Marathon Co. to seek state funds for watershed project

The Marathon County Executive Committee on Thursday directed administrator Lance Leonhard to try and locate state funding for a six-year, $610,000 annual “pay for performance” program meant to significantly reduce agricultural phosphorus runoff in a west county watershed.

The directive followed a presentation from county land and water program director Paul Daigle, speaking on behalf of the Environmental Resources Committee (ERC), asking county leadership to lobby area legislators to include funding in the state budget for a Fenwood Creek Subwatershed Project.

Executive Committee members were skeptical state budget chiefs, especially at this late date in the budget writing process, would include money for the county program, but thought funding might be found in the federal American Rescue Act or through some other vehicle.

County board chairman Kurt Gibbs, town of Cassel, who asked several skeptical questions about the Fenwood project, suggested Daigle’s request be returned to the ERC, but supervisor John Robinson, Wausau, who asked his own skeptical questions, said there was no time for the ERC to review the Fenwood project and successfully pushed for Leonhard to secure funding.

Daigle said current conservation programs in the county don’t work. All farmers in Wisconsin must meet a list of state performance standards, he explained, but even if all farmers in the county meet these standards, rivers and creeks would still be “impaired” and not meet state and federal standards for phosphorus reduction. He said the state and county in the past targeted barnyards and manure pits to reduce polluting runoff, but that cropland was now the biggest culprit behind surface water pollution.

Daigle said current state conservation programs did not respect the autonomy of farmers, allowing them to create solutions.

“The state is very prescriptive,” he said. “They offer square pegs but we have round holes.”

He proposed a “going from good to great” pilot program in the Fenwood Creek Subwatershed to assess whether the county could “move the needle” and reduce phosphorus runoff across the rest of Marathon County cropland.

Daigle proposed paying Fenwood area farmers:

_ $20 a per acre for reduced tillage and cover crops.

_ $30 per acre for reduced tillage, cover crops and longer crop rotations.

_ $40 per acre for no till planting, cover crops and managed grazing.

Farmers would be paid half these amounts to maintain these “superior farming” practices after a threeyear period. The program, if approved, would pay for an $80,000 staff person in the Conservation, Planning and Zoning Department.

Daigle said the pilot would attempt to find out if these payments could persuade Fenwood Creek Subwatershed farmers to lower phosphorus by 60 percent or 31,536 pounds each year. If the program is a success, the approach could be used county-wide, he said.

If no state funding is available for the pilot project, he said the county itself could fund it and, if the county chose not to provide funding, the next option to meet phosphorus goals would be for the county to request the state impose targeted performance standards on Marathon County farmers. These are special pollution regulations such as were imposed on Brown and Kewaunee dairy producers after that region suffered widespread well contamination from manure.

Chairman Gibbs voiced concerns about the proposal. He questioned whether the state could approve such a project, given its potential statewide cost, and whether the “superior farming” practices were profitable such that farmers would continue with the practices after government payments stopped. Gibbs worried that, like in the past, farmers would revert to “traditional” cropping practices after incentives went away.

Daigle said he did not know what the pilot project would cost either statewide or countywide. He said he had no data to show that the “superior” farming practices were, in fact, profitable, largely because farmers were reluctant to make cropping budgets public. He said, however, that UW-Marshfield Agricultural Station had documented cost savings from no-till agriculture.

Gibbs said farmers paid to adopt “superior” farming practices needed to be “held accountable” and profitability needed to be shown. He said cropping budgets could be “sanitized” to protect the individual identities of farmers.

Robinson said Daigle was exaggerating when he said the program would take farming from “good to great” because all he wanted to do is take currently polluted rivers and reservoirs off a list of impaired surface waters. He stressed that any program needed to show outcomes, including whether farmers adopting new techniques remained profitable.

He said he supported the pilot project, but that if farmers themselves did not take responsibility for agricultural run-off “sooner or later it will be required” that producers change their cropping practices.

ERC chairman Jacob Langenhahn, town of Marathon, said he appreciated the committee’s discussion, but stressed his committee voted unanimously in favor of the Fenwood Creek Subwatershed Project to support the county strategic plan that calls for reducing phosphorus runoff into the creek by over 14,000 pounds a year. He said the county government had to honor its environmental obligations.

“One way or another, we committed ourselves to this,” Langenhahn said. “We have to take some kind of action.”