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Better identification of impaired watersheds and better programs 

 to manage sources which have been associated with impaired water 

 quahty are important goals of the Clean Water Act amendments. 

 Where this is already occurring, and where impairment has been 

 specifically related to agriculture, farmers have been willing par- 

 ticipants in cooperative watershed projects. This fact is exemplified 

 by ongoing efforts in the State of South Dakota to reduce sediment 

 loadings in the Bad River watershed. Landowners are voluntarily 

 adopting best management practices on cropland and rangeland, 

 such as rotational grazing and conservation tillage. Local, State, 

 and Federal agencies are cooperatively providing landowners with 

 the technical assistance and encouragement they need to address 

 locally identified sedimentation problems. 



The landowners' efforts to reduce nonpoint source pollution in 

 the Bad River watershed will lessen the need for constructing 

 downstream dikes to control waterflow in the river necessary for 

 power generation. The proposed dikes are estimated to cost $30 to 

 $40 million, and the upstream success with BMP installation and 

 resulting sediment loading reductions is an outstanding example of 

 the cost-effectiveness of cooperative watershed projects. Only $1.4 

 million has been spent over the last 4 years in providing technical 

 assistance, education, and cost-share assistance in the watershed, 

 and these efforts have gained the participation of 80 percent of the 

 landowners in the Plum Creek Watershed, the 160,000 acre target 

 area of the Bad River Watershed being addressed at this time. This 

 level of participation mirrors participation rates in cooperative 

 projects established across the country under USDA's water quality 

 initiative and the rural clean water program over the past decade. 



The Bad River water quality project will serve as a model for ad- 

 dressing other problem watersheds in the State of South Dakota. 

 Other projects will continue to focus on low-cost management im- 

 provements upstream in order to achieve broad landowner partici- 

 pation, while avoiding the more expensive water quality remedies 

 downstream. These activities will take place without new mandates 

 from the Federal Government. And over the next decade, water 

 quality officials in South Dakota are confident that impaired water- 

 sheds will be assessed and treatment well underway without any 

 new Federal directives to do so. 



The Bad River project and others like it are based on the impor- 

 tant principles of targeting resources to priority impaired water- 

 sheds, working partnerships between private landowners and Gov- 

 ernment agencies, voluntary participation, site-specific planning, 

 and respect for private property rights. These principles are the 

 key to success in putting agricultural nonpoint source programs in 

 place, and are strongly endorsed by the Clean Water Working 

 Group. 



The primary limiting factor for more accelerated progress in the 

 Bad River and other projects like it across the country is the re- 

 sources, and not good faith. We believe that the Clean Water Act 

 amendments should improve nonpoint source programs which will 

 enable the good actors, like the landowners in the Bad River Wa- 

 tershed, to make the management changes necessary to address 

 nonpoint problems identified with agriculture. Making adequate re- 

 sources available to States to develop and implement their 319 pro- 



