NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION: ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION AND

WATER QUALITY

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HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 17 AND 19, 2007

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NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION: ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION AND WATER QUALITY

NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION: ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION AND

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34–796 PDF 2007

NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION: ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION AND

WATER QUALITY

(110–25)

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 17 AND 19, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizaon 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

BOB FILNER, California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

MICHAEL A ARCURI, New York 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

CONTENTS Page

Proceedings of:

April 17, 2007 ....................................................................................................... 1

April 19, 2007 ....................................................................................................... 130

April 17, 2007

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vii 

TESTIMONY 

Driscoll, Charles T., University Professor of Environmental Systems Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse 

University ............................................................................................................. 26

Fineday, Lenny, Director, Administration and Governmental Affairs Department, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe ...................................................................... 7

Grumbles, Hon. Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water, 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency .............................................................. 7

Mueller, Jon, Director of Litigation, Chesapeake Bay Foundation ..................... 26

O’Donnell, Hon. Arleen, Acting Commissioner, State of Massachusetts, Department of Environmental Protection .............................................................. 7

Slattery, Michael C., Director, Institute for Environmental Studies, Texas 

Christian University ............................................................................................ 26

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Baker, Hon. Richard H., of Louisiana .................................................................... 43

Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois .......................................................................... 45

Kagen, Hon. Steve, of Wisconsin ............................................................................ 46

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 47

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 51

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Driscoll, Charles T. .................................................................................................. 55

Grumbles, Benjamin H. ........................................................................................... 79

Goggleye Jr., Hon. George (submitted by Lenny Fineday) ................................... 98

Mueller, Jon A. ........................................................................................................ 104

O’Donnell, Arleen ..................................................................................................... 115

Slattery, Michael C. ................................................................................................. 119

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Grumbles, Hon. Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water, 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, responses to questions for the 

record .................................................................................................................... 88

April 19, 2007

Page

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... xvii 

TESTIMONY 

Baker, James, Professor Emeritus, Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University .......................................................... 151

Coombe, Richard, Regional Assistant Chief, Natural Resources Conservation 

Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture ........................................................... 135

Faber, Scott, Farm Policy Campaign Director, Environmental Defense ............ 151

Page

VI

Hooks, Craig, Director, Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds, Office 

of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ............................................. 135

Howarth, Robert W., Ph.D, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 

Cornell University ................................................................................................ 151

Stem, Wiley, Assistant City Manager, City of Waco, Texas ................................ 135

Wolf, Roger, Director of Environmental Programs, Iowa Soybean Association .. 151

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Baker, Hon. Richard H., of Louisiana .................................................................... 168

Bishop, Hon. Timothy H., of New York ................................................................. 171

Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois .......................................................................... 177

Matsui, Hon. Doris O., of California ...................................................................... 179

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 181

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 186

Salazar, Hon. John T., of Colorado ........................................................................ 192

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Baker, James ............................................................................................................ 197

Coombe, Richard ...................................................................................................... 217

Faber, Scott .............................................................................................................. 232

Hooks, Craig ............................................................................................................. 238

Howarth, Robert W. ................................................................................................. 251

Stem, Wiley .............................................................................................................. 278

Wolf, Roger ............................................................................................................... 298

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Baker, James, Professor Emeritus, Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, the impact of agriculture on 

water quality ........................................................................................................ 201

Coombe, Richard, Regional Assistant Chief, Natural Resources Conservation 

Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, response to questions for the 

record .................................................................................................................... 226

Hooks, Craig, Director, Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds, Office 

of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, responses to questions 

for the record ........................................................................................................ 248

Howarth, Robert W., Ph.D, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 

Cornell University:

Response to questions from Rep. Johnson ......................................................... 257

The Development of Policy Approaches for Reducing Nitrogen Pollution 

to Coastal Waters of the USA, Robert W. Howarth ...................................... 262

Wolf, Roger, Director of Environmental Programs, Iowa Soybean Association, 

response to questions for the record ................................................................... 306

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

American Farm Bureau Federation, statement .................................................... 308

National Corn Growers Association, statement .................................................... 332

National Pork Producers Council, statement ........................................................ 339

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(1)

HEARING ON NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION: 

ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION AND WATER 

QUALITY 

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eddie Bernice 

Johnson [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I would like to welcome today’s witnesses to our 

hearing on the Impact of Atmospheric Deposition and Water Quality. 

Today we will hear from representatives from Federal, State and 

tribal governments and other interested stakeholders. These diverse perspectives will provide the Subcommittee with a much 

broader understanding on nonpoint source water pollution and how 

atmospheric deposition impacts water quality and what the Federal 

Government is currently doing about it. 

To begin, let me extend a warm greeting to Dr. Michael Slattery. 

Dr. Slattery comes from my home State of Texas and one of my 

alma maters, who is an expert in environmental science. 

As a former health care professional, I am very concerned about 

the impact that air pollution can have on human health especially 

on mothers and children. 

Dr. Slattery has been instrumental in providing critical scientific 

findings on the impact of coal-fired plants, power plants, in the 

State of Texas. These plants, as Dr. Slattery will testify, are central contributors to mercury loading in water bodies throughout 

Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. 

I thank you very much for being here today to discuss your research findings. 

Nonpoint source water pollution is an area that has not been 

looked at in many years by this Subcommittee, and I am pleased 

to announce that this is the first in a series of hearings that will 

look at this major area of concern and the impairment of the Nation’s water bodies. I hope that these hearings will provide the 

members of the Subcommittee with a firmer grasp of the nature of 

nonpoint source pollution as well as what the Federal Government 

is doing or not doing to deal with it. 

Nonpoint water pollution might best be described by what it is 

not. It is pollution that enters water bodies through a pathway 

2

other than a discernible, confined and discrete conveyance such as 

a pipe or ditch. This pollution is captured by rainfall or snowmelt 

and carried into the waters, eventually causing these water bodies 

to become impaired. 

The sources of nonpoint water pollution are varied. They can include runoff from farms, streets and construction sites. The sources 

can also include emissions from power plants, industrial facilities 

and car tailpipes. This form of nonpoint source pollution is referred 

to atmospheric deposition and what we are here today to discuss. 

These types of substances begin as air emissions enter the atmosphere and eventually fall out or settle over the land and water 

bodies. In many cases, these substances are eventually washed into 

water bodies, causing considerable pollution. It is important to understand that atmospheric deposition nonpoint source pollution begins as an air pollution problem and ends up as a water pollution 

problem. 

While I realize that the regulation of air pollution is outside the 

purview of this Subcommittee, the fact that a significant number 

of waters are impaired through the atmospheric sources makes this 

issue a concern of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee. 

