January 29, 2016 By Adam Uren, BMTN
Plans to make farmers and landowners with private ditches install “buffer zones” of vegetation to limit contamination of Minnesota’s waters have been shelved by Gov. Mark Dayton.
In an announcement on Friday, Dayton said he has told the Department of Natural Resources to stop mapping private drainage ditches after meeting with GOP House leaders on Thursday. Here are some of his comments.
“The Republican legislators insisted that they did not intend those ditches to be included in the scope of the legislation, even though its buffering requirements would not take effect until November 2018.
“Threats have been reported to me that DNR and BWSR (Board of Water and Soil Resources) bonding requests – which are urgently needed to address the state’s serious water quality and infrastructure challenges – would not be considered by House leadership, if private ditches were not retroactively exempted from the new buffer requirement.
“I am deeply disappointed by this, because we should require all Minnesotans to take responsibility for the quality of the water that they pass on to their fellow citizens. I thought that we had achieved a modest agreement in the last legislative session about the urgent need to improve the quality of Minnesota’s waters by limiting their pollution from runoffs from private and public ditches.”
The Pioneer Press says the move represents Dayton “ceding ground” to farm interests and Republicans over his landmark buffer strip plan, despite warning farmers last year to support the proposal or see Minnesota’s famous waters become “cesspools.”
What’s the significance of this?
Dayton heavily pushed for new legislation to create “buffer zones” around Minnesota’s lakes, rivers and streams during last year’s legislative session, after research emerged highlighting heavy levels of pollution, which rendered waters in parts of the state un-swimmable and un-fishable.
Factors in the pollution are the chemicals, nutrients and sediment running off into the water from farmland.
To combat this, the state passed a new law requiring buffers of vegetation between farmland and waterways to filter out agricultural chemicals before they entered the water.
As The Friends of the Mississippi River explains, the new law requires buffers averaging 50 feet wide of “continuous perennial vegetation” be placed alongside public waters by Nov. 1, 2017, and buffers of a minimum 16.5 feet in width placed around “public ditches” by Nov. 1, 2018.
But Minnesota is also home to many private ditches, including those on farmland, some of which feed into Minnesota’s public waterways and drainage systems. These will now be exempted from the law.
“Public and private ditches do not look or function differently on the ground,” a DNR spokesperson told BringMeTheNews. “Both are open channels that conduct the flow of water, and therefore, both have the potential to carry sediment and associated pollutants to our public waterways.”
MPR reported last year that Dayton intended for these private ditches to be included in the legislation, but agricultural groups and, judging by Dayton’s comments, Republican lawmakers, did not.
The news organization notes the final budget bill passed last year was only agreed in the “waning hours of the legislative session,” and the Minnesota Corn Growers Association said it could require the Legislature to “refine the law” this year.
It is not clear at this stage how many miles of private ditches in Minnesota there are, or how many of them are on farmland.
Dayton backs off buffers for private ditches after meeting GOP leaders
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God, help me be the man that my dog thinks that I am.
God, help me be the man that my dog thinks that I am.
Re: Dayton backs off buffers for private ditches after meeting GOP leaders
Private ditches seen as 'small portion' of farm drainage
By Tony Kennedy Star Tribune
February 14, 2016 — 9:48pm
Gov. Mark Dayton’s decision last week to exclude private ditches from buffer strip mapping was an obvious setback to his hard-fought 2015 water-quality law.
Gov. Mark Dayton’s reluctant decision last week to exclude private ditches from buffer strip mapping was an obvious setback to his hard-fought 2015 water-quality law.
But the head of Minnesota’s Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) said Tuesday that private ditches account for only a “small portion” of surface drainage and that the state is forging ahead with its plan to thwart chemical runoff from soils in farm country.
BWSR Executive Director John Jaschke said the state won’t attempt to calculate the percentage of drainage now flowing from private ditches. The data collection would take months and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has said there isn’t a good method to quantify it.
Instead, the DNR will continue to map public ditches in need of 16.5-foot-wide strips of natural vegetation under the new law. Dayton pushed for the requirement in response to a state finding that half of Minnesota lakes and rivers in southern Minnesota are too polluted much of the time to allow swimming or fishing.
The strips of grasses and other vegetation help to block runoff of fertilizer, pesticides, other chemicals and harmful bacteria that would otherwise flow into streams, rivers and lakes. Buffers also are intended to aid fish habitat by slowing erosion and curtailing riverbank sloughing.
