Thank you for the opportunity to address the issue of TMDLs and agricultural water quality issues.

I'm Ron Jones, Director of the Texas Institute for Applied Environmental Research at Tarleton State University. The testimony I provide today is primarily based on our work with the dairy industry in the Bosque River watershed in North Central Texas and the water quality issues there. Our work in the Bosque River watershed is culminating in the development of a TMDL. Developing a TMDL in a nutrient-impaired watershed is a sobering and difficult exercise.

I want to narrow my testimony to TMDLs and the long-term implications for production agriculture. The TMDL process, although inherently sensible, is a reconciliation process parallel to having a hopelessly overdrawn bank account without the option of bankruptcy. If the agricultural community does not move proactively to engage the process and develop an appropriate program to address water quality problems, TMDLs will become an unpayable debt both for agriculture and the citizens downstream.

We are contemplating and even attempting to apply a 30-year old solution to municipal and industrial point sources to agricultural runoff issues. The NPDES was never intended to address water quality problems that arise from runoff across hundreds of millions of acres of privately held agricultural lands. NPDES is a technology-based treat-and-discharge program designed for polluters with deep pockets. It has little to offer those who want to resolve agriculture runoff issues other than the capacity to regulate and enforce. Regulation and enforcement are necessary, but they are far from sufficient to resolve the next generation of environmental problems related to farms, fields, and feedlots.

Agriculture must take steps to develop an appropriate alternative, otherwise EPA is put in the quixotic position, through TMDLs, of wielding the NPDES sword against an ocean of farmland. This regulation will not address the pollution problem farmers face, nor can farmers afford to implement NPDES solutions. Instead we need an approach tailored to the needs of agriculture and its unique water quality problems.

Long term solutions to water quality problems related to agriculture may look more like highway beautification and litter programs of the last 40 years than the NPDES program. In the fifties, the fine for littering in Texas was ten dollars, and it was not enforced. In 1964, the Highway Beautification Act, addressing billboards beautification, and litter passed. Federal monies were sent to states to launch local programs. Later, in our state, Willie Nelson sang "Don't Mess with Texas," and we encouraged citizen and corporate groups to "Adopt-A-Highway." We also have provisions for fines up to $1000, and these fines are enforced.

This program has been immensely effective. Government is involved, but citizen involvement has made the difference. A new ethic evolved. My generation, who grew up throwing cans and trash out the car window, now has a conscience that goes off at the thought of littering. Our sons and daughters belong to the organization that just cleaned up that stretch of highway. Is it a perfect program? Of course not, but it has been a very successful program.

The success of the effort can be attributed to development of a smart and well-funded program, with several points of entry. It was designed to change behavior over the long term. There was a role for government, a role for the corporate world, and a role for the local community — all focused on producing change in the people using our nation's highways.

There are no easy fixes to the Clean Water Act to properly cope with agriculture. There are no one-line amendments and no compromises. It requires more than EPA"getting tough with agriculture." We need new programs based on new ideas that are appropriate for the problem and the industry.

Government action addressing agriculture water quality problems must combine complex science with law that encourages voluntary compliance with regulatory backup and maintains the economic viability of production agriculture.

• The science is an order of magnitude more difficult than the point source science we use under NPDES. When algae blooms in a lake, how do you trace the surplus nutrients back through hundreds of miles of branching watershed?
• What are the voluntary land use and management decisions we want to encourage? It is difficult to imagine how government can oversee thousands of producers making decisions for millions of acres, but what are the scientifically based actions we want to encourage and how do we encourage them?
• When Dow Chemical produces agricultural chemicals in an environmentally sound manner, the cost of doing so is included in the price of the product. Municipal wastewater treatment plants charge the producers of the waste. The majority of agricultural producers are not price makers and cannot pass abatement costs forward in the price of commodities produced. Our research indicates small producers are more heavily affected by the cost of compliance than larger producers. Just as the nonpoint and point source science is not parallel, the economic factors are not the same between industry and agriculture.

The first round of TMDLs probably will not prove to be successful because of the enormity of the nonpoint source problems and the inadequacy of the law. While we wait for legislation that does work, Congress should put funding in place to:

1. Cope with infrastructure needs to support water quality monitoring programs
2. Develop the science and economics to support the second round of TMDLs
3. Look at new ways to finance these programs

Perhaps the best deal agriculture can strike in dealing with environmental problems is to develop programs that:

• Employ good science and economics
• Are community-based
• Provide for flexibility in resolving the problem
• Maintain the competitiveness of the industry in a global economy
• Start a new small business division in EPA
• Keep direct government regulatory programs one step removed from privately held lands

Like the Highway Beautification Act, let's put the emphasis on voluntary programs that are backed up by enforcement and that produce results:

• The country cannot afford the cost of programs that place government in the position of monitoring how land is used and managed
• Agriculture cannot afford programs that place EPA regulators in the middle of farming activities

October 1999