UMB Stewardship Initiative

            Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to address the General Farm Commodities, Resource Conservation, and Credit Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee about H.R. 4013, The Upper Mississippi River Basin Conservation Act.  The purpose of this legislation is to reduce sediment and nutrient losses into the Upper Mississippi River from the surrounding landscape.  Over the last year I have worked with farmers, the navigation industry, sporting groups, conservation organizations, and government agencies throughout the region to come up with an effective, basin-wide, and non-regulatory approach to dealing with this increasingly serious problem.

            The Upper Mississippi River system--whose tributaries and basin encompass much of the landmass of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri--is one of our nation’s great multi-use natural resources.  In 1995, shippers transported 126 million tons of cargo on the system’s 1300 commercially navigable miles.  This system remains vitally important for moving the region’s agricultural commodities to markets across the globe.  Twenty-two million Americans rely on the river and its tributaries for drinking water.   Forty percent of North America’s waterfowl use the wetlands and backwaters of the river as a migratory flyway.  The Upper Mississippi River basin provides $1.2 billion annually in recreation income and $6.6 billion to the area’s tourism industries.  A healthy Upper Mississippi River increases benefits for all users of the system.

            Unfortunately, soil erosion and nutrient loading threaten the health of the river system and the vast agricultural, industrial, and recreational activities it supports.  Sediment fills the main shipping channel of the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, costing over $100 million each year to dredge.  Soil erosion reduces the long-term sustainability and income of the family farms, with farmers losing more than $300 million annually in applied nitrogen.  This affects farm income at a time when we have a crisis in rural America.

            As lawmakers, we must move beyond our current, after-the-fact damage repair efforts and develop cost-effective measures to reduce sediment and nutrients from entering the river in the first place.  We need to recognize that these water quality and land conservation problems cross traditional state and administrative boundaries.  Solving them requires a coordinated approach between the federal, state, and local agencies working throughout the five-state basin.

            H.R. 4013--which currently has 40 cosponsors from 20 states and territories---proposes a comprehensive approach to reducing nutrient and soil sediment losses in the Upper Mississippi River basin.  In order to make cost-effective conservation decisions, it is imperative that we develop sound scientific information about the problem of polluted runoff.  H.R. 4013 authorizes the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)–a science-based, non-regulatory agency--to work with other agencies and non-governmental groups to develop a basin-wide sediment and nutrient monitoring network.  USGS would expand their own monitoring activities, coordinate and integrate existing monitoring efforts, develop guidelines for data collection and storage, and establish an electronic database system to store and disseminate information.  To put this information to work, H.R. 4013 directs the USGS to collaborate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other pertinent federal, state, and local agencies to establish a state-of-the-art computer modeling program to identify runoff "hot spots" in the basin.

            H.R. 4013 seeks an alternative to the traditional regulatory approach to environmental protection. Information obtained through the USGS’s monitoring and modeling program will be used to implement four highly successful U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs: the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP).  These USDA programs, which are voluntary and incentive-based, have multiple benefits: direct rental payments to farmers, reductions in commodity surplus production, retirement of marginally productive land, expansion of wildlife habitat, and improved water quality.  There is a pressing need for higher authorization levels for these programs, which have many more applicants than the USDA can accommodate under current enrollment limits.  H.R. 4013 includes strong protections for the privacy of personal data collected and used in connection with monitoring, modeling, and technical and financial assessment activities.

            H.R. 4013 also recognizes the need for continued research into methods of controlling erosion and runoff.  The legislation establishes a grant program to support "model farms" and innovative practices designed to reduce sediment and nutrient loss.  In more general terms, it enables the Secretary of Agriculture to enter into cooperative agreements that would advance the goals of reducing farm field runoff.  This component of the legislation will advance the efforts of many states, including my home state of Wisconsin, to develop new technologies and farming practices aimed at improving both productivity and environmental quality.

            Basin-scale conservation work requires extensive communication and cooperation between citizens, government officials, and other stakeholders.  To facilitate this work, H.R. 4013 creates a fifteen-person citizens advisory council and an interagency working group.  The citizens advisory council will seek input from farmers and local conservation districts about methods and priorities for reducing sediment and nutrient losses and formulate recommendations for the implementing agencies.  The interagency working group will coordinate efforts between USDA, USGS, and other participating agencies.

            In summary, H.R. 4013 calls for a comprehensive and incentive-driven approach to reducing sediment and nutrient losses in order to prevent damage from occurring to the river system and to improve the economic and environmental health of the basin as a whole.  The benefits of the programs authorized in this bill would extend far beyond the five state region, both because it calls for nation-wide increases in USDA land conservation programs and because nutrients and sediments from the Upper Midwest have impacts all the way down the Mississippi and throughout the Gulf of Mexico.  I see this legislation as a pilot for future watershed and basin programs in other parts of the nation.

      Far too often, our nation’s farmers and landowners seek to do the right thing but are overwhelmed by the proliferation of agencies and programs that address agricultural conservation issues.  This legislation seeks a comprehensive and coordinated approach to nutrient and sediment reduction efforts.  Such an approach, I believe, is long overdue and will have the greatest positive benefits for our farmers and the environment and will do so without creating any new federal regulations.