Agricultural News
North Canadian/Oklahoma River Protection Threatened by Federal Budget Cuts
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:08:26 CDT
Efforts underway to install water quality improvements to agriculture and other privately owned land in the North Canadian/Oklahoma River watershed will be stopped far short of their goals due to recent cuts to voluntary water quality efforts at the federal level according to Joe Parker, President of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts (OACD).
"With a stroke of a pen the federal government was able to put in jeopardy our efforts to protect and improve the quality of Oklahoma Cities' water," Parker said. "It's just crazy that at a time when all of the country from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico is facing so many water quality challenges that our political leaders in Washington would take such a drastic step. It just boggles the mind."
According to Parker, the Oklahoma Conservation Commission (Commission) has been notified that roughly 20% of the funds it receives through the Clean Water Act Section 319 program are likely to be cut this coming December. These funds are used to partner with landowners to undertake best management practices on land in priority watersheds. Also to be cut are the funds used by the Commission to monitor the water to verify whether or not reductions in pollutants such as nutrients, bacteria and sediment are taking place due to the changes on the land resulting from these management practices. Through the use of these funds the State of Oklahoma has been able to realize reductions of nutrients as high as 70% in some watersheds. With these cuts, however, many of these programs, including the work in the North Canadian/Oklahoma River watershed will come to a halt without additional funding.
"The timing of these cuts could not be worse for the quality of the water in the North Canadian River," Parker said. "As with all of the water quality programs undertaken by the Oklahoma Conservation partnership, we have seen a great response from landowners in this watershed. Already over 20 thousand acres of crop land has been converted from conventional tillage to no-till production to control erosion and reduces run-off from farm ground, over 8 miles of stream bank has been protected by riparian buffer strips and over 500 acres of highly erodible crop land has been put back to grass. This is a great start but we need to do a lot more if we're going to avoid bacteria and nutrient problems in the Oklahoma River. If we don't see additional dollars in this effort however, this work won't get done."
According to Clay Pope, OACD Executive Director, these cuts should be of concern to all Oklahomans.
"The bottom line is that we have proven in Oklahoma that you can be successful in addressing nonpoint source pollution while respecting private property rights," Pope said. "The big concern really is that if you don't have programs like this, you have only two choices, either regulations that hurt agriculture or dirty water-either option leads to law suits and big political fights. While we understand the need to balance the budget, we have shown that there is a way forward on water quality that splits the difference between regulation and bad water with our work here in Oklahoma. Why in the world the federal administration would want to put programs like this that work at risk is beyond me. It really makes you wonder if folks are interested in solving problems cooperatively or if they simply have an agenda to push for more regulations that will only feed the current climate of distrust so many people have of the EPA and make it harder to get the work done on the ground that needs to happen if we are going to clean up and protect our water."
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI
Top Agricultural News
More Headlines...
