NRCS Helps Montana Couple Deal with Wetland Violations

A successful farmer has a connection with the land.

"I think you actually create a bond with the land, because you watch it grow like you do your kids," said Jay Meyer, who, with his wife Colleen, ranches on Burnt Fork Creek east of Stevensville. "You watch it develop and you have expectations of it."

The Meyers consider themselves stewards of the land. And they point to the fact that noxious weeds are nowhere to be found on their place. Their stewardship is something they take seriously.

"Do you see any knapweed on our ranch? Do you see any over-grazed pastures? If a farmer or rancher is not a good steward of the land and does not take care of his land he'll put himself out of business," said Colleen Meyer. "We love and care for the land. That soil is our roots - is our heritage."

And in an effort to continue to be a good steward, last fall Meyer signed a contract with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop a new irrigation system on his land that would create significant water savings. The program he signed up for was through the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program. This cost-sharing program would pay for part of his new system.

The idea was to replace flood irrigation with a pivot sprinkler system, which is a much more efficient way to irrigate as well as less labor intensive, said Meyer. With flood irrigation, the Meyers irrigate about every three weeks. With the pivot system, they would water every three days and still use less water, he said.

"The water savings that this project would create would help other farmers up and down the drainage with water," said Meyer.

But there was a hitch in the process.

Meyer cleared some trees on land that was considered by the government as wetlands, though at the time he did the work, neither he nor the government knew it was wetlands. Because he didn't know about the wetlands he didn't have a 404 permit, which is the Federal document needed to work in a wetland area.

When the NRCS found out, they turned the potential violations over to the Army Corps of Engineers, which is the government regulatory agency designated to administer the Clean Water Act, which wetlands fall under.

The Corps of Engineers, the NRCS, and the Environmental Protection Agency, along with several other local people and agency representatives came to the Meyer ranch on May 5, to look at the wetlands and some to show support for Meyer.

Pete Schendel from the Corps of Engineers decided that there were violations and that a restoration plan needed to be developed with the Meyers and the NRCS.

That plan was started when Meyer met with Craig Englehard and Pete Husby from the NRCS at his ranch.

The main part of the restoration plan is to plant trees in the 18 acres designated as wetlands.

"The trees will be the more costly part of it," said Englehard.

They will also move dirt and fill away from the wetland area and plant shorter shrubs where the planned pivot system will travel over, he said.

But the NRCS will pay for all the restoration work, which will hopefully begin soon, said Englehard.

"I would still like to get them in this spring if we can, that would be my goal," he said.

Nationally, wetlands have been in the spotlight recently.

On Earth Day, President Bush announced a new national goal for wetlands restoration. The previous goal was "no net loss" of wetlands in the United States, a stance the President took two years ago. According to an April 22 press release, the country is nearing that goal.

But now the president's goal is to increase American wetlands, according to the press release.

"The president's goal is to create, improve, and protect at least three million wetland acres over the next five years in order to increase overall wetland acres and quality," reads the release.

And as far as the EPA and the Corps of Engineers are concerned, the Meyers' small chunk of wetlands falls underneath the Federal government jurisdiction.

"Wetlands serve an important function," said Kristine Knutson, who was at the Meyer ranch on May 5, as a representative with EPA out of Helena.

Wetlands act as a sponge for flood waters, help control erosion and clean the water, she said. "Water that comes out of a wetland is generally much cleaner than what goes into it."

Wetlands are also home to a variety of wildlife, she said.

"Wetlands provide habitat for a vast majority of species yet they account for a small proportion of the landscape," Knutson said.

According to the president's press release, "wetlands cover an estimated 111 million acres of nonfederal land" in the lower 48 States.

Part of wetland protection is not allowing them to be filled in, said Knutson. That was her concern on the Meyers' ranch. There was dirt that could potentially fill in the wetland areas, but the violations weren't severe.

"It was relatively minor and with some corrective work they could put the situation back and it would restore itself," she said.

But having wetlands designated on his property wasn't something Meyer wanted. The 18 acres of wetlands is essentially protected and he can't really use it, he said.

"You can't drain it, fill it, ditch it or farm it," said Meyer. "I've lost 18 acres to any possibility. I can't wiggle."

There are Federal regulations that you have to follow when you have wetlands on your place, said Englehard. But Meyer can still graze his land, something that has been done on that ground in the past, said Englehard.

The other aspect is that Meyer is signed up to receive grant money through the EQIP program, said Husby, State biologist with the NRCS out of Bozeman.

"If you want to receive taxpayer's money then you can't do certain things in wetlands," he said.

But for Meyer, somebody coming on to his land and telling him what can and can't be done has far-reaching implications and offenses. It questions his stewardship, he said.

"There's no intention to destroy, fill, dump garbage in (the wetland). That might be an environmentalist fear that the farmer's going to do that but that's not what the farmer's going to do," he said.

The Meyers' children are sixth generation Montana farmers. Meyer's family moved to the ranch on the Burnt Fork when he was 10-years-old, he said. Montanans who have lived off the land for generations get tired when people say they don't know how wonderful the land is, he said.

"They resent out-of-state people coming in and saying you don't know how lucky you are," said Meyer. "The people who have been here for generations know what they have here. They know how lucky they are."

The Meyers talk about the importance of the cottonwood trees that grew along the creek. He watched them grow from the time he was 10, until they took them out last January. They were part of the ranch, something he and his kids had grown up with.

"It was a very emotional decision for us to start taking those trees down," said Colleen Meyer.

But that was typical for the whole process of going through the specifics of the EQIP program, she said. They knew there were going to be changes and they were taking a risk.

"All the way through there have been emotional decisions to make because we are good stewards of the land," she said.

Meyer is tired of listening to people say how beautiful the land is and then accuse farmers of destroying it, he said.

"Why is it so beautiful if we destroyed it?" he asked.

He acknowledges that there have been abuses in farming in the past. There have been farmers who haven't taken care of their land, but those kinds of farmers aren't successful and don't last long, he said.

And as far as the NRCS is concerned, Meyer has been a good steward, said Englehard.

"I think for the most part he's done a good job, other than the wetland thing. He just missed it."

But the mistake was made in good faith, he said.

"That's why I'm doing the best I can," said Englehard.

Though Meyer's irrigation project is on hold now, there is no reason it can't continue as planned once the wetlands are restored, he said.

Meyer seems cautiously optimistic. There is still some work to be done to bring everything together and he still wishes there had been a way to avoid stopping the project at all.

"If they could have seen the end product come to fruition, the issues that are the obstacles right now would have seemed very small," Meyer said.

Reporter Greg Lemon, Ravalli Republic.