Buffer Strip Research Paper

Based on research completed by University of Minnesota soil scientists, the state mandates that every wetland should be protected by a 50-foot buffer zone. The City of Lilliput, a rural town located 30 miles north of St. Cloud, Minnesota, increased the buffer zone to150 feet in1990 within their municipality. The rationale behind Lilliput’s increase was because the town is zoned for predominantly rural uses, i.e. farming and cattle ranching. Due to the animal wasted and farmers’ use of pesticides on their crops, the Town Council felt that increasing the buffer around surrounding wetlands would better protect it from these sources of contamination than would the state minimum of 50

The culprit this time around is the farmland that makes up 63% of the Lake Erie watershed, or, more specifically, the potent phosphorous fertilizers being improperly applied to the land (McLean et al., 2014). Growing demand for food has placed increased pressure on farmers’ crop production, so many farmers compromise using more fertilizer less efficiently in

In Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell, Tidwell explores how the Cajuns in Southern Louisiana have been impacted by climate change. Tidwell brings to attention that Louisiana has 40% of the United States’ wetlands, but people do not realize all of the economic benefits and ecosystem services that these wetlands provide. Sadly, these wetlands are being submerged and destroyed at the rate of over a football field an hour. The main causes of Louisiana’s wetlands disappearing are the levees that prevent the Mississippi from dropping rich sediment at the mouth of the river to create barrier islands, and the careless actions of oil and gas companies (creating pipelines everywhere and frequent oil spills).

While these events happened in our area more headline news caught the eye of South Dakota citizens. Senator Tom Daschle proposed a bill that had the potential to lead to the development of more wetlands in South Dakota. The bill offered tax credits to farmers who preserved wetlands not enrolled in the Conservation reserve program or wetland reserve program (Olson). With the Winter of 1997-1998 being so short schools, banks, city crews, and churches were able to catch up on their budgets. Schools didn 't have to call off any days, city crews

The agriculture industry lost around 1.7 billion dollars, due to not having the proper water allocations for the fields. On the west wide of the valley, half of their 600,000 acres of farmland went fallow, because they didn’t have enough water to farm them. And about 14,500 farm workers in the Central Valley lost their jobs. Without the proper water allocations, farmers will have to continue to pump ground water at extremely high costs, which will force people out of the industry and raise the price of the products produced by the those who can stay in. The impact of the fight over water ripples far beyond those just in agriculture, it affects all of

To address the issue of unregulated fertilizer pollution in water supplies, Glennon quantitatively analyzes the amount of fertilizer that is used in the United States: “According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agricultural industry annually applies 110 billion pounds of fertilizer to one-eighth of the landmass of the continental United States” (69). With this statistic, Glennon creates opportunities in his piece to include new and compelling evidence that demonstrates the dangers of water pollution and its impacts on the nation. Along with this statistic concerning fertilizers, Glennon further expands his claim to describe the issue of runoff from other chemicals, such as perchlorate, in water supplies: “…the contamination plume from the Kerr-McGee plant contains 20 million pounds of perchlorate dissolved in more than 9 billion gallons of water” (69). By including the words “million” and “billion” in his data about chemical runoff, Glennon intimidates the reader into believing that these contamination issues affect populations on an enormous scale. He also frequently uses authoritative figures to strengthen his claim: “[A 2004 EPA report] alarmingly predicted that as many as 355,000 hazardous waste sites would require cleanup over the next thirty years, costing $250 billion” (75). Glennon attempts to alarm the reader and expose the detrimental costs of water pollution and its widespread consequences. However, while Glennon usually cites his evidence, he also includes information from unknown sources, which causes the reader to question the validity of some of his claims. In one argument concerning TCE, another industrial chemical, Glennon declares the dangers of the chemical without

The environment, and recreational activities that are essential to the outdoors, have also been negatively impacted by this system for allocating water rights. The issue of whether or not this system is equitable towards environmental protection has been raised because environmental organizations typically do not have the same funds as other entities, such as cities and towns, oil, gas, and energy companies, and manufacturing. Furthermore, as Jones and Cech point out, “environmental concerns continue to be underrepresented in Colorado water law and policy” (p. 712). This has created a situation similar to agriculture, where environmental concerns become second thoughts to those of M&I, giving rise to environmental issues across the state. These environmental issues can have an effect on residents throughout Colorado, from anglers who enjoy healthy streams and rivers for fishing, to kayakers and rafters who need flowing rivers to recreate

