29 



STATEMENT OF NORMAN A. BERG, WASfflNGTON REPRESENT- 

 ATIVE, SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION SOCIETY 



Mr. Berg. Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the Soil and Water Con- 

 servation Society, I welcome this opportunity to share with you 

 some thoughts on water quality improvement and wetland protec- 

 tion. Our society is an international organization. Most of our 

 members are engaged in some phase of natural resource manage- 

 ment. We will celebrate our fiftieth year come 1995. 



My background includes a family farm and many years of work 

 with the Soil Conservation Service in Minnesota, Idaho, and South 

 Dakota. I was in South Dakota during the highlight days of the 

 early soil bank when the pheasant population benefited immensely. 



Public discussions of nonpoint source water pollution problems 

 and their solutions, as you so well know, are not new. The USDA 

 had, until this year, a yearbook of agriculture. Each year their pub- 

 lication had a major topic. In 1955, it was water. The foreword by 

 then Secretary Ezra Taft Benson said, "I have little need to remind 

 you that water has become one of our major national concerns. 

 Farmers know only too well the hazards of pollution, and the defi- 

 ciencies of good water for house, stock, gardens, and crops. They've 

 suffered the fury of floods, of droughts, and the worries of soil ero- 

 sion. Losses in life, security, productivity, and money have been 

 great." 



In 1972, I was asked by the International Joint Commission to 

 cochair with a Canadian colleague a reference group that examined 

 the impacts of various uses of all land in that great basin, includ- 

 ing agriculture, on the quality of water in the Great Lakes system. 

 Our report to the two nations in 1978 highlighted nonpoint sources 

 as a major problem needing a much higher priority. 



Many meetings have been held to seek and bring together those 

 who are either contributing to the problem or wanting it solved. In 

 1988, more than 80 public and private and nonprofit organizations 

 created the Water Quality 2000 initiative. It was an effort to de- 

 velop an integrated national policy for both surface and ground 

 water quality and concerns. Their report, "A National Water Agen- 

 da for the 21st Century," had controlling runoff from both rural 

 and urban lands as one of the 12 challenges facing the future. It 

 also suggested that water quality and quantity problems both be 

 planned and managed on a watershed basis. Protecting water re- 

 sources by preventing pollution was another key strategy. One of 

 the impediments was the too narrowly focused water policies, along 

 with, of course, the problem of insufficient funding. 



So after what in reality has been decades of study, discussion, 

 and debate, you have come to a decision point in 1994. Agricultural 

 nonpoint source reduction, as evidenced by the number of bills be- 

 fore your committee, will no doubt be a major objective in the reau- 

 thorization of the Clean Water Act. Though there is a broad con- 

 sensus that something must be done about these problems, dif- 

 ferences of opinion remain between the agricultural and environ- 

 mental communities about the proposed solutions. As the enact- 

 ment process continues, it is our hope that Congress will do some- 

 thing that will encourage the Nation's farmers to adopt more sus- 

 tainable agricultural production systems, and these systems need 



