Program intends to involve private sector in environmental protection initiatives
By John Flesher
AP Environmental Writer
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is teaming with businesses, nonprofits and others on a five-year, $2.4 billion program that will fund locally designed soil and water conservation projects nationwide, Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
Authorized by the new farm law enacted earlier this year, the Regional Conservation Partnership Program is intended to involve the private sector more directly in planning and funding environmental protection initiatives tied to agriculture. Officials provided details of the program to The Associated Press ahead of an announcement scheduled for Tuesday.
“It’s a new approach to conservation that is really going to encourage people to think in very innovative and creative ways,” Vilsack said.
He described the projects to be funded as “clean water start-up operations” that will benefit communities and watersheds, a departure from the department’s more traditional approach of focusing on individual operators adopting practices such as no-till cultivation or planting buffer strips to prevent runoff into streams.
Universities, local and tribal governments, companies and sporting groups are among those eligible to devise plans and seek grants.
“This program is a recognition that a coordinated and comprehensive effort is more effective than the USDA operating on its own and Ducks Unlimited operating on its own and the Kellogg Foundation operating on its own,” Vilsack said.
In addition to protecting the environment, the projects will bolster the rural economy by supporting tourism and outdoor recreation jobs while avoiding pollution that would cost more to clean up, he said.
USDA will spend $1.2 billion — including $400 million the first year — and raise an equal amount from participants. Successful applications will include offers of cash, labor or other contributions, as well as plans for achieving measurable solutions and using new approaches, said Jason Weller, chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Vilsack was announcing the program in Michigan, home state of Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, primary writer of the farm bill with Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma. A news conference was scheduled in Bay City near Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay, where nutrient runoff from croplands causes algae blooms that degrade water quality.
Stabenow said she expected the area to generate several funding proposals.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, established by the cereal pioneer, is working with The Nature Conservancy on a project designed to reduce runoff in the Saginaw Bay watershed, said Diane Holdorf, the foundation’s chief sustainability officer. Kellogg, based in Battle Creek, buys wheat for its cereals from farms in the area.
The program establishes three pots of money for grants. Thirty-five percent of total funding will be divided among “critical” areas including the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the Columbia, Colorado and Mississippi river basins, the Longleaf Pine Range, prairie grasslands and the California Bay Delta.
Additionally, 40 percent will go to regional or multi-state projects selected on a competitive basis and 25 percent to state-level projects.
The California Rice Commission plans to seek funding of initiatives to expand water bird habitat in flooded Central Valley rice fields, said Paul Buttner, manager of environmental affairs. Rice farms are an indispensable waterfowl refuge because most of the original wetlands have been developed, he said.
Working with the USDA and other partners, the rice commission has developed practices that can make fields more hospitable for birds such as draining them more gradually ahead of planting season and building nesting islands, Buttner said. The new program could attract more participants, he said.
The New Mexico Association of Conservation Districts will develop proposals for combating invasive plants that suck too much water from the ground and ranching practices that could slow the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, Executive Director Debbie Hughes said.
