By Rep. Paul Anderson
Strong rhetoric out of the governor’s office may impede progress on a controversial 50-foot buffer requirement for Minnesota waters. Gov. Mark Dayton, in a news conference last week, said that farmers don’t have the right to create cesspools, and that they “should look into their souls” when thinking about the proposal that would require them to take land out of production and establish buffer strips, with no compensation from the state.
When word of this plan came out, one of my first thoughts was of the huge cost to the state in taking well over 100,000 acres of farm land and converting them into conservation buffer strips. When I saw the actual piece of legislation, there was no mention of compensation to landowners, other than encouraging enrollment in the federal “continuous CRP” program. It amounts to a state mandate to enroll in a voluntary federal program if one wanted some level of compensation! The only mention of state funding was an unknown amount going to local Soil and Water Conservation Districts to assist in the establishment of buffers.
I read an article written by Howard Midje, a retired Minnesota state design engineer of what was known at the time as the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and is now the NRCS. He called the governor’s buffer requirement the “largest land grab in state history.” He went on to describe how buffers actually work, saying they need to be mowed or clipped several times during a season to keep the grass short and to keep trees from becoming established. He said that if grass is allowed to grow over two inches tall, it will simply bend over when water flows through it and lose its effectiveness in trapping sediment. Midje added, “The mowing (of buffer strips) and pheasant habitat are not always compatible.”
Under current regulations, the mowing of grass is not allowed on CRP land, with the exception of mid-contract maintenance. I contacted the state Farm Service Agency office to verify that, although we were told by the head of BOWSR that USDA is looking into the possibility of allowing more mowing on this type of contract. Interestingly, when one signs up for continuous CRP, officials utilize a grading system to determine how wide buffer strips should be, and they could range from a minimum of 30 feet to over 100. That seems to make more sense, as the one-size-fits-all plan proposed by Gov. Dayton could be too narrow in some areas and too wide in others.
This mandatory buffer bill has already passed one Senate committee. It was also heard in the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where its reception was not as warm. Before the state takes an estimated 125,000 acres out of production by requiring buffer strips and turns the enforcement of this mandate over to the DNR, we need to slow down and work together. It doesn’t work well if one side feels their concerns are not being heard and that sound science is not being utilized.
We all want clean water, and most farmers are doing their part to improve water quality. Instead of this cookie-cutter approach, we should be targeting high-impact areas where buffers will do the most good, and we should be doing it in a way that fairly compensates farmers for their loss of productive land.
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