Letter to Tom Kasich, News Gazette

Kasich@news-gazette.com

Stewardship and the Watershed Community

By Robert J. Moore, Executive Director-Prairie Rivers Network

We all live upstream from someone.

To convince yourself of this fact, take your coffee outside, pour it on the ground and ask yourself the following. "Into what river or stream will it flow?" Depending on where you live in Champaign County, it could ultimately reach the Sangamon, Kaskaskia, Vermilion, or Embarras River.

Champaign County is the origin of these rivers. It is why this area is often referred to as the "Headwaters Region" of Illinois. the source of water for numerous communities downstream of Champaign-Urbana.

Trace the path of these rivers on a map. Find the towns and cities along them? Decatur, Tuscola, Sidney, Villa Grove, Charleston. You probably have friends or relatives that live in these communities. Besides the coffee you just sacrificed, what else are we sending to those communities via these rivers?

These are fundamental questions we must answer to understand a watershed and our role in the watershed community. In a nutshell, a watershed is the land that drains to a common waterbody, be it river, lake, or stream. This is your watershed, and everything within those boundaries is part of your watershed community.

Living in the headwaters of so many watershed communities, people in this area have a special responsibility to those who live downstream. The pollution we generate will ultimately impact our downstream neighbors.

Pollution from factories, sewage from nearby towns, and chemicals from surrounding farmfields all find their way into our rivers and travel downstream. As good neighbors and as responsible stewards every member of the watershed community should strive to minimize the problems they pass on to those living downstream.

In the last twenty-seven years we have worked to minimize water pollution. The passage of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act guaranteed Americans the right to clean and safe water. At the same time these laws gave us all the responsibility for keeping our waters clean and safe.

And many of us are taking that responsibility very seriously.

Companies are trying to meet state and federal standards for water pollution. Cities and towns do likewise, treating sewage and meeting guidelines for the quality of their stormwater. They do this not just because they are stewards, but because the watershed community, all of us, have demanded they do so.

The result of these efforts ? our most polluted streams have seen improvements in water quality. But much work remains and many problems have gone unsolved. This is particularly true in the case of runoff from agricultural lands.

For over sixty years farmers and landowners have had an alphabet soup of programs available to them to address polluted runoff. Thousands of farmers throughout Illinois have participated in these programs and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to provide farmers with assistance to deal with polluted runoff from their lands.

Clearly many farmers have a strong sense of stewardship. They care deeply about the land they farm and the impact they have on the watershed community. But we cannot ignore the largest source of water pollution in Illinois ? agricultural runoff.
 

There is a flood of scientific research that proves this to be the case. In Illinois over 85 percent of our impaired river miles are impaired by the agriculture industry. These water quality problems are well documented?soil erosion and sedimentation, channelization and dredging, as well as the runoff of farm chemicals like fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.

The impacts can be seen locally. Flooding on the Salt Fork. Nitrates in the water supplies of Danville and Decatur. Similar problems in Charleston and Mattoon.

Many farmers are voluntarily taking steps to help those living downstream. They manage their land in a way that helps control runoff?as any responsible member of the watershed community would. Many use conservation practices on their farms to minimize downstream impacts. Unfortunately, many do not.

700,000 acres of Illinois farmland have been enrolled in farm conservation programs. While that’s a lot of farmland, it is only 2.4 percent of the 27 million acres of farmland in Illinois. In other words, over 97 percent of Illinois’ farmland is not benefiting from federal and state conservation incentive programs. Those living downstream also do not benefit.

Does this mean farmers on that 97 percent of the land are not good stewards? Not at all. Many farmers are proud of the conservation ethic they practice, a conservation ethic taught by generations of fathers and uncles. But many farmers today don’t have the time or the resources to practice the ideals of good stewardship. The agriculture industry does not have the time or the patience for such idealism.

Farming has changed in the last three decades. As in other parts of the business world? bigger is better. Farms are larger than ever and to work such enormous swaths of land farmers must be more efficient and more productive. This type of farming has become less about family, less about community, and less about stewardship. It has become more about mechanization, productivity, and business.

Farm chemical use has skyrocketed in the last 30 years. More than 95 percent of our corn acreage has herbicides and pesticides applied to it. A similar percentage of land is treated with chemical fertilizers. We now have crops that are genetically altered so that herbicides can be applied in high amounts. Farming has indeed changed, as has the watershed community.

When the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, we sought immediate solutions to the most obvious pollution problems ? industrial waste and municipal sewage. The Clean Water Act helped convince industries and cities to minimize pollution before it became a problem for those downstream.

They were convinced because the law required them to change the way they did business?to be held accountable for their stewardship. Before the Clean Water Act, we relied on industry’s sense of volunteerism to protect our waters, and our waters suffered.

Today, in Illinois and across the nation, we are depending on the agriculture industry’s sense of volunteerism and stewardship to address the increasing problem of polluted runoff. So far, that record of volunteerism shows painfully slow progress.

The agriculture industry must increase its effort to be responsible stewards. The industry must become an active participant in the watershed community. Our family farmers would like nothing more than to practice the type of stewardship their fathers and grandfathers practiced, maintaining the long-term health of the soil and the waters while at the same time forging a life for themselves by working the land.

This conservation ethic runs deep in the tradition of the American family farmer. Unfortunately, the agriculture industry, like all large-scale industries, is competitive. The margins of error for the family farmer are small. All too often the agriculture industry fails to provide adequate assistance to those upon whom their foundation is built?the family farmer. The family farmer is doing all they can ? the agriculture industry must do more.

Prairie Rivers Network has worked for years to protect Illinois’ natural resources. We are constantly looking for ways to work with those interested in safeguarding our rivers and our streams from the effects of pollution.

But we cannot do it alone, nor can anybody else. It takes an effort from everybody in the watershed community, including the agriculture industry. We would like to invite all members of the agriculture industry to work with us. Maybe we can begin making progress together if we all sit down and discuss it ? perhaps over a cup of coffee.