I, for one, am eager to find out if the Environmental Protection 

Agency is equipped to properly handle such multimedia pollution 

problems especially in the light of the interstate and international 

nature of air pollution and its impacts on State waters. 

Atmospheric deposition is a major source of water body impairment. In EPA’s most recent National Assessment Database, the 

States report that 26 percent of lakes, reservoirs and bays are impaired because of atmospheric deposition. In addition, in 2004, 44 

States had fish consumption advisories for mercury. This means 

that nearly every State in the Union has fish that are contaminated and should not be eaten. The majority of fish consumption 

advisories focus on mercury contamination from atmospheric 

sources. 

Although sources of mercury in the environment can be both natural and manmade, the United States Geographical Survey has 

found that human activities have doubled or even tripled the 

amount of mercury in the atmosphere. This mercury has come from 

power plants and other fossil fuel-burning sources. 

Given what we know about health impacts of mercury, any mercury advisory in today’s day and age is wrong. That more and more 

water bodies are subject to mercury advisories and nearly every 

State in the Country is subject to these mercury warnings is unbelievable and needs explaining. It is time for this Committee to start 

asking how this could be, and then it is time to ask what are we 

doing about it. 

Water bodies throughout this Country have been negatively impacted, are being negatively impacted by harmful atmospheric deposition for far too long. Unchecked, this type of nonpoint source pollution will result in human health and economic costs that both localized regions as well as the Nation can ill afford. 

I urge members of this Subcommittee not to forget these costs 

are not just the aesthetics of water bodies, not just the fish and 

aquatic plant life. Instead, the effects of mercury deposition and 

3

the effects of pesticide deposition, the effects of other toxic metals, 

all have demonstrated dramatic negative health impacts on young 

children, adults and the elderly. We need to ask ourselves if all of 

this harm can continue without any effective response. 

I welcome the witnesses to today’s hearing, and I look forward 

to their testimony. They will better inform the Subcommittee as to 

the nature of atmospheric deposition, how it relates to nonpoint 

source pollution and how it impacts human health and the environment. 

The Chair recognizes Mr. Baker. 

Mr. BAKER. I thank the gentlelady for convening this hearing 

and for her broad view and opening statement concerning water 

quality. I share many of her concerns in preserving the valuable 

asset that our nation relies on in a daily fashion. 

I would also point out that nonpoint source water degradation is 

certainly something the Congress should better understand, receive 

scientific comment and learn better the effects or consequences of 

that anomaly. 

With specific reference to atmospheric deposition, merely for establishing the scope of the problem we really face, there was actually a geologic period brought to an end by the result of a six mile 

meteor impact 65 million years ago that ended the Cretaceous and 

started the Tertiary period. Also, similarly, some believe ended the 

life of dinosaurs. Fortunately for humankind, no similar event has 

recently occurred although in 1883 the volcano, Krakatoa, erupted 

and volcanic ash surrounded the equator in 13 days, having significant adverse ecological effects. 

I merely enter those observations into the record because atmospheric depositional conduct is an extremely complex phenomenon 

which can be affected by vehicle emissions in China or coal-burning 

gas-fired generators in other countries around the globe and, because of trade winds, result in depositional activities within the domestic United States, over which we obviously have very little control or ability to regulate. 

It is for those reasons that I suggest we certainly should learn 

and better understand the forces at work, but prior to moving to 

any new regulatory constraint on domestic business activity, we 

need to fully understand the risks we face and the appropriate response that this Congress should generate without unnecessarily 

constraining responsible economic growth. 

With that in mind, I look forward to the balance of the hearings 

that are now scheduled as I know the Committee will learn a great 

deal and resultingly take responsible action. 

I yield back and thank the Chairlady. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Ms. Matsui. 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you for 

calling this very important hearing. 

In my district of Sacramento, we are part of the greater Sacramento River Watershed which emanates from the Sacramento 

River. The Sacramento River is the largest and longest river in 

California. It stretches over 350 miles through the heart of Northern California, and it collects water from over a dozen counties between Sacramento and Oregon in an area of more than 27,000 

4

square miles. This mighty river has 27 tributaries feeding into it, 

and 17 percent of California’s land drains into the Sacramento 

River. 

My priority since taking office has been flood protection, but the 

more I engage on the issue, the more it is apparent to me that flood 

protection is not just about levees and dams. It is also about the 

decisions we make within a watershed. 

I am very interested in developing a comprehensive Sacramento 

Watershed approach. It is my intent that this approach will address the environmental, water quality, conservation, land use and, 

yes, flood protection components of a full and robust watershed approach. 

I am particularly interested to hear about the EPA’s Section 319 

program and how it can work with other programs and agencies 

such as USDA. It is my belief that it will take more than one program, one agency and one approach to address the needs of our 

larger watersheds in this Country. Whether it is identifying 

nonpoint source pollution or managing land use, all of these issues 

are interrelated. 

I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses, and I thank you 

once again, Madam Chair, for calling this hearing. 

I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Ehlers? 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to express 

my appreciation for this hearing. 

I apologize. I won’t be able to stay because the Aviation Subcommittee is having a classified briefing in 15 minutes, and I have 

to be at that, but I will try to stop by here after that. 

This is an extremely important issue and, as a representative of 

the Great Lakes, I can assure you how important it is for all of us 

who live there. We have something on the order of 70 million people depend on the Great Lakes for their drinking water, and so it 

is a crucial issue for everyone in the Great Lakes Region. 

We are very proud of our lakes. We are very proud of the purity 

of the water, but the atmosphere deposition is an increasing problem. 

Just to give you one example, a number of years ago, the United 

States banned the use of the chemical, Toxaphene. Not too long 

ago, the Great Lakes’ concentration of Toxaphene was still continuing to increase because it is not banned in other parts of the 

world. It is a volatile organic compound. It gets into the air, circulates in the atmosphere, comes down with the rain into the Great 

Lakes Watershed, and there we are. 

So this is an extremely important topic, and I look forward to the 

comments on this. 

Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Bishop? 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank you 

for having this hearing as well as the hearing Thursday afternoon. 

This is a very important issue, nationally, one that is particularly important to my district. I represent a district that is literally 

surrounded by water. And so, these are concerns of ours that are 

5

of long standing, and we look forward to the testimony both this 

afternoon and on Thursday afternoon. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Mr. Gilchrest? 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Just briefly, I want to thank our witnesses on the first and second panels for coming. We look forward to a very productive working relationship with you over the next couple of years in this session of Congress, and we hope we can make progress. 

I have some other things. I am going to try to stay for the hearing, but I may have to leave. 