Dayton backed off on the mapping of private ditches, saying Republican leaders threatened not to fund other work for the environment. The issue has pitted the governor against some farmers, who don’t want to lose land that could be used to plant crops.
Going forward, Jaschke said the BWSR’s job will be to work with local authorities to install missing buffer strips on a rolling schedule.
“Nothing has changed in that respect,” Jaschke said.
He said there shouldn’t be any disputes over whether a ditch is public or private. They are classified in legal descriptions and public records as one or the other. He also said the normal collective process of establishing public ditch systems will continue to convert private ditches to public ones.
Jaschke said Renville County, with its flat, extensively drained farm fields, is an example of a place with few private ditches. The further west you go, to places such as Lac qui Parle and Yellow Medicine counties, there is less uniformity, he said. And in one south-central watershed district, rough estimates show that nearly 10 percent of the drainage is by private ditch.
“It’s very different place to place,” Jaschke said.
By Tony Kennedy Star Tribune
February 14, 2016 — 9:48pm
Gov. Mark Dayton’s decision last week to exclude private ditches from buffer strip mapping was an obvious setback to his hard-fought 2015 water-quality law.
Gov. Mark Dayton’s reluctant decision last week to exclude private ditches from buffer strip mapping was an obvious setback to his hard-fought 2015 water-quality law.
But the head of Minnesota’s Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) said Tuesday that private ditches account for only a “small portion” of surface drainage and that the state is forging ahead with its plan to thwart chemical runoff from soils in farm country.
BWSR Executive Director John Jaschke said the state won’t attempt to calculate the percentage of drainage now flowing from private ditches. The data collection would take months and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has said there isn’t a good method to quantify it.
Instead, the DNR will continue to map public ditches in need of 16.5-foot-wide strips of natural vegetation under the new law. Dayton pushed for the requirement in response to a state finding that half of Minnesota lakes and rivers in southern Minnesota are too polluted much of the time to allow swimming or fishing.
The strips of grasses and other vegetation help to block runoff of fertilizer, pesticides, other chemicals and harmful bacteria that would otherwise flow into streams, rivers and lakes. Buffers also are intended to aid fish habitat by slowing erosion and curtailing riverbank sloughing.
Dayton backed off on the mapping of private ditches, saying Republican leaders threatened not to fund other work for the environment. The issue has pitted the governor against some farmers, who don’t want to lose land that could be used to plant crops.
Going forward, Jaschke said the BWSR’s job will be to work with local authorities to install missing buffer strips on a rolling schedule.
“Nothing has changed in that respect,” Jaschke said.
He said there shouldn’t be any disputes over whether a ditch is public or private. They are classified in legal descriptions and public records as one or the other. He also said the normal collective process of establishing public ditch systems will continue to convert private ditches to public ones.
Jaschke said Renville County, with its flat, extensively drained farm fields, is an example of a place with few private ditches. The further west you go, to places such as Lac qui Parle and Yellow Medicine counties, there is less uniformity, he said. And in one south-central watershed district, rough estimates show that nearly 10 percent of the drainage is by private ditch.
“It’s very different place to place,” Jaschke said.
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God, help me be the man that my dog thinks that I am.
God, help me be the man that my dog thinks that I am.
Re: Dayton backs off buffers for private ditches after meeting GOP leaders
Minnesota's buffer law triggers a new debate: Which waters are covered?
By Josephine Marcotty Star Tribune
February 14, 2016 — 10:05pm
A buffer strip of grass and trees along the Rock River west of Edgerton is a good example of the
Only about one-third of the streams in Minnesota’s farming regions will get the maximum amount of protection under new state buffer rules — a number that environmentalists say falls far short of what Gov. Mark Dayton’s signature water protection law was intended to accomplish.
State regulators are drawing up a map of the streams, ditches, wetlands and lakes that will fall under the new and highly controversial buffer law — the nation’s first — enacted last year in an effort to reduce pollution from farm runoff.
But they are relying on a decades-old list that excludes more than half the known small streams that create a web across Minnesota’s landscape and carry sediment, phosphorus and other pollutants into the major rivers.
Officials from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) say the buffer law doesn’t give them the authority or time to start from scratch in what would be a massive job of reviewing all the state’s waters. The existing list, known as the Public Waters Inventory, was bitterly fought for years in the 1970s but is now widely accepted as the state’s official catalog of waters subject to regulation.
Critics say the state is missing a one-time chance to do it right. Combined with Dayton’s recent decision to exclude private ditches from state enforcement, Minnesota’s first major piece of new environmental legislation in years will not come close to achieving its potential, they say.
