Mr. Ron Jones joined Stan Johnson in responding to the following questions in their remarks:
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Good morning, I'm Ron Jones and I'm Director of the Texas Institute for Applied Environmental Research. We've been working on the Bosque River watershed in Texas. We have a water quality issue related to the dairy industry. It's gone through lots of stages. We just finished a total maximum daily load ( TMDL); we're about to implement that TMDL, and we're looking at a certification program as part of that implementation process. Everyone understands that for a stream that is impaired, the Clean Water Act (CWA) and EPA require a TMDL to be developed, which allocates out loads to contributing sources. It's a very logical process, but it's a very unforgiving process. We sure don't want our streams and rivers to get on those impaired water lists, because the requirments of the TMDL program are very tough.
I'm interested in policy, institutions, and institutional delivery systems. I don't think our problem is going to be in developing the ability to do assessments, certifications, and comprehensive nutrient management plans (CNMPs), I don't think that's going to be our problem. I think our problem is developing the capacity to do that in a systematic and predictable manner across the country, where these programs will stand to produce the water quality objectives that we have to meet. I'm concerned with building the institution that will deliver that, and I think that's more difficult than many realize.
Let me just talk a little bit about the Clean Water Act. In 1972, the focus was industrial point sources. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program, a top-down regulatory program, was designed to deal with point sources of pollution. NPDES reached out and picked up concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) production areas as a point source. Lagoons and associated dewatering operations were also included as point sources. In the debate between Senators Muskie and Dole, it was clear that Congress saw a difference between water pollution associated with industrial operations (and concentrated animal feeding operations) and runoff from crop fields. And that's why this policy space (governing the latter) at the federal level is empty right now.
We will not have predictability across this country in the way we manage these issues until that policy space is filled in. It's one thing to develop third party programs and put them in place. But if we don't get something in the Farm Bill and something in the Clean Water Act that recognizes and codifies these programs, then you're going to wind up with the NPDES program pulled all the way across the agricultural industry (to include crop farms). Alot of folks think this is a foregone conclusion. But if you look at it, crop and mixed farms are big-time different from the CAFOs and industrial facilities.
It's not a question of do we fix it or not. That's not the question at all. More and more producers across the country understand that's not the issue. The issue is how do we do it in some predictable manner, still get the results that we want, and keep government regulators one step removed from agriculture's production area? In Texas, when we first started working, there were 4000 point sources that our state EPA was inspecting. In Erath county where we have 140 dairies, if we go to a phosphorous-based application rate, which we have to do, or haul the rest of it out of the watershed, we're going to have 2000 fields that must be inspected. Now, you tell me how we're going to inspect all those fields, to where there's any predictability. So, we must think through new approaches.
Municipal and industrial point sources achieve compliance objectives through treatment systems located outside the production area. For the last 30 years, industry worked hard to keep EPA outside their production area. And here's why: as a farmer, when we get CNMPs and they turn into permit nutrient plans (PNPs), they are going to specify type of crop grown, tillage practices, distance to stream, width of filter strip, and perhaps even the height of the filter strip. All of these things will then become enforcable criteria. If it says that your filter strip is supposed to be 100 feet wide and it's 50 feet wide, then you're going to be in violation of your PNP.
If agriculture doesn't get busy and make these third party certification programs work, then what you're going to be faced with is a government regulatory program that's going to exercise authority directly over these lands. We're proposing a two-step process, and it has to be a very predictable two-step process. The first step is a farmer-friendly program. The second step is that bad actors that don't get involved with the program [such as an EMS program] become subject to government regulation. Its got to be predictable. It bothers some farm groups when we talk about a back-up regulatory program. That has been our experience in the Bosque. Everyone talked about voluntary programs initially, however, when it gets right down to where you can't duck the problem, where you have to fix it, then the conclusion of the industry is, "everyone's got to participate." Everyone has to do the right thing. I'm suggesting that we have to build a new institution. And there's nothing like it on the face of the earth. We're talking about components of it at this meeting. But where does the funding come from to sustain it until there is enough demand to support a national program? How do we ensure quality control? How do we make sure that assessments and certifications can be done predictably and systematically across the country. In my mind, those are the real challenges facing this program.
I don't want to diminish the other issues. But these institutional challenges must be addressed so that agriculture can make the case that this delivery system will achieve Clean Water Act objectives. Anything short of that will result in EPA and environmental groups pushing to put direct NPDES regulations over all fields and ultimately all of agriculture.
Question: What is this new institution? Private, federal, state?
Ron Jones: The authorization has to be broad enough so that the certification process can be driven either by local governments or producer groups.
Question: Can we sell it to the public?
Ron Jones: Yes. I don't think that in our state or in most states, there's going to be enough money appropriated to inspect all these fields. The private sector must play a huge role. This can't be smoke and mirrors, so that you can get by one more year doing the same old thing. We're going to kick this process off in the Bosque, but it's going to be a very transparent process. We're going to involve the mayor of Waco, a downstream city. The best we can do for agriculture are programs that rely on good science and economics, that maintain the competitiveness of the industry, and that keep government one step removed from privately held agricultural lands.
Stan Johnson: If we adopt the ISO framework, which is about the capacity to meet a particular objective, that puts a huge amount of responsibility right where it should be -- with the farmer or with the watershed and whoever knows the most about it. There'll be regulations; there already are. These processes are ways to document that you are meeting the regulations and have the capacity to do that. I think Environmental Management Systems are a key piece of what will emerge in different forms and with different institutions as part of this new system.
What you're proposing here is something radical in relation to the Natural Resources Conservation Service's current practices. What has been the reaction in your on-going dialogues with NRCS?
Stan Johnson: I think the days of Best Management Practices are gone. We'll have them as guidelines, rules of thumb. All these things are valuable. But we're going to transition to a systems, process, certified approach that will be together with whatever kinds of targets are there in terms of water quality or air quality or whatever. One of the things that is an issue for the EMS project here, is that it tends to focus on farms. Many times, the context in which it's most efficient to manage these systems and establish the process is larger than a farm context. How that gets done is a very complicated issue, and one that research and education institutions like land-grants, need to be involved in.
Jim Horne: BMPs have a very important role in the context of an EMS. They cannot stand alone, but BMPs give a system its substantive underpinning.
Question: There are lots of insults from agriculture, industry, and municipalities. Do you see an emerging cooperation among these potential EMS elements? How do you see this coordination developing so that no single segment is targeted to deal with a specific insult while the others get by?
Stan Johnson: TMDLs put these people in association with each other immediately, and maybe that's one of their most important functions. I think the dimensions of the areas that are defined by TMDLs we'll find out are far too large. The information costs of getting to know all these people are very high. We've been trying this in some communities with watershed councils, and watching what emerges. It doesn't always emerge in the same way. It's very interesting that when the community gets involved, they might set even higher water quality standards than the regulatory bodies do. For example, an old farmer in one of the watersheds said "I don't care about the specifics of what's in the stream, I want to be able to catch trout in the stream again. When that happens we're there." Citizens don't care about phosphorous parts per billion and all that sort of stuff. They see that as part of the quality of life in that community. So if you create these institutions and allow them to work, you may get a lot of differentiation in both how communities go after it, and what they think are appropriate indicators of success.
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