Special funding totaling $3.75 million will go to a cost-share program next year to improve water quality in two Northwest Arkansas watersheds, said Dave White, chief of the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The financial commitment could swell to $38 million over the next eight years, White said by telephone Thursday from Little Rock, where he announced the funding at a news conference.
“The goal is to make the regulators into the Maytagrepairman,” he said. “We’re wanting to have everything so splendid that there’s no need for the repairman.”
The Environmental Quality Incentives Program focuses on the Illinois River and Eucha-Spavinaw watersheds, which cover 1.32 million acres in portions of eastern Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas.
Landowners who voluntarily sign contacts of 1-10 years agree to implement certain conservation efforts on their property in exchange for payments.
The program will complement the other U.S. Department of Agriculture effortknown as the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. That program provided $30 million last year to the Illinois River watershed, where eligible landowners are providing 15-year conservation easements in exchange for annual payments.
“I think it will give us momentum,” said Delia Haak, director of the Illinois River Watershed Partnership, a river-protection organization. “I’m wanting these programs to be successful and protect watersheds.”
Oklahoma and Arkansas, which together authorized $1.25 million to go with the$3.75 million announced Thursday, submitted a joint application to obtain the money. White was impressed with the states’ cooperation and quality of the application, but he has only authorized the special funding for the first year.
“It’s my full intent to get to the whole $38 million,” White said.
Oklahoma and Arkansas have been at odds over the two watersheds for decades, with Oklahoma entities claiming that poultry companies, farmers and Northwest Arkansas sewer plantsare polluting rivers that flow into Oklahoma.
In 2001, the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority sued six poultry companies and the Arkansas city of Decatur, accusing them of polluting the Eucha-Spavinaw watershed with bird manure used as fertilizer and sewer plant discharges.
That federal lawsuit was settled in 2003, when the companies agreed to pay $7.5 million and limit how much bird manure is used as fertilizer in the watershed. In the agreement, Decatur said it would clean up sewer plant discharges.
Since then, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson brought a federal lawsuit against Springdalebased Tyson Foods Inc. and other poultry companies.
During a 50-day trial that ended earlier this year, Edmondson claimed the companies were polluting the Illinois River watershed with manure. The federal judge who oversaw the trial hasn’t issued a ruling.
Making money available to landowners is a far better approach to improving water quality than lawsuitsand dealing with the “heavyhanded, punitive approach” of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
“We know the EPA has put the Illinois River on their priority list,” Lincoln said by phone. “We’re in their crosshairs.
“I just think a collaborative effort like this is so much better than a top-down effort from the EPA that does nothing but fine people. I’d much rather see us take an incentives approach.”
Farmers and landowners in the region have been slow to latch onto the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program started last year in Benton and Washington counties.
Making $30 million available to lease up to 15,000 acres over 15 years, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency has enrolled just 40 acres, said Ted Collins, executive director of Farm Service Agency offices in Benton and Washington counties.
The program pays $300 per acre the first year, then $84.50 each subsequent year. Collins said one Washington County landowner told him he’d need bigger annual payments to make it work.
“When you ask a producer to take his best land out of production, it’s a big stepand a big decision,” Collins said. “Anything you do in agriculture is bottom-line, dollar-driven.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/29/2010