Family Farm Alliance: Family Farm Alliance Joins National Call to Action to Address Freshwater Crisis Sept 15, 2010

Mission: To ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers.

Issue Alert!

Family Farm Alliance Joins National Call to Action to Head off Looming Freshwater Crisis

Economy, public health, ecosystems threatened without new direction in freshwater management by public and private sectors, diverse coalition cautions

Media Contacts: Patrick O'Toole (WYOMING) - 970-376-6311 or 307-380-6176
Dan Keppen (OREGON) - 541-892-6244

(Washington, D.C. - September 15, 2010)

The Family Farm Alliance joined a diverse coalition of businesses, farmers, environmental not-for-profits and government agencies today in issuing a landmark call to action aimed at heading off a national crisis in water quality and supply that could affect the nation's economy, the livability of our communities and the health of our ecosystems.

"Charting New Waters: A Call to Action to Address U.S. Freshwater Challenges," is the culmination of an intensive two-year collaboration exploring solutions to U.S. freshwater challenges. It was presented to the Obama Administration at a meeting of federal agencies convened by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and released to the public during a noon forum at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

Alliance President Patrick O'Toole, a rancher from Wyoming, was one of five individuals who appeared on a "Leaders" panel before the public unveiling of the "Call to Action" earlier today. Alliance Executive Director Dan Keppen (OREGON) was also in attendance.

"There was broad consensus among participants that our current path will, unless changed, lead us to a national freshwater crisis in the foreseeable future," the Call to Action reports. "This reality encompasses a wide array of challenges ... that collectively amount to a tenuous trajectory for the future of the nation's freshwater resources."

The report identifies serious challenges to the quality and supply of freshwater, such as pollution and scarcity; competing urban, rural and ecosystem water needs; climate change; environmental and public health impacts; and a variety of economic implications. It offers actions to confront these threats and a plan to ensure that our freshwater resources are secure for the 21st century.

"We have been issued a challenge, and it's time to rise to meet that challenge," said O'Toole, who raises sheep and cattle with his family on ranch straddling the continental divide. "Family farmers and ranchers have a proven track record of finding solutions to constantly emerging challenges, and we hope this report will point federal policy makers in our direction."

While a great deal of progress has been made since landmark freshwater legislation in the 1970s, many freshwater challenges persist, the report says. It sees some as acute and obvious, such as severe droughts and broken water mains. Others are characterized as more subtle and chronic, building quietly over the years - such as endocrine disrupting chemicals in rivers and drinking water and the slow but steady depletion of aquifers and declining snowpack in parts of the country.

The document is believed to be the first such comprehensive, cross-sector examination of U.S. freshwater challenges and solutions. It represents consensus recommendations of diverse interests convened by The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread in Racine, Wisconsin.

Reliable freshwater supplies are an essential underpinning of U.S. economic security, with energy generation, manufacturing, food production and many activities of daily life dependent on access to freshwater, the report says. It notes that an estimated 41 percent of U.S. freshwater withdrawals are for thermoelectric power generation, primarily coal, nuclear and natural gas; 37 percent go toward irrigated agriculture.

"For too long, our society has treated water as a cheap, non-strategic and infinitely available resource. Not anymore. Threats to water quality and access are putting our businesses, communities and way of life in jeopardy. The time to act is now," said S. Curtis Johnson, chairman of Diversey Inc., a leading global provider of cleaning and hygiene solutions to the institutional marketplace and co-signer of the Call to Action.

The document proposes a series of shared actions across sectors to ensure sustainable and resilient freshwater resources so that we have the ability to absorb changes, sudden or otherwise, through flexible water management strategies.

The Call to Action's recommendations include a range of freshwater management strategies to head off a potential crisis, such as streamlining and better coordinating fragmented governance among federal, state and local jurisdictions. Another key need identified in the report is modernizing our freshwater regulatory framework, developed in the 1970s to deal with the acute environmental issues of that era.

The report also calls for better accounting of the full cost of services delivered by municipal water and wastewater utilities and sharing this information with consumers. Revised pricing structures that more accurately reflect the full cost of services could be one step toward financing badly needed upgrades to U.S. water and wastewater systems.

"Freshwater is our most precious resource and the lifeblood of our economy - industry, agriculture and energy generation all depend heavily on adequate supplies of freshwater. Water quality in our natural and municipal freshwater systems is vital to the health and livability of our communities," said Helen Johnson-Leipold, chairman of The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread. "The Foundation and its many partners in this collaboration offer the Call to Action as a means of bringing overdue attention to our nation's freshwater challenges and sparking action to address them."

A leading representative of the agriculture community commended the process that led to today's announcement.

"It's enabled a range of participants who seldom engage each other to arrive at some potentially significant and effective recommendations, such as those regarding water quality and the Farm Bill, guidelines for the work and composition of the proposed Freshwater Commission, and emphasis on the importance of local and state leadership in developing co-beneficial solutions based on sound data in local watersheds," said Ray Gaesser, past president of the Iowa Soybean Association and co-signer of the Call to Action.

In addition to signing onto the Call to Action, the parties in this groundbreaking initiative also made commitments as individual organizations to take actions to address freshwater challenges.

The Family Farm Alliance has produced a document - "Western Water Management Case Studies" (July 2010) - that illustrates farming best practices and success stories from throughout the Western United States.

"As our document was being prepared, we were asked to testify before a Senate water committee about the report, which was seen by policy makers on Capitol Hill as a constructive approach to educating policy makers on how to solve vexing water challenges," said Keppen. "We have since distributed the PDF version of that report to national conservation, water and farming organizations, Western governors, Congressional offices, key Obama Administration policy makers, and the media."

Click here for a PDF version of the Alliance report.

"Going forward, we commit to working with interested parties to host watershed tours
throughout the West, with the goal of helping policy makers and practitioners understand and implement collaborative, grassroots-based best practices for watershed management," said O'Toole. "As a first step, we will host a tour of the Little Snake River watershed in Wyoming - one of the case studies outlined in our report - which highlights the successes that can be achieved through integrated, collaborative watershed management and the importance of locally led management efforts."

For additional information about the Call to Action, or to learn more about The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, please visit www.johnsonfdn.org.

The Family Farm Alliance is a grassroots organization of family farmers, ranchers, irrigation districts and allied industries in 16 Western states. The Alliance is focused on one mission: To ensure the availability of reliable, affordable irrigation water supplies to Western farmers and ranchers. Since 2005, the Family Farm Alliance has been invited to testify 25 times before Congress on water and environmental challenges and legislation. For more information on the Alliance, go to www.familyfarmalliance.org