Because of the judge’s ruling that the legislature is the only way to change this, that means a bill is how it will have to be fixed. The best option to alleviate farm runoff would be to impose similar regulations to what the state of Minnesota has done. The

Art Cullen, 59, is co-owner of The Storm Lake Times and received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing that challenged big corporate agriculture businesses in a small town in Iowa. In “Wrong Assumptions”, Art Cullen claims that Gov. Terry Branstad $4.7 billion plan to promote water quality in Iowa is totally unnecessary and also believes that skimming sales taxes from school is just the government wasting valuable money that could be used for somewhere else. Cullen supports his claim that Gov. Terry Branstad plan isn’t the best option by explaining that the actually plan would actually cost “more like 15 billion when you factor in federal and private cost-shares - to clean up our nitrate problem” (Cullen). He also explain a idea in

The buffer can filter out the stuff we put in our lawns, stop the silt that washes off places where we dig and contain pollutants from lawns and roads. These pollutants have another way to get in to the Chattahoochee, they flow virtually unchecked into the river from hundreds of miles of creeks that thread through the water shed. Silt is sent down stream because of nearby construction. The greatest danger to the creeks and to the water shed is land disturbing activities that lead to erosion, whether it is tearing out plants and trees along the banks or lack of fence systems to hold dirt. Local governments over seen by the state authority boards are responsible for enforcing state laws on erosion control. But when faced with the pressure and desire to increase tax, few local governments stand in the way of development. Even the latest growing counties have at most a few people to enforce the law. Donald Mitchell, chief soil and erosion inspector in Fulton Count, compares his job to "dropping a bucket of golf balls on a driveway and having to pick 'em up before they hit the street." His job is part cop and part educator. He needs to make sure everyone is educated on the issue so that people know what to do. Erosion into the creeks that feed the Chattahoochee is even more severe a problem than direct run-off into the river, as

The next controversy among North Dakota farmers is the demolition of shelterbelts. For many farmers the shelterbelts are vital to

The Standing Rock Indian Reservation covers 3,571.9 square miles of North and South Dakota, and is home to 6,171 people. Though Standing Rock has been featured in recent news about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), corporate invasion of tribal land is not the only issue this or any reservation faces. The people of Standing Rock have seen the graves of their families desecrated and much of their arable land submerged by the construction of the Oahe Dam, do not have access to sufficient clean water, and have an acute need for more housing to be built. Additionally, according to the the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA ERS), based on data from 2015, the Standing Rock Reservation meets criteria that classify it as a food

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”(1) The Keystone pipeline project is an excellent example of our entitled view regarding the environment. The last phase of the Keystone pipeline has finally been approved by President Trump after nine years of governmental delay. The first three phase have been completed, however this phase named the XL is the final phase of the Keystone pipeline project and it is the most important. Spanning two

“Farmers too, are starting to worry. In Merced County, farm leaders are trying to stop two private landowners from selling as much as 7 billion gallons of good water to farmers in another country. They call it “groundwater mining” (Source 3).If we start fixing the problem now there will be no problem later in the future. “At this point in time, we don’t want to keep going on at this pace. It’s more of a temporary fix” (Source

In the UVA Chesapeake Bay Game, I was assigned the role of a Crop Farmer number for the the Potomac River watershed. In the Bay game, the crop farmer controls several things, including the type of farming used, the number of acres used for each purpose, and the option of buying new farm equipment ("UVA Bay Game", 2016). The types of farming used in the bay game are conventional high yield, best management practices (BMP), advanced BMP, and sustainable ("UVA Bay Game", 2016). These farming practices range from very poor for the Bay’s health to the most beneficial. Conventional high yield farming produces the largest volume of crops, however uses pesticides and fertilizer that are detrimental to the Bay’s health ("UVA Bay Game", 2016). Sustainable farming is the most beneficial for the Bay as it puts a diverse population of plants together in order to reduce runoff, however it is more costly and has a lesser crop yield than the other farming practices ("UVA Bay Game", 2016). The crop farmer also has an option to choose how many acres will be used for planting, fallow land (land reserved for the next year to maintain nutrients), and cover crops that will be used as a more natural and environmentally sound option compared to other fertilizers ("UVA Bay Game", 2016).