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at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas; Dr. Terry 

 Nipp, water quality and environmental policy project director, on 

 behalf of the National Association of State Universities and Land- 

 Grant Colleges in Washington, DC; Mr. Norman Berg, Washington 

 representative of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, Wash- 

 ington, DC; and Dr. Jay Leitch, chairman, task force on wetland 

 policy issues, council for agricultural science and technology, de- 

 partment of agricultural economics at North Dakota State Univer- 

 sity in Fargo. 



Gentlemen, welcome. In keeping with my warning earlier, we are 

 going to proceed right away in order to expedite the hearing. Your 

 entire statement is received for the record and for the other mem- 

 bers of the committee and staff. You may wish to summarize your 

 statement; do whatever you are most comfortable with. 



Mr. Jones. 



STATEMENT OF RON JONES, DIRECTOR, TEXAS INSTITUTE 

 FOR APPLIED ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH, TARLETON 

 STATE UNIVERSITY, STEPHENVILLE, TX, ACCOMPANIED BY 

 LARRY C. FRAREY, POLICY ANALYST 



Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for the op- 

 portunity to come and share with you some of our ideas about how 

 one might go about solving agricultural nonpoint source pollution 

 problems. 



For the past 4 years, we have been working on a dairy pollution 

 problem in the Upper North Bosque River basin in Erath County, 

 Texas, about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth. In this watershed, 

 we have large dairies which are point sources, but we also have a 

 number of small dairies which are considered nonpoint sources of 

 pollution. Our work has been funded primarily by the State of 

 Texas, but we have also received funding from EPA region VI and 

 the EPA's Office of Policy Planning and Evaluation. We have part- 

 ners at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa 

 State University, and from the Blackland Research Center at 

 Texas A&M University. 



I will try to keep this statement very short. I have provided your 

 staff with a very detailed proposal in addition to our short sum- 

 mary we have given to you. We have also given a detailed proposal 

 to various agricultural groups and environmental groups in the 

 area here. I will be glad to go into any depth that you might want 

 to. 



Over the past 4 years, our institute has positioned itself between 

 the agricultural producers in our community and their complaining 

 neighbors downstream and downwind. We have attempted to sort 

 out the facts both from a scientific standpoint and from a policy 

 standpoint. We have come to question the adequacy of our current 

 environmental policies and institutions and compliance strategies. 

 We question their capacity to come to grips with agricultural 

 nonpoint source pollution problems. 



These current strategies are largely command and control regu- 

 latory programs that are underpinned by quasijudicial and admin- 

 istrative law processes. What we find is that they are very expen- 

 sive to the producer and we find that they are also very expensive 

 to the public sector. If we see these regulatory programs as being 



