In St. Paul, the environment conference committee wrapped up its work and sent its bill to the full House and Senate. Agriculture lobbyist Bruce Kleven says critical language impacting farmers was removed from the final bill. “There was a couple definitions of pesticides that were in the House environment bill they didn’t belong there, that’s in the ag jurisdiction,” said Kleven. “Those were taken out of that conference committee (report), mostly at the insistence of Senator (Aric) Putnam, the ag chair from St. Cloud. He was pretty adamant about telling the House members, if you want to do ag policy, you do it in my bill, not yours.” A House provision that would have required an environmental impact statement for any operation with 10,000 animal units or more was also eliminated. However, the environment bill significantly increases the penalty for violating the state buffer law. “Significantly is probably an understatement. Currently, the maximum penalty you can get is $500 for a violation of the buffer law. The new language that’s in the bill increases that to $10,000.” Over the objection of major farm groups, the Minnesota environment bill changes the definition of public waters, but it doesn’t take effect until 2027.
