NRCS also wants to work with groups

Agency proposes Regional Watershed Enhancement Program

Patricia R. McCoy
Capital Press

October 19, 2007


SALT LAKE CITY - The Natural Resources Conservation Service is well known for working with individuals on a volunteer partnership basis, but there are times when projects might work better if they were done in partnership with a group.

The agency currently has no authority to do so. One provision of the new farm bill currently before Congress seeks to change that, says Sara Schmidt, NRCS regional assistant chief for the West.

The proposal is the Regional Watershed Enhancement Program, which would competitively fund watershed or irrigation district level water conservation projects, she told a water conference here Oct. 11.

Such projects would target working agricultural lands and focus on one to two key water quantity or quality objectives, she said.

As proposed, the program includes performance incentives to encourage high producer participation in project areas, establishes interim performance targets that must be achieved in order to renew a project and invests mandatory funding of a suggested $175 million a year.

"One of our programs is the Wildlife Habitat Program, which already allows us to go beyond the boundaries of a single operation to work with groups such as nonprofit organizations or tribal entities," Schmidt said. "We want to apply that to a broader scale, which would let us apply our more popular program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, in a much more flexible way.

"For instance, we recently completed a project with an irrigation district in Marysville , Idaho , that involved 43 separate landowners. We had to do 43 sets of paperwork," she said. "As a result, it took a long time and involved a lot of bureaucracy, frustrating the landowners involved.

"With authority for regional programs, we could act a lot faster, with one set of paperwork," she said.

As proposed, the program would still require the buy-in of all landowners concerned, Schmidt said.

Schmidt presented the proposed program to more than 200 water management officials and experts at a conference held here Oct. 10-12 titled "Water Policies and Planning in the West: Ensuring a Sustainable Future."

It was sponsored by the Western Governors Association and the Western States Water Council, in cooperation with a number of federal agencies and multi-state organizations, including the NRCS.

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