Dairy pushes forward on clean water

By John Holevoet, director of government affairs

We all lived through the so-called “Year of Clean Drinking Water.” That’s what Gov. Tony Evers declared 2019 shortly after he was inaugurated. State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos responded with his own bipartisan task force to work on water issues. Thanks to COVID-19 and politics, the results of both efforts were minimal. 

Now it’s up to all of us to decide if we’re committed to something bigger. Could this be our decade of clean water? 

The Speaker’s Task Force on Water Quality pushed forward a handful of bills that would have invested about $10 million in several initiatives. While these bills passed the Assembly, they failed to come up for a vote in the Senate because the session was cut short by the beginning of the pandemic. 

This legislative session, there were a handful of items included in the state budget to move the ball forward on water quality, such as additional funding for farmer-led conservation initiatives and county conservation offices. 

There has been a real reluctance to do anything more this session, in part because anything that would spend additional funds would trigger something called “Maintenance of Effort” (MOE), which, because of our state’s acceptance of some COVID-era federal relief, would require a 70 percent matching investment in K-12 education. The handful of bills that do relate to water quality this session includes a modernization of the Farmland Preservation Program, which would probably have delayed implementation to avoid the MOE problem. 

DBA also has partnered with most other ag groups to support two bills that specifically target issues related to nitrates. One spends money to create a nitrogen optimization program for commercial fertilizer, provide crop insurance rebates for cover crops and fund a new hydrogeologist position to work with counties and farmers on groundwater issues. The other bill has no fiscal impact. Instead, it makes some statutory changes to make a few existing programs (e.g. the producer-led watershed grants and well compensation program) more flexible and efficient. 

As of this writing, the non-fiscal nitrate bill has emerged from a Senate committee on a unanimous vote. Its prospects look decent. The nitrate bill that would spend money faces a more uphill battle because of the financing and a couple of groups are opposed to the possibility of funding any new research on water. 

Despite the challenges, we’re going to continue pushing for both bills. They will be some of the legislation that we will focus on during our annual members’ lobbying event: Dairy Day at the Capitol. (Dairy Day is scheduled to take place on Jan. 18 and I hope you’ll join us.) The reality is that these bills are very modest steps. Research may not always give you the answers you want, but it does provide information you need to make sound future decisions. 

DBA’s sustainability journey has also taught us to not fear research. Good things are happening on the landscape and research shows that as well. That does not mean we don’t have challenges; however, ignoring them is not a long-term strategy for the future of dairy farming and agriculture. 

Beyond our efforts in the state Legislature, DBA and our affiliated co-op, Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, are trying to make the most of the infusion of federal cash the state, counties and many federal agencies have received through COVID relief, the infrastructure bill and potentially the Build Back Better bill. I am sure that our members are divided over some of these bills, but if they are the law of the land, it would be foolish not to try to utilize these funds in a way most beneficial to farmers and our sustainability goals. 

The evolution of DBA’s thinking about sustainability, which includes our collaboration with a handful of environmental groups, does mark a change from an approach from many years ago. That approach could best be summed up as obfuscate and litigate. Well, we can only hide from things for so long and battling things out in the courts has proven to be an expensive and generally unsuccessful gamble. 

The road we’re on is not always going to be a comfortable one, but the alternative is an even bumpier ride (with hefty lawyer bills to boot).