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Town hall meeting in Courtland airs concerns about state rules

COURTLAND — Legislators from Minnesota’s District 19 were in Courtland Saturday for a town hall meeting focusing on buffer strips.

Roughly 70 people showed up to ask questions of Senator Nick Frentz (District 19) and Representative Clark Johnson (District 19A) about the law requiring buffer strips on private land adjacent to public water ways.

Johnson and Frentz spoke on the importance of improving water quality, but wanting to make sure farmers were not hurt by the buffer law.

“There are things that we can do in this state to make sure that you can be as productive and profitable as possible,” Johnson said. “But I also work from a premise that I think almost everybody does in Minnesota, this is close to unanimous, is that we need cleaner water.”

A strong underlying thread through the early meeting was the argument that a single requirement for all of Minnesota farmers would not work — one size does not fit all.

Assistant Director of Strategy and Operations for the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) Angie Becker Kudelka introduced a handout with alternative practices for areas where standard buffer laws would not work.

The law reads that alternatives would have to “… provide water quality protection comparable to the buffer protection for the water body that the property abuts,” according to the handout.

One concern brought up later in the meeting was how that would work as the effects and standards of the buffer strips were not well defined.

Steve Commerford, a New Ulm resident, brought up research going back as far as the 1970’s that indicated that buffer strips were not effective on water quality.

He pointed to two researchers who presented the day before who had studied Lake Winnipeg.

“The conclusions they drew were that buffers at best would have no impact on water quality, but they could have a negative impact,” Commerford said.

He argued buffers should instead be framed as an issue of pheasant habitat preservation.

From there to conversation moved to phosphates, a large pollution concern in waterways, coming from large cities.

Multiple people cited a Star Tribune story that reported research that indicated a lot of water pollution came from cities, primarily lawn fertilizer, pets and pavement runoff.

Joe Smentek, director of public affairs for the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association pointed to a phosphate study of the Minnesota River.

It indicated that down through New Ulm, phosphate levels stayed flat.

“You get to the city of Mankato, right after the city of Mankato it (phosphate levels) shot way up, they blame agriculture for that,” Joe Smentek said. “You get north of St. Peter there is still agriculture and the nitrates have gone down.”

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