“Buffers are hardly the silver bullet,” said Scott Strand, head of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “But they are a part of what we can do on the landscape, and we should deploy them to the full extent that the law allows.”
The buffer law, one of Dayton’s hard-fought victories during the 2015 Legislature, was heralded by environmental groups and bitterly opposed by the state’s leading farm groups. It was designed to strengthen existing law, which gives counties authority to require 16.5-foot buffers on drainage ditches and 50-foot buffers on streams, lakes and wetlands.
Those rules were confusing and rarely enforced, and many of the buffers are missing. Dayton’s $28 million buffer law clarified the rules and added financial penalties. But the political fight never really ended. Farm groups and Republicans vehemently challenged the DNR’s assertion that private ditches — those constructed and paid for by individual landowners — were subject to the same penalties that apply to publicly maintained drainage ditches.
Adam Birr, executive director of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, said resistance was driven in part by the view of some farmers that their ditches are protected by private property rights. But mostly, he said, farmers were confused because there is no official list or map of private ditches, and they weren’t sure how the law would apply to their land.
“It was seen as a constraint to implementing the law,” he said. “Our folks were concerned about meeting the timelines.”
Two weeks ago Dayton agreed to exempt private ditches, saying that he had “caved” to pressure from agricultural groups and Republican legislators.
Whose list is right?
At the same time, environmental groups have been fighting their own battle with the DNR about another term in the law. The critical question: What, exactly, is a public water?
In contrast to public ditches, all public lakes, streams and wetlands would require an average width of 50-foot buffers — considered far more effective than the 16.5-foot version — or other approved protective measures. DNR officials say they don’t intend to use state’s legal definition of a public water — any body that drains 2 square miles of land. Instead, they’ll use the long-established public waters inventory.
That, too, was the product of a bitter and long political fight in the 1970s, fought county by county and through legal appeals, to determine which bodies of water would fall under state permit requirements.
“It was very controversial, a lot of angry meetings,” said Dave Leuthe, a DNR program consultant who worked on the inventory then, and last year was called out of retirement to help with new buffer mapping project. “You didn’t always feel safe or secure.”
But when it was finished, the final list omitted a lot of the smaller streams — some of which could be draining 2 square miles and are the most intimately connected to agricultural lands.
“If this is going to exclude a bunch of smaller streams, it will substantially reduce the benefit to them all,” said Craig Cox, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, a national nonprofit that has mapped Minnesota’s waters and buffers.
One state analysis, covering 67 counties, found the list includes 21,642 miles of streams — and omits 28,760.
The same is true for streams that were turned into ditches — 4,731 miles are public waters and 15,381 are not.
‘Missed opportunity’
Sarah Strommen, assistant DNR commissioner, said the agency’s map is still a work in progress. Some of those stream and ditch miles might yet be included, and county governments are responsible for managing and enforcing buffers on the rest. But, she said, the DNR is not going to go through the whole ordeal of debating public waters again.
“We don’t see any intent in [the new law] that we go through another similar extensive process to update that inventory,” she said.
Environmental groups disagree, saying the DNR has chosen expediency over the best water protection.
“To knowingly give out an incomplete map is a huge missed opportunity,” said Trevor Russell, program director at Friends of the Mississippi River.
Regardless, many of the people charged with implementing the law across Minnesota’s farm lands say it has changed the conversation.
“I think people understand that it’s the law now,” said Michele Stindtman, program manager for the soil and water district in Faribault County, which is 99 percent agricultural land. “They are calling to find out, ‘Am I 16 ½ or am I 50?’ ”
The DNR expects to complete its preliminary map in the next month and will make it available on its website (www.dnr.state.mn.us/buffers/index.html) for review by local governments and other groups. The final map must be done by July, and buffers must in place in 2017 and 2018.
josephine.marcotty@startribune.com 612-673-7394
By Josephine Marcotty Star Tribune
February 14, 2016 — 10:05pm
A buffer strip of grass and trees along the Rock River west of Edgerton is a good example of the
Only about one-third of the streams in Minnesota’s farming regions will get the maximum amount of protection under new state buffer rules — a number that environmentalists say falls far short of what Gov. Mark Dayton’s signature water protection law was intended to accomplish.
State regulators are drawing up a map of the streams, ditches, wetlands and lakes that will fall under the new and highly controversial buffer law — the nation’s first — enacted last year in an effort to reduce pollution from farm runoff.
But they are relying on a decades-old list that excludes more than half the known small streams that create a web across Minnesota’s landscape and carry sediment, phosphorus and other pollutants into the major rivers.
