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Farmers fear river cleanup may ban cattle from streams
Mike Massie is stirred up.The prominent Rappahannock County farmer and cattle raiser fears that a looming government effort to get livestock out of local rivers and streams to reduce water pollution is unfairly targeting the backbone of the county’s agriculture.
“The cow is not the culprit,” said Massie, reacting to recent news that state and local officials plan to develop a clean-up program for the Rush, Hazel and Hughes rivers. “The cow is standing accused of being bad for the environment, and if they do that, then I think the next step is to make it mandatory” to fence off all streams from cattle, and that could spell the end of livestock grazing in Rappahannock County, he said.
“If you believe that the cow is bad for the waterways, then you’d also have to believe that the tens of millions of buffalo on the prairie were bad for the west, and you’d have to give a posthumous award to Buffalo Bill,” for helping wipe out the American bison, he said with feeling.
Massie’s reaction may be more passionate than most, but there is concern among county farmers that a stepped-up state effort to reduce biological pollution in streams could lead to new costs and restrictions that would make it less attractive to continue grazing cattle on Rappahannock’s rolling, stream-laced pastures.
At a Sept. 14 meeting at Rappahannock County High School, state and regional officials said that pollution in the three tested rivers will require development of an “implementation plan” designed to reduce pollution caused by fecal coliform and e. coli bacteria. The plan, due to be unveiled by next spring, will call for voluntary steps by farmers and homeowners to reduce stream pollution–by such efforts as fencing livestock out of streams and repairing or replacing failing septic systems.
Though officials stress that the clean-up program will rely on voluntary efforts, aided by cost-sharing programs that help pay for at least some of the costs of stream-buffering and fencing, farmers worry that mandatory measures may follow if voluntary compliance fails to bring about the water-quality improvements that the new plan will spell out as specific goals for each of the three tested rivers.
Robert Anderson, chairman of the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors and himself a cattle raiser, confirmed that farmers worry about the program. “Most of the concern is that they don’t want it to be made mandatory,” Anderson said. The effort would be “good for the rivers,” he said, “but I don’t know if the farmers can stand it.”
Anderson believes that the officials developing the clean-up plan “don’t know much about farming.” Though the various federal and state incentive programs can pay much of the cost of fencing along streams, the programs require creating a buffer at least 35-feet wide between the fence and stream banks. “Most people don’t want to fence off all that land,” and lose the pasture acreage, he said. And then, “if the fence is washed out, you have to pay to put it back up.”
Some county farmers, however, have voluntarily taken such steps by enrolling in various farm programs such as the federal Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), a voluntary land retirement program that helps farmers protect environmentally sensitive land, decrease erosion, restore wildlife habitat, and safeguard ground and surface water.
Dick McNear, who raises Angus cattle on his farm in Gid Brown Hollow, joined the CREP program several years ago when it offered 100 percent cost-reimbursement.
“I’m kind of an environmentalist,” McNear remarks. He installed about four miles of fencing along streams with a 35-foot buffer, cross-fenced his pastures and installed water troughs for his cattle. Under the program, he is paid $80 an acre for the acreage taken out of production, and says he nets more profit from that than he could from raising cattle on that acreage.
“My wife hates it because I’ve got fences all over and she’s a fox-hunter,” McNear admits, but its good for the land and the streams. “I did lose some pasture, but I am netting roughly $70 per acre, which is a lot more that I am making on beef cattle now,” he said. Soaring costs of fertilizer and other farm inputs make his cattle business a “barely break-even” enterprise, McNear said.
If the cost-squeeze on farmers “keeps up for another two or three years,” McNear predicts, “you are going to see big changes here–a lot of farmers are going to quit, and I might be one of them.”
Raising beef cattle is by far the most important agricultural enterprise in the county. The latest Census of Agriculture, completed in 2002, found 234 farms in Rappahannock County raising cattle, with more than 17,500 head.
Kenner Love, agricultural extension agent for Rappahannock County, said, “A lot of farmers in the county have worked on excluding cows from the streams before this program came along.” While the voluntary programs aided by government cost-sharing seem to have worked well, there has been long-standing opposition to any mandatory program, he said.
“If there would be a mandatory program, it would have an impact on farm income,” Love said. “If you add another layer of costs, it could be the tipping point to make farmers get out of the business” of raising cattle. “The cost of production has risen so much that the return on investment is marginal.”
“I don’t have any problem with keeping the program voluntary,” said Mike Massie, but he fears it won’t stay that way in the future. “Any time the government starts to impose regulations on how you conduct your business, you have to ask where this is going to stop,” he commented.
“On my farm, it would be fences everywhere,” he said. “Every little valley has a stream on it. It would be a nightmare to maintain all these fences. I just wouldn’t do it. That would be the tipping point,” to quit the cattle business, he said, and then farm owners might sell their land for development. “I think if it goes mandatory, it won’t be fences that are built everywhere, it would be houses, roads and schools,” he said.
Massie, who is a former member of the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors, said the controversy “puts local officials in a bad spot.” They may hear complaints from constituents, but the rivers clean-up effort is required by federal Clean Water Act standards and under control of state officials, so the county supervisors have little to say about how the effort may evolve.
Officials of the Virginia Departments of Conservation & Recreation and Environmental Quality want to hear from farmers, homeowners and other citizens on their views about the river clean-up effort. Few citizens showed up at their initial Sept. 14 meeting on the subject, but they plan another meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at Rappahannock County High School at 7 p.m.
James P. Gannon is editor of rappvoice.com
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