More TMDL discussion

One of the objections we have heard to the Bay TMDL is that the Agriculture community is being picked on and that the whole responsibility rides on their shoulders.  While nobody likes to be told what to do, it’s time for everyone to stop pointing fingers at other parties and start doing the things we all know need to be done to clean up the Bay.  This means farmers, towns, businesses, and individual homeowners. 

But since the Ag community is particularly bent out of shape over the Bay TMDL, let’s address a couple of their concerns.

1 – We want to get credit for existing practices – The most common complaint I have heard from the Ag community is that they won’t get credit for the good work they have already done.  What they are saying is that they have implemented a large number of voluntary BPS (Best Management Practices) with their own money because they didn’t want the government telling them how to implement them.  This means that they did not receive government assistance for these projects (there are grants and cost share programs to implement BMPs) and they have not reported these BMPs to the agencies that tally the number BMPs on the ground.  The concern is that as goals are set, the farmers will never get recognized for the uncounted BMPs that are currently in place.  I have asked about this in every Bay TMDL meeting I have attended, and asked very clearly “Will farmers get credit for uncounted BMPs that are already in place?”  The answer has been “Yes” 100% of the time.  Of course these BMPs have to meet standards, and they have to be reported in order to be counted.  A farmer or land owner can’t just write down on a piece of paper that they have done X,Y, & Z, and get credit for having done it.  Just like a student can’t just tell their teacher that they’ve written a great paper but don’t want to turn it in.
I firmly believe that all farmers should get credit for all of the BMPs they have implemented.  If any farmer has an issue getting a particular BMP recognized, I want to know about it.  This is an important issue for Eastern Shore farmers, and it is vital to the success of the Bay TMDL. 

2 – We need more testing and modeling in order to make sure we’re going to get all of the results we expect before we implement this plan. -  Nobody seems to be questioning whether or not many of these BMPs work.  Most of the folks involved in this discussion have accepted that vegetative buffers, retention ponds, filter strips, rock dams, and nutrient management plans do reduce runoff pollution to the Bay.  But some lobbyists and lawyers are proposing that since we don’t have exact numbers to tell us how each one will work on every farm that we should not implement these accepted practices.  So while they concede that 1+1=2, they’re not sure that 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=22.

This seems to be another example of people deciding when to believe in science or not based on their own financial agendas.   We can keep studying the levels of pollution we dump in to the Bay for decades.  We will never have definitive proof that everything we propose will meet all of its goals all of the time.  But if your child were standing in the middle of a highway, would you wait to get them off the road until you had definitive proof that they were going to get hit by a car, or would you accept that a high probability of their getting hit was good enough for you and take some action to get them out of harms way?

3 – We think the Bay model is flawed. – Some national Agricultural and Homebuilders groups are proposing that the Chesapeake Bay Model is not a useful tool.  This is the basis of much of their PR campaign against the TMDL.  They’ve produced their own study which has been independently assessed to be misleading and flawed.

You can learn more about this here: http://cbf.org/page.aspx?pid=2646

4 – We can’t afford to stop polluting the Bay.  – Actually one of the messages from the Ag community at the beginning of this process was “if you can find the money, we can do this.”  One of the things environmental groups are investing in is a lobbying effort to get more Federal money for farmers to reduce or eliminate the cost of implementing BMPs.  All Americans have benefited from the financial savings that have resulted from allowing pollution to enter our waters, and many environmental organizations feel that we should all help pay the cost of properly dealing with our waste streams.

http://www.cbf.org/page.aspx?pid=2672

Here are a couple of good articles about BMPs & why they matter:

http://www.anr.state.vt.us/cleanandclear/ag-bmps.htm

http://www.vcnva.org/anx/index.cfm/1,403,418,0,html/Agricultural-Best-Management-Practices-Ag-BMPs