New Regulations For Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio-The En
vironmental Protection Agen
cy’s plan to clean up America’s
waterways, which includes re
ducing pollution from farms,
should not establish new non
point pollution regulations in
Ohio beyond those that cur
rently exist, said Brent Sohngen,
Ohio State University Extension
natural resource and environ
mental economics specialist.
Instead, the plan will help en
vironmental and regulatory
agencies better target funds for
voluntary incentive payment
programs. The incentive pro
grams encourage farmers to
adopt best management prac
tices that reduce potential water
pollutants coming from farm
land, Sohngen said.
“And, with continued moni
toring, agencies will be better
equipped to monitor the effec
tiveness of these voluntary pro
grams,” he said.
The EPA strategy, announced
in August, calls for states to
submit plans within 15 years to
clean up every waterway that
fails to meet water-quality
standards. The agency estimates
there are more than 20,000
streams and lakes nationwide
that fall into this category.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Dan Glickman told the Senate
Agriculture Committee on Feb.
23 that the impact of the pro
posed plan on farmers needs to
be clarified.
In Ohio, what is clear is that
the strategy will provide more
information than currently
exists on the contribution of
nonpoint sources, such as farm
operations, to the total pollution
in Ohio waterbodies, Sohngen
said.
“This may show that agricul
ture contributes a large or small
share of the pollution to water
bodies, depending on the partic
ular place,” Sohngen said.
The strategy requires states to
deelop Total Maximum Daily
Load (TMDL) plans for water
body segments-rivers, lakes and
streams-that are not meeting
existing standards for biological,
habitat, sediment and chemical
quality of surface waters. The
Ohio EPA has divided the water
of Ohio into approximately
5,000 waterbody segments. Of
these, 881 are not meeting exist
ing water-quality standards and
require TMDL development.
TMDLs involve collecting in
formation in waterbodies to
determine total point and non
point source pollution loads.
Loads are the quantity of pollu
tion contributed to a stream by a
single point-such as a discharge
pipe from a wastewater treat
ment plant-or a group of non
point sources-such as runoff
from farms, lawns or construc
tion sites. The collected informa
tion can then be used to set
maximum loads from each of
these sources that can be permit
ted and still meet water-quality
standards, Sohngen said.
Pollution load data already
exists for most point sources of
pollution under the National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System (NPDES) permitting
process. The new initiative calls
for development of similar load
calculations for nonpoint
sources of pollution. It will cal
culate loads that occur natu
rally, calculate maximum total
loads from all sources and deter
mine how to reduce maximum
loads in trouble areas in order to
meet water-quality standards,
he said.
In Ohio, four subgroups of an
Ohio EPA External Advisory
Group are helping develop the
TMDL process. One subgroup is
looking at current water quality
monitoring methods and how
they fit into the TMDL process.
Traditionally, EPA tests water
quality every five years on a
basin level. A basin consists of
Agriculture
all the land drained by a river
and its branches. TMDL will re
quire much more focused test
ing, Sohngen said.
A second subgroup is looking
at pollution flow models as a po
tential way of determining
TMDLs versus actual data col
lection. Another group is priori
tizing which of the 881
waterbodies in Ohio currently
not meeting water-quality
standards should be targeted for
improvement efforts first.
Sohngen is part of a fourth
subgroup that is considering
how to implement incentive pro
grams, regulations or other
methods to improve water qual
ity in areas currently not meet
ing standards.
“From what I’ve observed,
most people want to focus on ef
fective, voluntary incentive pay
ment programs as the first
method to reduce agricultural
nonpoint source pollution,”
Sohngen said. “But if that
doesn’t work, and nonpoint
sources are not making good
faith efforts to improve water
quality, then government regu
lations may become necessary to
bring nonpoint sources to the
bargaining table.”
The unregulated, nonpoint
community does not want to see
regulations, but they are sensi
tive to the notion they need to
make efforts to reduce pollution,
Sohngen said. So, the question
that arises is what constitutes a
feasible good-faith effort that
everyone can live with.
Possible voluntary 'efforts
farmers could implement in
clude improved manure man
agement plans, reduced nutrient
applications, conversion to con
servation tillage to reduce sedi
ment runoff, and installation of
vegetative filter strips along
streams to absorb sediment, nu
trients or other potential water
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pollutants that could wash from
farm fields.
Large farms classified as Con
centrated Animal Feeding Oper
ations, which currently require a
permit to be installed and may
eventually be classified as point
sources of pollution if other reg
ulatory efforts under way in the
state are passed, could be more
susceptible to TMDL pollution
restrictions, Sohngen said.
Several factors will influence
the potential impact of the
TMDL plans. One goal of the
TMDL process is to target prob
lem areas and direct financial
resources toward them. That
means incentive programs will
not be spread equally across the
state, he said.
There are three main govern
ment agencies that give finan
cial incentives for agricultural
environmental programs in
Ohio: the Ohio EPA, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Nat
ural Resource Conservation Ser
vice and the Ohio Department
of Natural Resources. Only the
Ohio EPA has TMDL efforts
written into their directives.
“One key for this program to
have an impact will be for these
three agencies to work together
to focus on TMDL priorities,”
Sohngen said.
Increased funding for farmer
implemented environmental in
centive programs would be
helpful, and Sohngen thinks the
next Farm Bill will do that.
Finally, incentive programs
can be made more effective by
focusing on actual improve
ments in water quality in addi
tion to implementing
environmental measures on a
farm, he said.
“Currently farmers are given
money to install things like filter
strips, manure lagoons and
other structures. But it’s not
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enough just to put these things
in. You have to make sure there
are no spills from the lagoons or
that the filter strips are in the
right spot to have the largest
effect,” Sohngen said. “Perhaps
farmers should be given some
performance criteria and offered
an extra payment if water qual
ity improves in two or three
years.”
The TMDL process is already
under way in Ohio. Five TMDL
plans are to be completed by the
end of the year, and four addi
tional plans are to be completed
in 2001.
“The most important part of
TMDLs is to be able to collect
enough data to determine where
the pollution is coming
from-either point or nonpoint
sources-and be able to focus re
sources on the impacted area or
areas,” Sohngen said. “If we can
do that, we can design some pro
grams that will really make a
difference.”
tor more information on
TMDLs, people can read the
Total Maximum Daily Load
(TMDLs) AE-7-99 fact sheet
available on Ohio State Univer
sity Extension’s Ohioline Web
site http://ohioline.ag.ohio
state.edu/ae-fact/0007.html. The
fact sheet,is also available at
county offices of Ohio State Uni
versity Extension.
Additional resources available
on the World Wide Web include
the U.S. EPA: Total Maximum
Daily Load Program Descrip
tion (http://www.epa.go
v/OWOW/tmdll), the Ohio EPA,
Section 303(d) TMDL Priority
List for 1999-2000 (http://chag
rin.epa.state.oh.us/programs/
tmdl/303dnotc.html), and the
Conservation Technology Infor
mation Center at Purdue Uni
versity (http://ctic.purdue.-
edu/kywmdl/tmdlhome.html).
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