Initiative Discussion

Introduction: The Problem
Public and private interests from the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri have developed a 10-year, $1.1 billion initiative to reduce the amount of sediment and nutrients leaving the Upper Mississippi Basin. Each year, sediment and nutrients are washed off the landscape, into feeder streams, lakes, rivers, and ultimately into the Mississippi River - reducing farm income, degrading water quality, threatening drinking water supplies and filling backwaters used by river fish and wildlife. Although landscapes naturally erode, human activities like residential and commercial development, road construction, and agriculture accelerate the movement of sand and silt into rivers.

In addition, nutrients are released into the Upper Mississippi basin from many sources, including wastewater treatment plants, suburban backyards and farm fields. The states of Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa are among those with the greatest percentage of cultivated land, the highest rate of nitrogen fertilizer application, and the greatest amount of artificially drained soils. The Upper Mississippi Basin contributes only 22% of the water, but 31% of the nitrogen, flowing into the Lower Mississippi River.

Although agencies, institutions and individuals have struggled to reduce nutrient and sediment loss, only modest achievements have been made. Most rivers and streams in the Upper Mississippi Basin continue to suffer from the effects of excess sediment and nutrients. There are many reasons - insufficient resources, inadequate information sharing, failure to set priorities, and lack of effective coordination.
 

To reduce the amount of sediment and nutrients entering the Upper Mississippi Basin, Congress should implement the Upper Mississippi Basin Stewardship Initiative. This public-private partnership will establish an advisory group to coordinate public and private activities, set goals and objectives, expand efforts to share information, create a basin-wide monitoring network, and identify and implement new solutions.

Current Constraints on Our Solutions
Although there are more than 75 programs at the local, state, federal and privately-funded levels that are designed to address some aspect of sediment and nutrient loss in the Upper Mississippi basin, we have no basin-wide plan. This results in redundancy of some efforts, gaps in others, and losses of efficiency throughout. In addition, there is no generally accepted baseline available for measurement of local conditions before, during, and after implementation of a program, so that a program cannot evaluate its accomplishments and shortcomings. Because most programs receive no funding for information exchange, there is minimal sharing of knowledge and experience gained in the field. Thus, it is difficult to adjust programs for lessons learned. Programs become inflexible, and must be applied to large areas using a one-size-fits-all approach, with minimal consideration of varying local conditions.

The Upper Mississippi Basin Stewardship Initiative
The Upper Mississippi Basin Stewardship Initiative has been framed to build on what we know, what we have, and what we know we need. In particular, the Stewardship Initiative will:

• coordinate public and private efforts to control sediment and nutrient levels by creating an interagency team and a public advisory group to provide direction and guidance to resource managers, grant-making agencies and legislatures. Successful examples such as the Chesapeake Bay Commission will be used as models.

• create a basin-wide monitoring network, initially to identify major sources of sediments and nutrients, and subsequently to assess the results of programs implemented to control those sources;

• institute a research and modeling program to fill in gaps in our existing knowledge of the dynamics of sediment and nutrient problems, and use the findings to target solutions;

• identify and implement a public outreach model to educate all stakeholders about (1) their role in the problem, (2) their role in the solution, and (3) the Basin Initiative, including program achievements and shortcomings;

• increase technical and financial assistance in a manner responsive to the findings of the Advisory Council, water quality monitoring, and research/modeling program; and

• maintain an ongoing review of the achievements and deficiencies of Initiative policies, adjusting them to improve their performance.

Coordination and Governance

The Initiative will create a systematic process of coordinating activities between Federal, State, and local watershed management efforts.  This will be accomplished by creation of a basin-wide governance structure incorporating stakeholder input. The Initiative will be managed by an inter-agency governmental team, conferring with a citizen Advisory Council. The Advisory Council will consist of representatives drawn from the state level, who in turn will be drawn from groups at the watershed or subwatershed level. The Council will include representatives from major stakeholder groups within the Basin. Representation should include all stakeholder groups that are impacted by, or have a role in managing, sediment and nutrients. These groups include: agriculture organizations (including sustainable agriculture), agriculture industry, watershed alliances, soil and water management districts, the commodity transportation industry, county and municipal organizations, tribal representatives, and recreation organizations.

Council administrative and logistical support will be provided by the Resource Studies Center (RSC). The RSC will provide logistical support for all Council meetings, establishing and maintaining relationships with existing and developing watershed alliances, watershed programs, soil and water management districts, and other institutional arrangements established to manage watersheds within the Upper Mississippi Basin. This role will include attending meetings, outreach, summarizing activities within specific watersheds and distributing summaries not only to Council members, but also to all the organizations making up this growing coalition.

The Council will be the forum for stakeholder groups to share experiences on workable management solutions, inefficient management strategies, management needs, and assistance delivery mechanisms. Its intent is to create a framework that can maximize the delivery and efficiency of federal and state land conservation and technical assistance programs. It will be responsible for reporting to Congress the status of land conservation programs and their effect in reducing sediment and nutrient losses, as well as the status of the public-private partnership.

Water Quality Monitoring
An early task of the Council will be to standardize water quality monitoring criteria and scope out how to effectively track and measure sediments and nutrients. Creation of a basin-wide monitoring network will build upon the proven and effective monitoring currently being conducted by the U. S. Geological Survey, the five respective States, and local organizations or governments. Data management and use protocols will be developed to permit the information to be used in a manner supporting Initiative-related decision-making, but the information will be managed in a non-government data management system. All private lands monitoring information will be treated as confidential information.