As we go through nonpoint source pollution and all the various 

aspects which is fundamentally human activity, everything we do 

from streetscapes to, as Mr. Ehlers mentioned, atmospheric deposition to herbicides, deforestation, agriculture, sewage treatment 

plants, the list is seemingly endless. Except that we match that list 

up with human activity, we now that it is not compatible with nature’s design. Nature gets degraded. Pretty soon, we are the ones 

that are going to be degraded or our great grandchildren. 

But as we go through all of the nonpoint source pollution contributions to this degradation, into this mix I really think we have 

risen to the level of understanding to put climate change and what 

that does to acidification of our estuaries to the draw-down potentially of the Great Lakes because of changing weather patterns and 

what that reduction of the volume of water will do to the concentration of all of these activities from herbicides to toxic chemicals to sewage to more people, et cetera. 

So I just ask you to take into consideration, climate change, as 

you run through the various aspects of your responsibility. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. Napolitano? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

The Honorable Ben Grumbles, we have met before and we talked 

water extensively. 

I thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for the hearing because the 

Subcommittee on Water and Power, in my particular Subcommittee, we have a great interest in this, and this dovetails the 

efforts that we are trying to put in. The nonpoint sources of pollution have become a major problem, and I am sure the studies are 

going to show that it is at least in 50 percent of water. 

How do we work to be able to ensure that our residents or citizens are protected from that pollution which we know is identifiable, is filterable and will make our youngsters or elderly who may 

be prone to picking up that pollution in the water that is not filtered out? 

How do we work with all of the effects on water and be able to 

ensure that we do it in a way that is not going to be protracted 

in addressing who is responsible, what responsibilities the Federal 

Government may have if it is Federal Government land? There are 

all kinds of things that come to mind. 

The adding of Section 319 in Congress in 1987 to the Clean 

Water Act, I think, needs to be more vibrant, visible, effective, and 

we should work with the States to ensure that that runoff is manVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
6

aged properly so that we can then work with them to be able to 

ensure the delivery of potable water and clean water in our rivers 

and our dams and into the aquifers that we draw from. 

Those are all areas, Madam Chairwoman, that I am hoping that 

we will be addressing or at least identifying the plans that will address the nonpoint pollution problems, the funding, whether it is 

public access from the cities, the States, the Federal Government 

through implementing State management plans, and if those Section 319 funds are being used adequately to address agriculture 

and nonpoint pollution. 

Those are all issues that I am hoping that we will be able to address, and thank again for being here and to the Chairwoman for 

calling this hearing. 

I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Kagen? 

Mr. KAGEN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

It is a great honor for me to able to serve the people of Wisconsin. I have gone through some of the math, and I represent 

more shoreline than any of the Congressional seats. It is a matter 

of great importance to my district and my people. 

I am also very sensitive to the political nature of how we preserve our environment and nonpoint source pollution. 

My father was a volunteer health commissioner when I was 

growing up in the early 1960s in Appleton, Wisconsin, and he was 

very irritated when I came home with my baseball suit on and I 

smelled like the DDT fogger. We had been riding our bicycles in 

the fog. The very next day, he went down to city hall, and he 

banned DDT spraying, and he lost his job because of it. He was 

protecting the health of his children and his neighborhood. 

I certainly hope that the actions of this Congress, the 110th, will 

be different than the results that he had as we seek to protect our 

environment, not just our surface water but our ground water as 

well. 

I look forward to working with everyone here and listening to the 

greatest extent possible to the testimony before I, like Vern Ehlers, 

have to go to a different meeting. 

Thank you very much. 

I yield back my time. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

I think that ends our opening statements. 

We are very pleased to have very distinguished panels of witnesses. 

For our first panel here this afternoon, we have the Honorable 

Benjamin Grumbles who we are going to give an honorary chair at 

that table. He is the Assistant Administrator for the Office of 

Water, the United States Environmental Protection Agency. 

Next, we have the Honorable Arleen O’Donnell, Acting Commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. 

Finally, we have Mr. Lenny Fineday, Director of the Administration and Governmental Affairs Department of the Leech Lake Band 

of Ojibwe. He is here on behalf of the Honorable George Goggleye, 

Jr., Chairman of the Leech Lake Band Board. Unfortunately, the 

7

Chairman is unable to attend this afternoon’s hearing, but we are 

happy to have Mr. Fineday to deliver that testimony. 

We are pleased that you were able to make it this afternoon. 

Your full statements will be placed in the record. 

We ask that witnesses try to limit their testimony to five minutes of oral summary of their written statements as a courtesy to 

other witnesses. We will continue to proceed in the order in which 

the witnesses are listed in the call of the hearing. 

Mr. Grumbles, you may proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE BENJAMIN H. GRUMBLES, 

ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE OFFICE OF WATER, 

U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; THE HONORABLE ARLEEN O’DONNELL, ACTING COMMISSIONER, STATE 

OF MASSACHUSETTS, DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL 

PROTECTION; LENNY FINEDAY, DIRECTOR, ADMINISTRATION AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT, LEECH 

LAKE BAND OF OJIBWE 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is always an honor 

and an education to appear before the Subcommittee and listen to 

your thoughtful statements. On behalf of EPA, I just want to commend you and the Subcommittee for holding this series of hearings 

this week, today on atmospheric deposition and Thursday on 

nonpoint source pollution. 

We all live downstream and downwind. I think over the course 

of several years the country is connecting the dots or I should say 

connecting the drops. The fact that acid rain, SO2 deposition, has 

a significant impact on lakes and water bodies, the fact that deposition of mercury which then becomes methylmercury has significant 

ramifications for water quality and fish consumption and human 

health and the health of water bodies. 

So this series of hearings, this focus on the diffuse sources of pollution is critically important. We fully agree with you, and the data 

tells us that atmospheric deposition is a significant contributor to 

water pollution. 

EPA’s recent data, the data that we get from the States under 

the Clean Water Act, Section 305(b) reports, cite atmospheric deposition as the source of impairment in 26 percent of the lakes and 

bays and 5 percent of the rivers and streams. Over 8,500 water 

bodies in 43 states and Puerto Rico have been listed as impaired 

by mercury on the State TMDL lists, and most of these are believed to be caused by atmospheric deposition. 

Acid rain is also a challenge for the Country particularly in the 

Northeast and New England States, and acid rain causes a cascade 

of effects ranging from fish kills to reduced fish populations and decreased biodiversity. 

Nitrogen is a significant problem, a significant water quality 

problem, and people often focus appropriately on the runoff from 

the land, but it is also the deposition from the air that can be a 

major contributor to eutrophication and hypoxic zones through atmospheric deposition of nitrogen. In the Chesapeake Bay, air deposition of nitrogen accounts for an estimated 28 percent of the nitrogen inputs to the bay. 