Officials from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) say the buffer law doesn’t give them the authority or time to start from scratch in what would be a massive job of reviewing all the state’s waters. The existing list, known as the Public Waters Inventory, was bitterly fought for years in the 1970s but is now widely accepted as the state’s official catalog of waters subject to regulation.
Critics say the state is missing a one-time chance to do it right. Combined with Dayton’s recent decision to exclude private ditches from state enforcement, Minnesota’s first major piece of new environmental legislation in years will not come close to achieving its potential, they say.
“Buffers are hardly the silver bullet,” said Scott Strand, head of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “But they are a part of what we can do on the landscape, and we should deploy them to the full extent that the law allows.”
The buffer law, one of Dayton’s hard-fought victories during the 2015 Legislature, was heralded by environmental groups and bitterly opposed by the state’s leading farm groups. It was designed to strengthen existing law, which gives counties authority to require 16.5-foot buffers on drainage ditches and 50-foot buffers on streams, lakes and wetlands.
Those rules were confusing and rarely enforced, and many of the buffers are missing. Dayton’s $28 million buffer law clarified the rules and added financial penalties. But the political fight never really ended. Farm groups and Republicans vehemently challenged the DNR’s assertion that private ditches — those constructed and paid for by individual landowners — were subject to the same penalties that apply to publicly maintained drainage ditches.
Adam Birr, executive director of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, said resistance was driven in part by the view of some farmers that their ditches are protected by private property rights. But mostly, he said, farmers were confused because there is no official list or map of private ditches, and they weren’t sure how the law would apply to their land.
“It was seen as a constraint to implementing the law,” he said. “Our folks were concerned about meeting the timelines.”
Two weeks ago Dayton agreed to exempt private ditches, saying that he had “caved” to pressure from agricultural groups and Republican legislators.
Whose list is right?
At the same time, environmental groups have been fighting their own battle with the DNR about another term in the law. The critical question: What, exactly, is a public water?
In contrast to public ditches, all public lakes, streams and wetlands would require an average width of 50-foot buffers — considered far more effective than the 16.5-foot version — or other approved protective measures. DNR officials say they don’t intend to use state’s legal definition of a public water — any body that drains 2 square miles of land. Instead, they’ll use the long-established public waters inventory.
That, too, was the product of a bitter and long political fight in the 1970s, fought county by county and through legal appeals, to determine which bodies of water would fall under state permit requirements.
“It was very controversial, a lot of angry meetings,” said Dave Leuthe, a DNR program consultant who worked on the inventory then, and last year was called out of retirement to help with new buffer mapping project. “You didn’t always feel safe or secure.”
But when it was finished, the final list omitted a lot of the smaller streams — some of which could be draining 2 square miles and are the most intimately connected to agricultural lands.
“If this is going to exclude a bunch of smaller streams, it will substantially reduce the benefit to them all,” said Craig Cox, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, a national nonprofit that has mapped Minnesota’s waters and buffers.
One state analysis, covering 67 counties, found the list includes 21,642 miles of streams — and omits 28,760.
The same is true for streams that were turned into ditches — 4,731 miles are public waters and 15,381 are not.
‘Missed opportunity’
Sarah Strommen, assistant DNR commissioner, said the agency’s map is still a work in progress. Some of those stream and ditch miles might yet be included, and county governments are responsible for managing and enforcing buffers on the rest. But, she said, the DNR is not going to go through the whole ordeal of debating public waters again.
“We don’t see any intent in [the new law] that we go through another similar extensive process to update that inventory,” she said.
Environmental groups disagree, saying the DNR has chosen expediency over the best water protection.
“To knowingly give out an incomplete map is a huge missed opportunity,” said Trevor Russell, program director at Friends of the Mississippi River.
Regardless, many of the people charged with implementing the law across Minnesota’s farm lands say it has changed the conversation.
“I think people understand that it’s the law now,” said Michele Stindtman, program manager for the soil and water district in Faribault County, which is 99 percent agricultural land. “They are calling to find out, ‘Am I 16 ½ or am I 50?’ ”
The DNR expects to complete its preliminary map in the next month and will make it available on its website (www.dnr.state.mn.us/buffers/index.html) for review by local governments and other groups. The final map must be done by July, and buffers must in place in 2017 and 2018.
josephine.marcotty@startribune.com 612-673-7394
.
God, help me be the man that my dog thinks that I am.
God, help me be the man that my dog thinks that I am.
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