For Release October 3, 2000

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

There has been much ado lately about the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) filing a lawsuit against the state over the clean water act. What has gathered the most attention is the suggested regulation of farm ponds. As usual, there’s been a lot of smoke, mirrors and hot air involved in this discussion. All three of these items make it very difficult to see some of the real issues.

I will not attempt to rehash all that has happened to get us to this point. But in a nutshell, a lawsuit was filed by several organizations against certain government entities saying that the federal clean water act was not being enforced. EPA looked into the matter, felt that the Kansas statutes were not adequate and issued proposed regulations to fix the problem.

I have a copy of the proposed regulations. Like most regulations, they are difficult to read and even tougher to understand. If they are enacted, then the administrative rules have to be developed to know how the regulations are going to be enforced. It’s very complex, there are very few clear cut issues in it and nobody knows where we will end up. There will probably be some compromises worked out, just as there was in a similar case in Idaho several years ago.

Part of the problem is that the Kansas laws, that were written to allow the state to enforce the Clean Water Act, have some rather unclear statements. There are also exceptions that contradict the intent of the regulations. There are also a lot of phrases that are not well defined, such as the difference between a farm pond and a fresh water reservoir.

The question that I’ve found most people wanting to know the answer to is: do farm ponds and pastures pollute streams and rivers? Anytime that there is a hard enough rain that you have runoff from any piece of land, there will be some form of pollution or contamination occurring. Erosion occurs in grasslands. Simply look at any dry farm pond and see how much silt has washed into it over the years. But the fact that the silt stopped in the farm pond indicates that they are helping to reduce contamination further downstream.

When cattle have free access to streams, there is bound to be some waste matter that ends up in that stream. But the same thing can be said for wildlife. And I don’t think any of us want to know what really goes on around any of our recreational lakes! These are all reasons why we have water treatment facilities for public drinking water. We all know that even the clearest mountain stream can contain nasty parasitic organisms that can make us sick if we drink it.

We all want to have the cleanest water possible. That includes every farmer and rancher out there. We all know that we do things that aren’t in the best interest of our water, whether we are a municipality, a farmer or a homeowner. Kansas has one of the best water sampling and testing networks in the country. We know better than any other state what problems we have with our waters.

We have made the state and federal government responsible for seeing that we do what we can to protect the waters of the state and the health of the population. We ALL then have a responsibility to do our share to protect the waters. There’s some vague languages in the laws that needs to be fixed. And there are some structural changes that need to be made and some management that needs to be adjusted. But just give us a little bit of time and room to work, and we can get it done, if we all cooperatively work together.

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