Advocates say they’re glad the Minnesota Legislature put $16 million toward solving southeastern Minnesota’s nitrate pollution problem, but some worry lawmakers have shortchanged efforts to treat private wells in the region.
“We need to see significant additional investments in public health support, especially for private well owners,” said Carly Griffith, water program director at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which has helped get the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency involved in addressing nitrate problems across the country. world. region last year.
The $16 million allocated to lawmakers will pay for testing and cleanup of wells contaminated by farm runoff and help farmers change their practices to reduce that runoff.
Minnesota promised the EPA in December that it would act quickly to help residents in southeastern Minnesota who had dangerous levels of nitrate in their wells.
Several government agencies – the Departments of Health and Agriculture, as well as the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency – are coordinating assistance for nearly 100,000 residents who use private wells in the region.
Lawmakers have allocated $2.8 million to test and inventory private wells across the region. It’s unclear how many private wells there are in southeastern Minnesota, but officials estimate that more than 9,000 residents drink water with nitrate levels higher than federal safety standards.
Another $2.8 million will pay for nitrate treatment systems for homes, which state officials will distribute in the coming months.
“This recent funding really helps accelerate some of our work and supports the efforts we’ve been making in southeastern Minnesota and other vulnerable areas of the state,” said Margaret Wagner of the Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide and Fertilizer Management Division .
Yet advocates say this is not enough; they pushed for at least $4 million, which they estimated would have helped address one in 10 residents with contaminated water in the region. They are also disappointed that lawmakers failed to pass a fertilizer tax that would have provided continued funding for nitrate cleanup.
“We’ve learned that agencies have so little capacity without this funding,” said Jeff Broberg, head of the Minnesota Well Owners Organization.
Broberg is a former delegate to a state committee that oversees Minnesota’s Environmental Trust Fund. He said he would have happily paid the proposed $0.40 per ton fertilizer tax that lawmakers debated earlier this year. He leases 56 acres near his estate in St. Charles and would have paid about $3 a year. But he said it is more important that the state comes up with a financing mechanism so that cleanup projects are not delayed.
Some of the projects this session funded laid the foundation for future work, including money to develop best agricultural management practices, more easements, and a new surface water nitrate management program.
State officials plan to work with farmers and specialists in the coming months to reduce nitrate runoff while increasing production with new agricultural practices. That could include more cover crops, expanded crop rotations or coordinating nitrogen and fertilizer rates with farmers in the region.
‘We consider this a pilot in many ways [project] and consider creating a mitigation program in the Southeast that can be replicated in other parts of the state,” Wagner said.
State officials have measured nitrate water pollution since 1990. Since then, nitrate levels have largely risen across the state. Although cities and towns have wastewater treatment plants to address pollutants in their water, private well owners are not regulated. They have to treat the water themselves.
Nitrate pollution comes from large-scale agricultural fertilizers and fertilizers — about 90% of the nitrate in water in southeastern Minnesota comes from fertilizers spread on croplands, a 2013 state study found.