8

Congressman Baker, in the Gulf of Mexico, that number is about 

20 percent. 

So it is not just about the nitrogen from sewage treatment plants 

or from farms or from the land. It is also from the air. We are also 

aware of other toxic metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, 

constituents that can be part of the atmospheric deposition that 

present challenges to the water. 

Most importantly, though, from an EPA perspective, I am focusing on the solutions, and I want to emphasize that one of the key 

steps we have taken over the last couple of years has been to use 

the Clean Air Act tools to control atmospheric deposition of mercury. In 2005, the Clean Air Interstate Rule and the Clean Air 

Mercury Rule which were signed in 2005, we have concluded that 

they will reduce air deposition of electric utility mercury emissions 

by nearly 70 percent from 1999 levels when fully implemented. 

That is a significant step forward in controlling mercury, the atmospheric deposition of mercury. 

Under the Clean Water Act, we have recently taken important 

steps working with our State partners to provide guidance, voluntary guidance to encourage a focus on early action, on implementing, using various State and regional tools and authorities to 

control and reduce mercury deposition and mercury discharges into 

water bodies through a voluntary approach coupled with our Clean 

Water Act tools that we will continue to use, the TMDL program 

as appropriate, and other tools under that statute. 

I also want to emphasize that one of the greatest success stories 

when it comes to environmental law and environmental statutes, 

from my perspective, is the acid rain trading program under the 

Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. This program set up a cap and 

trade approach, and we believe the data show that there are excellent environmental results from that cap and trade. 

Lastly, under the Clean Air Act rules, the Clean Air Interstate 

Rule, we believe, will be a major step forward in reducing NOx and 

SOx emissions and helping to protect and restore waters across the 

U.S. We estimate that the 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule will reduce nitrogen loads to the Chesapeake Bay by 8 million pounds per 

year, a reduction of 8.8 percent by 2010. 

So, in conclusion, Madam Chair, we have a lot of work ahead of 

us. We, EPA, have made a significant investment under the air and 

water authorities that we have, relying on technology and innovation and perhaps, most importantly, collaboration, recognizing that 

State and local authorities, when it comes to nonpoint source or diffuse pollution, are key, critical to solving the problem. We think 

working with you, we will continue to make success on this important effort. 

Thank you. I would be happy to answer questions if you have 

any. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Grumbles. 

I would like to welcome Commissioner O’Donnell from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. We welcome 

your testimony. 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is an honor to 

be here today to testify before this Subcommittee. 

9

I just want to make a few points, starting with the problem. Mercury is a serious problem for the residents of Massachusetts. We 

have a Statewide advisory for consumption of all freshwater fish 

across the State. Over 8,000 babies are born each year with elevated mercury levels in their blood. The problem with this is that 

mercury is a neurotoxin, and it causes brain damage. 

We also have over 100 lakes that we have tested specifically for 

mercury in fish, and they are all posted individually. Our motto is 

basically where you test for it, you are going to find it. 

The vast majority of mercury comes from air emissions. We have 

done a lot of work throughout the New England area and with the 

Eastern Canadian Provinces, and the amount coming from water 

discharges is really negligible. The vast majority of mercury that 

enters our water bodies and our fish comes from the air. 

In 1998, the New England Governors and the Eastern Canadian 

Premiers adopted a zero mercury strategy. We set very specific numeric goals. The goal is to control mercury by 50 percent by 2003 

and 75 percent by 2010 and virtual elimination after that. As a region, we are on target, and Massachusetts is ahead of schedule. 

Massachusetts has currently reduced 70 percent of its in-State 

mercury resources. 

I am going to mention six sectors that we specifically controlled. 

Number one, trash incinerators, all of our trash incinerators control 90 percent of mercury emissions. That is three times the national standard. 

Coal-fired power plants, by 2008, all will have 85 percent mercury emission controls. By 2012, that will be up to 95 percent mercury emission controls. 

We had 150 medical waste incinerators. We work closely with the 

hospital industry in Massachusetts which is obviously a big industry in Massachusetts. All of those hospitals have found alternative 

ways of dealing with their mercury products, mostly replacing 

them with non-mercury sources. All 150 medical waste incinerators 

have been decommissioned. 

We also have 3,600 dentists in our State, and now 80 percent of 

them have amalgam separators on their discharge which goes to 

our wastewater treatment plants. We started with a voluntary program. We now have a mandatory program. You might not think 

dentists contribute a lot of mercury, but in Massachusetts alone 

400 pounds of mercury came from dental offices directly into our 

rivers and streams. 

All of our industrial wastewater dischargers must control mercury down to one part per billion by 2009. We have that standard 

on some wastewater treatment plants. We are putting it on the industrial wastewater dischargers themselves. 

Then finally, last year we passed mercury product legislation, the 

last State in New England to pass it. We are very proud of that 

legislation. It will involve phaseouts of mercury products where 

there are less hazardous substitutes, recycling for mercury products for which there is no acceptable substitute and a labeling program. 

Okay, so what results have we seen to date? We have been doing 

this now since 1998. We are sampling our fish Statewide from the 

time we put the controls on incinerators, five years out, to see if 

10

the environment showed any improvement whatsoever. Surprising 

results, you wouldn’t expect to see that rapid a response in fish tissue over five years, but Statewide we saw mercury levels come 

down between 15 and 20 percent. 

Interestingly, in the vicinity of the mercury sources themselves 

where the incinerators had controls put on them—there is one part 

of Massachusetts that has a lot of incinerators—up to 32 percent 

mercury reductions in fish tissue there, just over a period of five 

years. But that is still not enough. 

What else do we need to do? Well, the New England States all 

banded together with New York State and last week submitted to 

EPA, a regional TMDL. A TMDL is a Total Maximum Daily Load 

under the Clean Water Act, and it basically is a calculation of how 

much mercury reduction has to come from various sources in order 

to meet water quality standards. 

Our calculation in Massachusetts alone is 70 percent of all of the 

mercury coming into Massachusetts comes from upwind sources. So 

we have done our best to control our own sources, but 70 percent 

is still coming in from out of State, and we will not meet water 

quality standards unless more controls are put on upwind sources. 

Our calculations show that the incoming mercury sources need to 

be reduced by 86 to 98 percent in order for our fish to be safe to 

eat. 

Minnesota has also submitted a TMDL which I believe has been 

approved by EPA, and their figures show 93 percent out of State 

sources need to be controlled in order for their fish to be safe to 

eat. 

So, in summary, the States have done a lot, New England in particular. With westerly prevailing winds, we are at the end of the 

pipeline, and so we have seen some dramatic impacts associated 

with mercury deposition. We are doing our part to control it, and 

we believe that more controls ought to be put on upwind sources 

or else we will not be able to reach our goals in New England. 

Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Welcome, Mr. Fineday, for testimony from the Leech Lake Board. 

Mr. FINEDAY. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman and Subcommittee members. 

I am here today representing the Honorable George Goggleye, 

Jr., the Chairman of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. He sends his 

gratitude to the Subcommittee for holding this hearing and allowing us to offer testimony, but he also sends his regrets that a 

scheduling conflict prevented him from being here. 

There are several toxic pollutants or contaminants that are 

known to be capable of adversely impacting our watersheds and 

waters via atmospheric deposition. Mercury, dioxins and PCBs 

quickly come to mind. Of these, mercury is the most ubiquitous because it comes from any fossil fuel combustion source and is deposited through atmospheric deposition both into watersheds and directly into lakes. 

The fish in all of our tribal lakes and in all Minnesota lakes contain mercury from atmospheric deposition. Because of the widespread adverse impacts of mercury, I will direct my remarks today 

to this atmospherically deposited nonpoint source pollutant. 

11

Briefly, what do we know about mercury and its adverse impacts? Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, and human developmental 

impacts are well described. Mercury falling out of the air into a 

lake or watershed becomes methylated usually through natural 

bacteriologic processes. 

Once methylated, the mercury enters a terrestrial or aquatic food 

chain. All forms of mercury may be transformed biologically to 

methylmercury. Once methylmercury is incorporated into a food 

chain, it may be bioaccumulated and biomagnified as one organism 

eats another. Human exposure to mercury occurs primarily 

through consumption of fish and seafood. 

Because mercury is a potent neurotoxin, exposure to small 

amounts in the womb and during childhood can cause permanent 

neurological damage. In addition to IQ reduction, mercury toxicity 

has been associated with childhood diseases and disorders including mental retardation, cerebral palsy-like symptoms and hyperactivity as well as heart disease in men. 

An additional sobering fact regarding the toxic impacts of mercury is that the slope of the dose response curve appears to be 

steeper at lower doses, a term known as supralinear. This means 

that even at very low doses, mercury can cause significant adverse 

impacts to children, and impacts to fetuses may occur with minimal or no apparent symptoms in the mother. 

The following quote by the physician, Dr. Ian Donald, must be 

in the foreground of our thoughts as we deliberate mercury issues: 

‘‘The first 38 weeks of life spent in the allegedly protected environment of the amniotic sac are medically more eventful and more 

fraught with danger than the next 38 years in the life span of most 

human individuals.’’

Tribes using their fishery resources are disproportionately impacted by mercury contamination because of their generally higher 

fish consumption as compared to the overall U.S. population. Based 

on human blood mercury research by Schober, the U.S. Centers for 

Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 8 percent of American women of childbearing age have blood mercury levels above 

EPA safe levels. This percentage increases by four times to 31.5 

percent for Native American women with blood mercury levels 

above the safe limit established by the EPA. 

The ability of mercury to cause IQ deficits in children is perhaps 

the most widely recognized quantifiable mercury impact. 

The following calculations are derived from the findings of the 

three major studies that have been done regarding mercury impacts to children, the EPA and our ongoing tribal research of mercury in fish. The three major studies are named for their geographic locations: Faroe Islands, New Zealand and Seychelles. The 

range of potential IQ deficit for children in the above studies is 

quite large, spanning from-.53 to-0.024 IQ point for each part per 

million of maternal hair mercury. 

Our assessment of potential IQ impacts to Leech Lake children 

incorporates the above referenced study data, tribal specific fish 

mercury data and tribal seasonal fish consumption data. All of this 

data translates to potential IQ losses of up to 14 IQ points per 

Leech Lake child. Then, as distasteful as this may be, using the 

EPA’s economic valuation per IQ point of $11,871, a child losing 14 

12

IQ points to mercury would also be at an economic disadvantage 

of $166,194. 

We as Indian people cannot afford to relinquish the fish that 

have sustained us for centuries. Fish are an integral part of our 

culture. They are who we are. 

Thank you again for allowing me to speak here today. Megwitch. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

We will begin the first round of questions now. 

Let me start by asking Mr. Grumbles. What is EPA actively 

doing at this time to coordinate EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation 

and the Office of Water to reduce atmospheric deposition? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you, Congresswoman. 

Several things, one of them is the two offices work together in 

the implementation of the water program, sharing observations 

and ideas in coordination with our State partners as the Air Office 

works with its States to implement the Clean Air Interstate Rule 

and the Clean Air Mercury Rule. 

We are also working together on several fronts to advance energy 

efficiency and water efficiency to reduce and to mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases. The two offices have been working together for years on the Energy Star Program, and now we are also 

working on a Water Star. It is called Water Sense Labeling Program to help use voluntary measures. 

But, frankly, the focus is on using the tools we have to provide 

to the Air Office, added incentives and insights from the water programs across the Country and the tribal programs across the Country to help connect the dots or the drops between atmospheric deposition and water. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Now what is EPA doing to reduce the mercury emissions from 

foreign sources? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. One of the highest priorities in the Agency is to 

work with our global partners to reduce air pollution that does 

have an impact on U.S. citizens. There are several initiatives that 

are underway. There is the Methane to Markets Partnership that 

the Administration has been advancing, not just EPA but the Department of Energy and others. 

I, myself, as well as the Administrator on several occasions have 

been to China to meet with environmental officials to learn what 

they are doing and to also provide insights from the EPA programs 

and statutes that your Committee and other committees have 

passed to control atmospheric deposition including mercury. 

The Agency has a mercury road map which involves many different offices and programs reducing the sources of pollution. Arleen O’Donnell mentioned an effort with dentists to have amalgam 

separators. Our Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances Office 

as well as our Air Office have been working to advance measures 

with States and with the regulative community to reduce mercury 

emissions and discharges into the air and into the water because 

we recognize that what you put on the land or what you put in the 

air is ultimately written on the water. 

So it is a priority for the Agency including continuing to work 

with the FDA on joint fish consumption advisories to reduce the 

13

risk and also recognize that eating fish is part of a healthy, balanced diet. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Do you have a copy of the results? Are you documenting results? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Under which? 

Ms. JOHNSON. On the international influence or impact. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. We have an extensive amount of information 

that we would be happy to provide the Committee with in terms 

of our discussions and comparisons with Chinese officials, Air and 

Water. 

I just recently entered a memorandum agreement with the Ministry of Water Resources to focus on a watershed approach and in 

particular to provide technical assistance to them on integrated 

river basin management and ways to address nonpoint source pollution because that is one of the major challenges facing China 

when it comes to water. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Ms. O’Donnell, do you have any comments? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. I am also Chairman of the Quicksilver Caucus 

which is a national affiliation of State associations, and we have 

been working closely with EPA on the mercury road map. We provided comments along the way, and I think the bulk of our comments, at least from me, are that the road map ought to have more 

specific numerical targets, the same way the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers mercury strategy did. 

