15 



if you would share with us your views on whether you believe the 

 USDA and the SCS have the capability to be the lead agency in 

 nonpoint source pollution management plans on agricultural land 

 in the way that H.R. 1440, the Site-Specific Agriculture Resource 

 Management bill, spells out. 



Mr. Hebert. We are strong supporters in the Department of the 

 approach advocated in the bill you referenced. We believe that it 

 is important that when we work with farmers and ranchers on 

 their farms and ranches to deal with their natural resource prob- 

 lems that you deal comprehensively with the problems that they 

 face. 



With regard to your question about can this same approach work 

 in terms of addressing water quality and should SCS be the lead, 

 I don't believe that there is any single agency in the country at the 

 Federal or local level that can be the sole lead. We have always 

 worked in partnership at the State and local level and national 

 level, the Extension Service, conservation districts, with the two 

 agencies in the Department that do most of this work with regard 

 to on-the-ground implementation, SCS and ASCS, and State and 

 local partners of all types at the State agencies. We believe that 

 the approach in H.R. 1440 should definitely be a component of 

 what we are doing to deal with nonpoint source pollution problems 

 and that SCS has a strong role to play. I don't believe that you 

 could say that we could be the sole lead agency in that regard. 



Mr. Johnson. I wonder if you could elaborate a bit on the Janu- 

 ary 1994, memorandum of agreement relative to the definition of 

 agricultural lands. Particularly in western parts of our country, 

 there is concern about the rational for not including rangelands 

 within that definition. I wonder if you could discuss with us the ra- 

 tional and share that with us. 



Mr. Hebert. I will take a quick shot at it and then we can see 

 if any of the other agencies need to respond. In general, when the 

 MOA was put together the goal was to achieve a couple of particu- 

 lar items. First, we wanted to be able to give the landowner, in this 

 case the agricultural community, a consistent message about what 

 is on their properties in regard to wetlands and how it would be 

 affected by Federal wetlands policies. And second, we wanted to re- 

 duce duplication and the overlap among the Federal agencies as 

 these programs progressed. 



As we looked at how those goals could be achieved, we had to 

 recognize that there were historical areas of expertise that had 

 been developed by the various agencies in this area. With regard 

 to agricultural lands, the Soil Conservation Service has been imple- 

 menting the swampbuster provision since 1985 and we have con- 

 siderable experience on croplands essentially in delineating wet- 

 lands. The 1987 Food Security Act manual is designed to address 

 specifically how to go about delineating wetlands oh croplands 

 given that the natural vegetation has been removed. We do not 

 have comparable experience in delineating wetlands on lands 

 where the natural vegetation has not been removed, such as range- 

 land and tree operations. That is outside of our historic area of sig- 

 nificance. 



Our goal in doing the MOA and what we want to achieve is to 

 make sure that we do this job properly. We did not want to proceed 



