive director and general counsel of the Association of Clean Water Administrators, said, “Citizens don't differentiate between sources of water. They want clean water.”
      
Nutrient reduction is something that Dunn said the Clean Water Act does not address.
      
“What we need is a watershed approach,”Dunn said.
      
Steve Hershner, utilities environmental manager for Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said 80 percent to 90 percent of nutrients in the city's drinking water comes from nonpoint sources, such as farmland runoff.
      
“All of us contribute to the water quality problems in the state, and all of us need to be part of the solution.”