We have done a lot of work with vehicle switches, with electric 

arc furnaces. I think that is a great success story, having an agreement with the Automobile Manufacturers of America. That will reduce about 10 tons of mercury emissions a year just coming from 

that one source alone. But I think we have got to take a sector approach and look at all the other sectors that need to be controlled 

and figure out what numeric targets are achievable. 

On the coal-fired power plants, we can do in 95 percent in Massachusetts. Other States are requiring 95 percent. We think 70 percent under the Clean Air Mercury Rule is not sufficient. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. Fineday, did you want to comment? 

Thank you. 

Mr. Baker? 

Mr. BAKER. Secretary Grumbles, what is the database on which 

the atmospheric depositional estimates are based? Is there, for example, a Canadian-U.S. monitoring system that is run for some 

continuous period of time to generate a database from which assumptions can be made? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, I am going to ask to get back to 

you with specifics on that. I want to coordinate with the Air Office 

in terms of the precise databases. 

I am not sure if it is. It probably is the Clean Air Act permitting 

programs, one of the most reliable databases for atmospheric deposition. They may also be using in part some of the TRI data, air 

emissions. 

Mr. BAKER. Permitting data would be a one time instance where 

you are required to report certain data upon your applications filVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
14

ing. That would not be a continual monitoring responsibility, would 

it? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I can speak to the Clean Water Act on continual 

monitoring responsibilities which it is the case for all facilities 

under the Clean Water Act on monthly monitoring. 

Mr. BAKER. But not for air. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I don’t know the time frame for the monitoring 

on air, and I commit to get that to you. 

Mr. BAKER. Well, it is my understanding that there are various 

governmental agencies like the NOAA, for example, and various 

states which may have their own aggregating data points, but it is 

not a formalized EPA-driven monitoring system which generates an 

annual data set from which conclusions about atmospheric deposition rates, on a statistically significant basis—let me clarify—those 

conclusions. 

My point is A, we need to know more, but B, if we were to find 

out that the coal-fired generators of Canada are a significant contributor to Massachusetts and Minnesota’s numbers, what do we do 

about that? Do you have a recommendation? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, I know one thing that the Agency is doing 

is that the Administrator is in discussions with the Environment 

Minister for Canada, talking about issues that we share, and one 

of them is atmospheric deposition and air pollution, trans-boundary 

air pollution. 

Mr. BAKER. Would there be any data available to us that shows 

the U.S. atmospheric depositional rates to other nations? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I think we do have some data that I would be 

happy to provide to you. I want to check the facts on this, but as 

I was going through some of the background material that we will 

provide to you and other members, the figure of 1 percent jumps 

out in my mind. 

Mr. BAKER. That is 1 percent of what? I am sorry. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. The global emissions, that the U.S. contributes 

1 percent of the global emissions, atmospheric deposition emissions 

with respect to mercury. 

Mr. BAKER. Sure, and so what we need then is a substantive material database by element and by amount. I think it is important 

for us to see what we are doing to others as well as what others 

are doing to us. 

I am very concerned about the rate of industrialization in China 

and the lack of air quality restrictions that they do not appear to 

be anxious to impose on their burgeoning economic development 

and the consequences of that to us, not necessarily mercury but nitrogen particularly. Is there any study of those international relationships that might be available to us or is that an area where 

significant work needs to be done? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. We need to continue to do work, and I will also 

coordinate with the Assistant Administrator for International Affairs to coordinate a response to you. 

I would also say, Congressman, that the Administration’s emphasis on the strategic economic dialogue is precisely to engage with 

our partners, China and other Asia Pacific partners, on energy efficiency, energy production and environmental responsibility. Part of 

the purpose for that emphasis that the Administrator and other 

15

cabinet level officials have is to have sincere discussions with 

China and other countries about the concerns we have about global 

air pollution. 

Mr. BAKER. To wrap up for me, you mentioned a 20 percent contribution to the Gulf waters from atmospheric deposition. On what 

basis was that 20 percent calculation made? Is there some study 

that you might make available? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I can certainly make available the study, the 

data that we have. The Air Office and their programs in Research 

Triangle, they have similar data on the Chesapeake Bay where I 

got the 28 percent figure. 

Mr. BAKER. I will only point out this observation about our circumstance in my immediate market, that we are under an EPA restricted economic environment because of our non-attainment 

standards. 

I have been advised by academics that if you were to take all 

mankind, all vehicles, all industry and everybody that breathes, including cows, off the face of the state in the area in which the current non-attainment requirements exist, given the number of trees 

and hours of daylight, there are days in July and August when God 

can’t meet the standard without any contribution from human involvement. 

We just need some reasonableness here, and I think that that is 

the thing that concerns many of us who want clean water, clean 

air and our kids to be healthy. How do we get there in a manner 

which makes taxpayer sense and environmental sense? 

Without this data, it seems very hard to develop a meaningful 

policy that can be publicly defended. The 20 percent figure should 

be something that ought to be very clearly delineated so that we 

can understand and then try to proceed and do something about it, 

having identified the source. 

I thank the gentleman and yield back. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Baker. 

I have a couple more questions before I move on. 

Mr. Fineday, thank you very much for being here. What I would 

like you to tell me about is the unique situation faced by the Native American neighbors especially with regard to contaminated 

fish. 

Mr. FINEDAY. I guess all I can really say on that is that fish has 

been an integral part of our culture for centuries, and it has been 

a staple of our diet for many, many centuries. From my testimony, 

I think you can see that we have concluded the potential negative 

impacts as far as the impacts on IQ is an economic disadvantage. 

Outside of that, I guess I would ask for something maybe more specific. 

I would also just like to say that the Chairman had instructed 

me that any technical questions, if they could please be submitted 

in writing, and we will respond to those as expeditiously as possible. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Grumbles, just one more question, you have a web site that 

has been up. When we started to look in order to do some research 

on this hearing, it disappeared. Who manages that web site? 

16

Mr. GRUMBLES. Is this the Office of Water home page? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Well, it is within my office. We have a technical 

official, a technical person within the resource management staff, 

who operates it. I would love to know for how long it was not available. It must have just been a technical bleep or something. 

Was it after the storm? 

Ms. JOHNSON. It disappeared last Thursday. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I would love to know more. We embrace transparency and providing as much information as we can that is credible and reliable, putting it on the web site. So I would be very interested to find out more. 

Our web site does have, just for the benefit of others who haven’t 

visited it, we do have specific focus and emphasis on mercury, the 

mercury road map which is in the Office of Water. It is an Agencywide web site. 

