Legislators propose Fenwood funding
State would pay for conservation practices for six years
Four central Wisconsin state legislators are proposing to fund a Fenwood Creek Subwatershed pilot project as a way to test whether the approach could be used to improve water quality across the state. The project would be funded at $607,000 a year through 2025.
The co-sponsors are Sen. Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls) and Reps. Donna Rozar (R-Marshfield), Pat Snyder (RWausau) and “Jimmy Boy” Edming (R-Glen Flora). The program, developed by the Marathon County Conservation, Planning and Zoning Department (CPZ), would pay farmers between $20 and $40 an acre for practices that reduce agricultural run-off, including reduced tillage, planting cover crops and management intensive rotational grazing. Farmers would get half-payments for maintenance after three years.
In a co-sponsorship memo that went out to legislators, the local officials argue that the state’s current tool for protecting against farm pollution, Nutrient Management Plans, have not been effective and that a new approach is needed. “Reducing agricultural runoff is critical to the health of Wisconsin’s waterways,” they write. “However, less than 37 percent of the cropland in the state has a Nutrient Management Plan in place, the state’s primary tool for reducing runoff. Of the Nutrient Management Plans in place, few have long-term impact on phosphorus reduction, causing Wisconsin to miss phosphorus reduction goals, leaving many of our waters continually on the state’s impaired list.”
The quartet of legislators claim that the Fenwood Creek Subwatershed Program has worked in Marathon County to reduce farm run-off between 60 and 90 percent. They say the county’s approach should be further tested to see if it can be scaled up for use across Wisconsin: “The Fenwood Creek Watershed makes up a significant portion of the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir, one of the greatest non-point pollutant contributors to the Wisconsin River. Expanding this pilot will not only give the state critical information about the efficacy of replicating 60 to 90 percent phosphorus reduction in other areas of Wisconsin, but will improve the condition of our state’s longest river, the Wisconsin River.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Bernier said the legislators have until April or May to have the proposal pass in this session of the legislature. The senator, he said, is “not holding her breath” to see the bill pass this session, but hopes to see it included in a future state budget. The spokesperson said Bernier tried to include the Fenwood Creek Subwatershed project in the last state budget but was unsuccessful.
CPZ conservation program manager Paul Daigle, author of the Fenwood Creek Subwatershed Project in its present form, said a funded project would explore whether county success with the program could be expanded to other parts of the state.
“If the pilot project is successful, it will provide a blueprint for the county and the state on how they want to move other impaired watersheds within the county and state forward to meet Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) goals, and what they can afford to implement, but the big question is to first to find out if we can have a watershed wide success in improving water quality, not just individual farm success stories,” he said.
Daigle clarified the county’s claim to have reduced phosphorus by between 60 and 90 percent is based on the experience of five farms. The decrease was not measured in the field, but calculated through the University of Wisconsin SNAP-Plus computer modeling system, he said.
Jimmy VanDeBrook, executive director of the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association, said the Fenwood pilot initiative had “a lot of promise” and that the environmental organization Wisconsin Greenfire would “try and help out as best we can” to support it.
VanDeBrook said the Fenwood effort offered a better way to approach conservation.
“What this does is reward people for doing a good job meeting the standards we already have,” he said. “We need to do more of that. This should be the model.”
John Kennedy, vice president of the Big Eau Pleine Citizen Organization, applauded the legislators for their bill.
“I think this is awesome,” he said. “Now we need to get Petrowski on board. The Fenwood would be a great pilot project to inform others around the state.”
ERNIER