Monitoring, using sound scientific design, will be implemented around major program management areas. It will be used to evaluate progress, so that program accomplishments and shortfalls can be identified. Key products of this effort include capability to measure Initiative performance, and a clear linkage between land management and treatment to local and regional river water quality. These products and their resultant benefits will not be realized by either decision-makers or the public at least until the fourth program year; from that point and into the future the benefits will increase with each additional program year.

Research and Modeling
The Research and Modeling component of the Initiative is intended to address critical gaps in our knowledge. Monitoring results will be important input to a basin management model linking agriculture, urban, and economic considerations to future Mississippi Basin environmental conditions. The Corps of Engineers (limnology research and modeling), Agricultural Research Service (agriculture practice research and modeling) and land grant universities (agricultural practice research) will work together to:

• measure how well specific management practices work in differing environmental situations;

• measure transport processes, such as the relationship between specific agricultural management practices and water quality in streams, lakes, and rivers;

• measure the risks incurred by landowners when they participate in new management practices, and identify proper incentives that recognize and offset a landowner's risk taken for the public benefit; and

• do integrative modeling to assess environmental results of Best Management Practices on a specific watershed, the Mississippi River, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, a new Grant Program will fund universities, private organizations and local governments develop and experiment with alternative agricultural strategies that can result in economically viable agricultural operations, that conserve soil and nutrients.

Education and Outreach
The long-term success of these efforts must include support from stakeholders, the public, their elected representatives, and others. This requires that all parties be adequately informed about the issues and ongoing efforts to resolve them. The Initiative includes a public education and outreach component, aimed at increasing public awareness of the problems of sediments and nutrients in the Mississippi Basin. This will include activities designed to increase public awareness of the importance of the Upper Mississippi Basin, and the costs of not taking action. These activities are to be drawn from the strongest existing models of outreach and education currently operating around the country.

Increase Technical Assistance
The ultimate goal of the Initiative is to involve the Basin's private landowners, cities, and public land managers in the voluntary implementation of best private land conservation practices. Federal programs that provide voluntary technical and financial assistance to urban and rural landowners should be expanded, and their efforts targeted within identified problem areas. The findings of water quality monitoring and applied research can furnish the information needed to target these resources to high priority areas. In addition, the incentives offered will reflect an understanding of local environmental conditions, benefits of specific management practices, and risks incurred by the landowner. These components will enhance the selection and performance of incentive programs at the same time that they enable us to realize greater efficiencies in implementation.

Current efforts proposed for expansion include the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA), Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP.), Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), Watershed and River Basin Planning and Installation (PL566), and non-point source pollution control projects as funded under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act as amended in 1987.

Assess and Adjust Program Performance
A basic assumption underlying the Initiative is that there are benefits to incorporating flexibility into the management of natural resources. To achieve this, the Advisory Council will be tasked with maintaining an ongoing review of the achievements and deficiencies of Initiative programs, and identifying adjustments that would improve their performance.

Ongoing water quality monitoring and reporting will develop information that will enable the Advisory Council to evaluate program performance, and recommend that specific efforts be increased, decreased, or eliminated as appropriate. Effectiveness will be measured by:

• level of participation of landowners in the program;

• successful sediment and nutrient reduction, and

• accomplishment of an efficient expenditure of resources.

Budget

The proposed budget for the Initiative totals $1.1 billion spread over five states and ten years. More than 78% of the funding requested for this initiative will be provided directly to landowners as financial and technical assistance. During the first three years, funding for technical and financial assistance will be modestly increased while monitoring and modeling are used to identify high priority subwatersheds. By the fourth year, however, technical and financial assistance will be increased over current spending levels. During the fifth and sixth years, funding for research will be reduced or ended.

Implementation Schedule
Years 0 - 1: Pre-Legislation Planning and Partnership Development
Develop Initiative support and identify partner participants
Development and scoping workshops for Initiative components

Years 1 - 3: Implementation
Activate Advisory Council / Coordination mechanism
Implement water quality monitoring program
Implement research and modeling programs
Implement educational outreach

Years 4 - 10: Implementation
Implement technical assistance for private lands conservation
Guidance and assessment by Advisory Council
Water quality monitoring continues for assessment
Phase out of research programs
Ongoing Education / Outreach

What Do We Need to Do Next?
The next and most important steps in the Stewardship Initiative's development are meetings with stakeholder groups, identifying their concerns and expectations, and reflecting those concerns in the Initiative's design. Stakeholders need to identify leaders within their groups who can provide guidance to the Initiative's development, and ensure that the Initiative's guiding principles, goals and objectives are being met throughout its implementation. These representatives need to meet and develop a consensus on a common purpose, attainable goals, and best use of existing talents.

Following partnership and program development, individual Initiative goals and components must be defined as to their specific objectives, and as to where and how they should be accomplished with the best use of existing talents. The Council will establish and supervise public-private task groups including but not limited to the following:

• a water quality monitoring task group;

• a sediment and nutrient modeling task group;

• an economic risk assessment task group;

• an outreach task group, and

• a governance task group.

The Advisory Council also needs to develop mechanisms for effective communication, and develop a flexible organization to perform their ongoing oversight during Initiative implementation. Formation of this support, advisory, and communication organization is crucial to the Initiative's success, and one of the highest priorities.

How Do I Get Additional Information?
For additional information please contact Barry Drazkowski at:
Saint Mary's University Resource Analysis Department
phone (507) 457-6925
email bdrazkow@smumn.edu
FAX (507) 457-6604