Then also within the Office of Water, we have something in particular. You were just asking a question about fish advisories. We 

have an annual listing of fish advisories and through the Office of 

Water web site, EPA.gov/water, you can locate the different types 

of fish advisories, most of which are mercury-related, throughout 

the Country, and we can track the trends, the status and trends 

of that. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Is it updated periodically? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes. Yes, it is. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Is that the reason it is down? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Okay. I wonder. We have complimented you for 

the transparency, but I wonder whether or not anything outdated 

or whatever that is not that far outdated, that warrants removing 

it completely from public view. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I think that the credibility of the Agency and 

other agencies depends on having accurate, reliable information. I 

think particularly in this day and age having a web site that 

shares as much information as we know is a good thing, and we 

fully embrace that. Also updating is the key as some of these issues 

are so complex. As we gather information and benefit from peer review, it is important to get the scientific information up there. 

So I am happy to look further into that and find out more specifics with your staff as what problem you might have run into. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. We were a little curious because of this hearing 

come up, that it suddenly disappeared. Thank you. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Are there questions from other members? 

Mr. Taylor? 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Grumbles, I happen to represent the coastal area of Mississippi that was clobbered by hurricane Katrina a year and a half 

ago. A fairly large portion of the coast went underwater at different 

times. So that would have subjected the Mississippi Sound to 

urban runoff, in some instances maybe even industrial waste. 

17

I am curious since the consumption of shellfish in that area is 

very high—crab, shrimp—and we are trying to revive the oyster industry. To what extent, if any, has your Agency been involved in 

testing of those coastal water, in particular testing of shellfish like 

crab and shrimp to see if there have been any adverse effects? 

I would take the attitude of I just think people need to know. Let 

them decide whether or not they want to eat it, but they at least 

need to know if there is something that they should be concerned 

about in that source of food. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you, Congressman. I recognize your involvement and leadership after the storms. 

The Agency was very quick to enter into a partnership with FDA 

and with NOAA and with the Mississippi DEQ precisely on that 

subject of coastal water quality and the potential for contamination 

of fish and shellfish. I would not say we were the lead, but we offered expertise and technical assistance both within my office and, 

probably more importantly, within the regional office for that EPA 

region. 

So we have been involved. We continued to be involved. I don’t 

know. I haven’t gotten an update in the last few months on that 

concern, but we did work with the State and with the public health 

agencies on the water quality monitoring. 

We also took extensive samples in coastal water quality and also 

used our relatively new ocean research and survey vessel, the Bold. 

We diverted it from other missions and brought it into the Gulf of 

Mexico for additional reconnaissance work and testing in coastal 

waters. 

Mr. TAYLOR. If there is a compilation of results of what you have 

done, as things start to get a little better, these kinds of questions 

are coming up in my town meetings, and I would very much welcome whatever information you could provide along those lines. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Definitely, and also on the Agency’s web site, 

there is an extensive amount of information on hurricanes Katrina 

and Rita and all the different types of environmental monitoring 

that we did. 

So I will also go back and mention your ongoing interest and 

need for data on that. 

Mr. TAYLOR. The consumption of seafood really tends to spike 

during the summer, shrimp season, crab season. In the fall, they 

are expecting the first oyster harvest since the storm. So I think 

a timely response from you would be greatly appreciated. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Okay. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you. 

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Taylor. 

Mr. Gilchrest? 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

The issue of mercury and air deposition, to some extent it seems 

to me, is a design flaw in our engineering technology. Nature has 

a particular design. Now you could say it is random. You could say 

there is an infinite number of variables. But there is a particular 

design to hydrology, to air deposition, to everything on the planet. 

18

We reach in, and we disrupt that with our designing technology 

which doesn’t take mercury out, which for a long time didn’t take 

lead out of gasoline. It didn’t take CFCs out of the atmosphere. We 

saw what all of those things did. 

So what we did with lead, we took it out of gasoline and designed 

engines to run without it. We took CFCs out of the atmosphere and 

had an international arrangement to do that. 

Ben, you mentioned acid rain and all of those things and how 

they were created. Acid rain, or example, is a cap and trade program, so we are reducing that by fairly significant numbers, and 

it is beginning to work. We were able to engineer new technology 

to become not only as efficient but even more efficient and improve 

the economy at the same time. 

If in the Clean Air Interstate Rule and the Clean Air Mercury 

Rule, we are going to reduce mercury levels by 70 percent, if I 

heard you right, Ben, what is the date that we are going to achieve 

that 70 percent reduction by the target date? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I am going to make sure that I provide accurate 

information in follow-up. 

But some of the materials I have that I am looking at, there are 

a couple of different phases. The first phase for the Clean Air Mercury Rule, what I have got. 

Mr. GILCHREST. You can approximate, Ben. Is it somewhere 

around 2015, 2017? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I think it is around that. I have got the second 

phase under the Clean Air Mercury Rule is due in 2018. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Okay, so that is a reduction of 70 percent by 

2018 of mercury. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Right. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Ms. O’Donnell, does that reduction by 70 percent 

by 2018 enhance or help anything that you are doing in your reduction of mercury in Massachusetts, New England and New York, 

and what is your goal by 2018? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Our goal is 95 percent by 2012. 

Mr. GILCHREST. By 2012. 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Correct. 

Mr. GILCHREST. How are you achieving that? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Actually, because we were already controlling 

for NOx and SOx, so we have already got air pollution controls on 

our coal-fired power plants for that, those controls alone got us to 

80 percent mercury reduction. So with some additional control 

technologies, it wasn’t far fetched to get to 85 and eventually 95 

percent by 2012. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Is there some discussion with New England and 

New York? 

First of all, I would like to have Maryland associated with that. 

We will see what we can do to connect with that prospect. 

Is there a discussion with people in EPA about how you are 

achieving more dramatic results a lot sooner and apparently, I am 

assuming, successfully and sharing your system with them? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Yes, we submitted voluminous comments on the 

Clean Air Mercury Rule when it was proposed. So we do have extensive comments in the public record, and several States have acVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
19

tually sued EPA under the Clean Air Mercury Rule because we believe that further controls are needed. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Do you feel that what you are doing with mercury is hampering or stifling your economy in New England? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. No. We do cost-benefit analyses for all regulations that are submitted, and our analyses show that the benefits 

far exceed the costs and the costs were fairly minimal. 

Mr. GILCHREST. You wanted to achieve one part per billion in 

Massachusetts for mercury? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. That is for the discharges, wastewater discharges. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Wastewater discharges. 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Right, and we are already achieving that for the 

Mass Water Resources Authority which basically treats sewage for 

half the State’s population. They are already meet the one part per 

billion mercury limit set by us and EPA Region 1, by the way, and 

Region 1 EPA played a very lead role in that. 

