Popular Olmsted Co. farm program could reduce water pollution, if officials can agree how to pay for it

ROCHESTER – Take $5 million in federal money, add incentives for farmers to plant crops to soak up nitrates and you’ve got a program so popular it’s getting bipartisan support across the state.

But who’s going to pay to expand it?

That’s the question Olmsted County is trying to answer as officials look to spread their soil health program across southeast Minnesota to address ongoing nitrate pollution.

The county hopes to be included in the Minnesota Legislature’s budget plans this session, but it’s also applied for $9 million in environmental grant funding in case lawmakers don’t factor the program into their plans.

“I don’t think it will take a long time to spread money around the region‚” said Skip Langer, a soil conservation manager with Olmsted County’s Soil and Water Conservation Board.

Some environmentalists say Olmsted County’s work is important, but they don’t think using money from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund is appropriate given other needs around the region and state.

“You know what I’d almost guarantee happens if it comes out of the clean water funding, they’ll cut the money for water testing or some other thing that has already been deemed to be a critical need,” said Jeff Broberg, a former member of the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, which recommends environment and conservation projects using lottery money.

The initiative pays farmers to plant cover crops or small grains or share costs for haying and grazing in three separate programs. The crop payments are capped at up to 150 acres per program and a little less than $16,000 annually.

Yet farmers are often planting much more cover crops and small grains than the program requires. County officials say 113 producers have signed up for the soil health program thus far, planting almost 13,000 acres within the program and an additional 12,000 acres after they saw reduced fertilizer costs from keeping more nitrogen in their ground.

Langer told the Olmsted County Board last week the program shows a 30% reduction in nitrates in local groundwater, slightly higher than the statewide average reduction under similar cover crop programs.

The program is set to continue for a few more years until the initial $5 million runs out, but Olmsted County continues to get questions from neighboring communities about starting similar work as part of southeast Minnesota’s mission to curb nitrate pollution.

Minnesota promised the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December 2023 that it would act quickly to help residents in southeast Minnesota with dangerous levels of nitrates in their wells after the EPA urged the state to take action to protect people with polluted water.

Broberg, a geologist from Utica and president of the Minnesota Well Owners Organization, said he supports expanding the program as it’s getting a lot of buy-in from farmers. But he’s concerned lawmakers will use the project as a political cudgel to open up environmental lottery funding for other uses outside of its intended use, noting five or six bills this year that could change how Clean Water Act money could be spent without any citizen oversight.

“Those of us who are worried about the usurpation of dedicated funding through what I term legislative mischief, this is one of the top items that’s drawing attention to that,” Broberg said.

Olmsted County Commissioner Michelle Rossman farms corn, soybeans and alfalfa among other crops with her husband and has enrolled in the program since it started. The Rossmans have planted much more cover crops and small grains than the program reimburses because they’re seeing savings and benefits in using less fertilizer, she said.

Rossman said the program deserves to be expanded through any funding source the county can find, in part because it will help reverse decades of nitrate pollution buildup over the next 20 or 30 years.