Prix Pictet is a prestigious new international photography contest that poses this challenge:  effectively communicate visually about sustainability issues. The theme for this first year is water—from floods, to drought, to rising seas.

While the winner won’t be announced until the end of October, the submitted photos of finalists are available to view. The images are extraordinary—powerful, troubling, effective.

Take a look. There are 18 shortlisted finalists, and you can review the portfolios of each.

First negotiated by the region’s governors and premiers, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (the Compact) requires ratification by all participating states and provinces before it can be put into effect. Minnesota led states by ratifying the compact in February of 2007. The agreement will protect our water resources by combining measures that restrict exportation of water from the basin and improve water conservation.

The Compact first arose in protest to Asia’s attempt to export Great Lakes water more than a decade ago. Attention has shifted as drought-stricken portions of the United States are increasingly looking toward the water-rich Great Lakes. The importance of the Compact is further underscored as Global Warming experts predict worsening summer droughts.

“Even though work on the Compact started before Global Warming was on people’s radar, the passage is really timely. Protecting the water in the Great Lakes was already an important part of preserving and restoring the Great Lakes. With Global Warming entering the picture the threat increases significantly,” says Rosie Loeffler-Kemp, one of Clean Water Action’s lead staff on Great Lakes issues.

By the Compact’s guidelines, any major water diversion would have to receive approval by all the states, preventing states from competing with one another to sell the most water in a “race to the bottom”— literally. Once Michigan and Pennsylvania are on-board we look to Congress to place the final stamp on this important regional agreement to protect our Great Lakes.

Emily Rosenberg

Program Intern, Clean Water Action

Is your favorite lake polluted?
KARE 11 Sunrise, June 26, 2008

State law does not require swimming beaches to be regularly tested – or posted when there is pollution – but some counties, districts, and cities choose to do so. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency also monitors Lake Superior beaches during the summer. The beach data page pulls data from these different sources and compiles it in one easy-to-use page. The report is available here.

This new tool follows the spring launch of Check My Lake, a site that allows people to easily look up whether their local lake is too polluted for swimming or fishing

Powered by Conservation Minnesota, the new website is a user-friendly way that Minnesotans can find out whether their favorite lakes are clean or polluted – or haven’t been tested yet. The site relies on the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA)’s database but makes the information easy to access and comprehend.

By going to http://www.checkmylake.org, the website’s users can either type in the name of a favorite lake or type in a county name and choose from among a list to find out whether lakes have been tested and what the results show.

According to the MPCA, nearly half of lakes tested are polluted. More troubling, for every lake MPCA has tested, there are 4 more that the agency hasn’t tested.

Rochester’s experience with groundwater recharge shows that even when water is plentiful, studying its comings and goings can pay off. For decades the city drew on the Galena aquifer, a shallow system just below the surface. It produced plenty of water but, like a lot of shallow aquifers in southeast Minnesota, was easily contaminated.

By 1960 the city had abandoned the aquifer completely because of nitrate and fecal coliform bacteria. Now the city drills hundreds of feet to draw presettlement water out of two aquifers: the St. Peter Sandstone and Prairie du Chien-Jordan. But geological studies in the 1980s showed that there was a ticking time bomb buried below the surface. It turns out that half of Olmsted County’s water was recharging from the Galena down to the aquifers below it. That shouldn’t have been a problem, because typically on its way down through the soil profile the water would hit an impervious layer of shale called the Decorah Edge.

It would then run along the top of the shale and trickle over the edge at places where the shale is exposed on a hillside. At that exposed edge, grass, trees and soil filter out contaminants such as nitrates, making it so they don’t accompany the water the rest of the way down into the aquifers.

In fact, one study showed that nitrate levels decreased from 9.8 parts per million to 0.7 parts per million as recharge water flowed over the Decorah Edge. The drinking water standard for nitrate is 10 parts per million—higher levels can be toxic for infants. The problem is, as Rochester’s population has grown and spread out, the area of the Decorah Edge has been threatened with development—particularly residential housing. One estimate is that the entire area could be developed by 2045, eliminating deep-rooted grasses and trees and basically eliminating the ability of the Decorah Edge to filter water.

