The Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources is back-tracking from a proposal that would have substantially increased the fines for noncompliance with the buffer law. In a joint hearing of two Senate committees on Wednesday, Minnesota Farm Bureau President Kevin Paap explained concerns with the proposed BWSR fines. Paap also testififed in the House.
“It’s important we look at a voluntary incentive-based, locally designed and implemented process with technical and cost-share being the most important. We do believe in a regulatory process, but it needs to be transparent and consistent.”
Paap says there are other discussions happening in the Minnesota legislature on regulations.
“We’re going through the draft nitrogen management plan. One of the things that came up in the hearings, there could be an amendment or change in the buffer law which changes with soil loss ordinance and takes that penalty to a state-wide level. This makes it from a local decision to a state decision. Lots of good discussion about real concerns we need to have in agriculture about changes to soil loss ordinance.”