“When you convert land from something like permanent pasture and hay, you disrupt the hydrology,” Jeff Green, a Department of Natural Resources karst expert in southeast Minnesota, recently told me. “You can manage the impacts of land uses such as animal agriculture, but land conversion into housing developments and parking lots is different.”

Nitrogen contamination in southeast Minnesota is a big problem, particularly as more pasture, hay and timber has been replaced by corn fields, which rely on nitrogen fertilizer to be productive. Using technology to replace the Decorah Edge’s ability to remove nitrogen from water would cost the city an estimated $5 million annually. That’s one reason why in 2006 city officials passed zoning ordinances keeping parts of the Decorah Edge from being developed. Lake City, Wabasha and Redwing are now looking into using similar buffering to filter water recharging along the St. Lawrence Edge adjacent to the Mississippi River.

“It’s one of the most sophisticated water protection ordinances in the country,” says Terry Lee, Environmental Services Coordinator for Olmsted County. Lee credits widespread geological mapping and water testing with providing the information needed to take advantage of this natural filtration system. “It has wide ranging applications. You’re using an ecological approach to reach your water quality goals.”

“Feedlots: Winona County reported 12 known basin overflows and numerous other structures within inches of overflowing. Many facilities are transferring manure to other structures with available space. As available cropland dries out, manure will be land applied to make space for more rainfall. One operator was required to recover manure and clean out 1+ miles of dry run stream bed as the result of a pumped discharge from a barn pit. One basin was 4-5 feet underwater and appears to have had 5 sinkholes form next to the basin. This basin is to be pumped and repaired. Fillmore County had one report of a basin in danger of discharging and Houston County had one report of a basin in danger of discharging.”

To be sure, the August flooding devastated all types of farming in that region, and no manure lagoon in the world could be built to withstand 17 inches of rain at one shot. These facilities probably held up as best they could, given the extreme circumstances. But there’s one sentence in that situation report I find particularly troubling:

“One basin was 4-5 feet underwater and appears to have had 5 sinkholes form next to the basin.”

Five sinkholes? Good gravy! Now, I do understand that it’s a tricky endeavor to predict where the next sinkhole will yawn open, giving us a surpise peek into our collective basement. Sinkholes (trivia lesson of the day: sinkholes are called “cockpits” in Jamaica) are the geologic equivalent of a morel mushroom: they can pop up in places that the day before showed no sign this fully formed freak of nature was lurking beneath decks all along. But the science of hydrogeology does have ways of tracking which parts of southeast Minnesota have a high probability of sinkhole development. In fact, some cutting-edge sinkhole mapping has been done in Winona and Fillmore counties. I am willing to venture a guess that a farm that develops five of these bad boys in a matter of hours—even under extreme weather conditions—was in a “high probability” area. It’s Sinkhole City out there, and now it’s lakefront property.

So here’s the question of the hour: What local or state environmental officials in their right minds ever allowed that lagoon to be built in that particular location? It’s doubtful anyone will be made to answer for such a lapse in judgment—weather events of Biblical proportions tend to offer excuses for forgiving past sins.

Here’s how EQIP was meant to be used when it was first created in the 1996 Farm Bill: When the Hodgsons bought a broken-down farm a quarter-mile from southeast Minnesota’s Root River in early 1998, they knew it would need a lot of work before they realized their dream of being grass-based beef producers. The house was a mess and the rest of the farmstead was a hodgepodge of rusty fencing and small, slumping buildings, one of which was mounted on old herbicide containers.

Showplace Acres it wasn’t.

Even basic fencing was either lacking, or half buried in the neglected fields. “You would grab a piece of wire fence sticking out of the ground and it might not stop pulling up until you get to the north end of the farm,” Brad says, only half joking.

The Hodgsons were beginning farmers and were short on cash. They received a head start by taking the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings course. They also got their cattle herd started when they qualified for a no-interest livestock loan as Farm Beginnings graduates. But revamping a decrepit farm takes more than training and livestock—it requires money.

Despite the economic obstacles, over the past few years the Hodgsons have managed to seed down one small field at a time, slowly converting the farm’s row-cropped acres into a series of rotationally grazed grass paddocks. One of the federal government programs that helped jumpstart their renovation was EQIP. Through EQIP, they received $4,700 in cost-share funds to erect fencing and put in water lines. The reason the Hodgsons qualified for EQIP is because its cost-share funds would allow them to deal with an environmental concern on their farm—soil erosion in this case—by installing a new production system such as managed rotational grazing. (All 100 acres of their farm is classified as “highly erodible” by the USDA.)

And rotational grazing, in turn, would give them the economic incentive to maintain perennial cover in an environmentally sensitive part of the Root River watershed. I’ve visited the Hodgson farm, and sure enough, their rolling hills are covered with verdant grass, which is grazed by a herd of Black Galloways. Little soil or runoff of any kind leaves their farm. That’s because land that used to be covered a few months out of the year with corn and soybeans is now protected year-round by grass.

I called the Hodgsons last week to see how they had weathered the recent catastrophic flooding in southeast Minnesota. Brad said they were far enough upstream on the Root that they had not experienced severe damage. But they did get an unprecedented amount of rain in a short amount of time. He was pleased that the pastured fields held up well against the downpour.

“The water running off my place was clear,” he told me. “So my soil isn’t washing onto somebody else’s place. If we had row crops, we’d be bringing in Cats to fill in the gullies. I’ve seen gullies on row-cropped land even when we didn’t get this much rain.”

Recently, the USDA further recognized the environmental benefits of such a system when it allowed the Hodgsons to enroll in the Conservation Security Program (CSP). The couple qualified for Tier 3, the highest CSP level a farmer can attain, and a sign that their operation is extremely friendly to the environment. CSP pays farmers for using systems that protect and enhance the environment. Through CSP, the Hodgsons are receiving USDA funds through a 10-year contract. That money will help them further establish their managed rotational grazing system.

Now, here’s how EQIP money is being used to make the programs very name a misnomer: Changes in the 2002 Farm Bill allow new and expanding factory farms to obtain up to a whopping $450,000 in EQIP funds to build huge manure storage and handling facilities in the name of “conservation.” To put that $450,000 in context, I recently called the Minnesota office of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which administers EQIP. According to staff there, during the 2007 fiscal year the average EQIP contract in Minnesota was around $15,000; the largest one was for $284,000. Factory farms have been using EQIP as an expansion tool to build multi-million gallon liquid manure facilities that engineering and environmental experts are increasingly criticizing as inherently flawed.

The House’s version of the 2007 Farm Bill, which was passed in July, established a $60,000 per contract payment limit for EQIP, which is a change in the right direction. As the Hodgsons’ example shows, EQIP has great potential to help the environment in an economically efficient manner. Instead of sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into a handful of pollution-prone liquid manure lagoons, why not spread that money amongst many smaller farms, helping them establish systems that are proven to be environmental winners?

Ironically, the House version of the Farm Bill cuts CSP by $4.8 billion (44 percent of its total budget) over the next decade, while boosting funding for EQIP 42 percent. Studies conducted by the Land Stewardship Project and other Midwestern farm groups show that CSP is proving to be an engine of conservation in farm country. The Hodgsons are not an isolated example. EQIP can be a better agro-environmental tool if reformed with a stronger payment limit, so more farmers can utilize the good aspects of this program. But if not, it remains a war chest for factory livestock operations to continue to expand.

What you can do
Contact Minnesota Senators Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar and tell them the 2007 Farm Bill should not subsidize factory farms through programs like EQIP. Tell them we need a $100,000 payment limit on the Environmental Quality Incentives Program in the 2007 Farm Bill. The current $450,000 level is way too high. It’s wrong that factory farms can get this money to build and expand. Taxpayers should not subsidize the environmental problems factory farms create. With a $100,000 cap, more farmers will be able to implement conservation practices and utilize the good aspects of this program.

Senators should also get the message that the Farm Bill must dedicate additional resources to the Conservation Security Program. CSP supports conservation results (actual measurable outcomes) while encouraging farmers to do more. We need both a better functioning EQIP and a strengthened CSP in the 2007 Farm Bill.

Coleman can be contacted at 202-224-5461; Klobuchar at 202-224-3244.

Hearing from citizens in September and October will be critical. For more information on how to make your voice heard in the Farm Bill debate, check the Land Stewardship Project’s federal policy page, or contact LSP’s Adam Warthesen at adamw@landstewardshipproject.org; 612-722-6377.

This is a prime opportunity for our Senators to make the Environmental Quality Incentives Program not just another clever name with a dirty little secret.