Mr. GILCHREST. In the TMDL program, is mercury a part of your 

TMDL? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Yes. We specifically submitted a TMDL for mercury. That was all six New England States plus New York. 

We previously submitted a proposal under 4(b), which is another 

listing category under the Clean Water Act, basically claiming that 

because the source of mercury came from the air and not the water 

a TMDL was not required, was not appropriate. EPA denied that 

request, so we are coming back now with a TMDL. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, Madam Chair, I just wanted to 

mention in your very good questions that with respect to the Clean 

Air Mercury Rule, the Agency also has extensive records on how 

it made its decisions in setting a national standard, not a standard 

for Massachusetts but a national standard. Also with embracing 

the notion of federalism, that in particular instances if States are 

going to show additional leadership or specificity tailored to their 

conditions, they could do so. 

With respect to the TMDL, the program with which you are very 

familiar, we look very much forward to working with States on innovative approaches and regional approaches. 

The reason we did not accept the proposal from the State of Massachusetts was that based on our lawyer’s views, the most legally 

defensible approach was to keep the Clean Water Act tools, not to 

create an off ramp from the TMDL program, to keep the TMDL 

program relevant and applicable but also to provide incentives for 

States that are showing leadership to take additional approaches 

and use additional tools. That is why we have come up with the 

March memorandum suggesting additional approaches towards 

early implementation using the various programs and activities 

that Arleen has articulated. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much, Ben. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Mr. McNerney. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Grumbles, new reports indicate that oil refining in the San 

Francisco Bay Area is responsible for approximately 4,000 pounds 

20

of mercury from atmospheric deposits into the San Francisco Bay 

per year. What guidance can you give me on how that would be 

dealt with, how long it might take, how much it might cost and so 

on? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, thanks for mentioning that. You 

are underscoring the importance of looking at what goes up in the 

air and not just off the land if you are serious about water quality, 

and we are serious about water quality in the Bay. Various things 

come to mind. 

One, through the Clean Air programs, we would want to look 

very carefully at that to see what controls there are to reduce that 

percentage. Under the programs that I am focused on, the Clean 

Water programs, a very useful tool, one which we want to continue 

to use, is the TMDL, the Total Maximum Daily Load program 

which creates a pollution budget and which can help us working 

with our State and local partners to identify significant and not 

significant sources for pollutant loadings to bays and other estuaries. 

We also have the National Estuary Program, and the Bay is part 

of that. That is a forum for collaboration at the local and State 

level to bring in the private sector and to demonstrate to them and 

show them that we have enforcement tools. We also have tools for 

collaboration to make further progress in reducing mercury and 

other harmful pollutant loadings to the Bay. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Is this problem local to the Bay Area or do other 

refineries around the Country cause similar problems? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. There are other refineries. That is not a particular or uniquely local problem. Personally, I don’t have with me 

statistics on how many other areas are experiencing that. I can say 

that sector, like other sectors that have air emissions, can lead to 

water quality problems. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. McNerney. 

Mr. Duncan? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I don’t have 

many questions. I am a little curious, though. 

Ms. O’Donnell, have you ever done a study of whether or how 

much some of your pollution is coming from outside of Massachusetts or even outside the Country? Do you have any kind of estimate on that at all? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Our estimate now is 70 percent comes from 

upwind States. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Seventy percent comes from neighboring States? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Seventy percent, yes. We don’t know what percentage of that comes from international sources. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I don’t really have any questions, Madam Chairwoman. I was interested in the Ranking Member’s statement that 

even God would be at non-attainment at some point. You know I 

have never heard a regulator any place who ever said that the costbenefit analysis didn’t come out in favor of more regulation. 

The problem is this: We could bring in people from small business who have been run out of business all over this Country in 

every industry because of so much regulation. I will give you an exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
21

ample. In East Tennessee, in 1978, there were 157 small coal companies. Then we opened up an Office of Surface Mining, and now 

there are none. 

You know 157 was probably too many, but in all these industries, 

all these energy-related industries, the little guys go out first, then 

the medium size, and things end up in the hands of the big giants 

and costs go way up. People’s utility bills go way up and all their 

energy costs go way up. Who you end up hurting are the poor and 

the lower income and the working people. 

I have noticed that almost all the environmental extremists come 

from very wealthy or very upper income families, and perhaps they 

don’t realize how much they hurt the lower income and working 

people by destroying jobs and driving up prices, but that is what 

they do. And so, you have got to have some balance and common 

sense in some of these things. 

There are all these groups that are always telling us how bad everything is even though great improvements have been made. 

Great progress has been made in regard to clean air and clean 

water over the last 30 years, and that is a good thing. But we have 

these groups that keep telling us it is getting worse, getting worse, 

getting worse, and really what it amounts to is they are just trying 

to get more contributions. They don’t want their contributions from 

their members to dry up. 

But what we need is some balance and common sense, and we 

need to keep in mind that every new regulation increases the costs 

that really can’t afford it. 

When President Clinton locked up the largest natural gas deposits in the Country along the face of the Rocky Mountains and the 

Grand Staircase Escalante Region of Utah, it drove up people’s 

utility bills all over the Country. We do that in regard to all these 

things. 

Anyway, I yield back. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Napolitano. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. Duncan, I agree with you to a certain effect, and I am sorry, 

but you just brought up a point. What is it worth in human effect 

because we have had an increase in, and I was making a note, attention deficit disorder in children and hyperactivity and mental 

health issues like bipolar disorder and cerebral palsy. If the findings from the tribe are focused and true, that human effect alone 

is worth the ability for us to continue to look at because our future 

generations will be affected. That, to me, whether it is mercury or 

perchlorates or any of those issues in water, we need to ensure that 

our future generations are protected in that manner. 

So while, yes, there may be some areas, but possibly we are right 

in being able to control them so that we don’t have future generations affected as badly as some of our generations currently are. I 

am talking about the grandchildren and great grandchildren of our 

future. 

Commissioner O’Donnell, in testimony, Administrator Grumbles 

described EPA’s new voluntary program for identifying and listing 

waters impaired by mercury placed on the TMDL category, the 

Total Maximum Daily Load. Could you explain how this new proVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
22

gram is a useful program for the States like Massachusetts and 

what are the alternatives? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Well, Ben is probably in a better position to look 

at that. We did look. You are talking about the 5m? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Yes. 

Ms. O’DONNELL. We thought about 5m, and we decided not to do 

it because we felt that we needed to take action sooner. The way 

we read 5m was it basically offered a delay in attacking the problem. So we wanted instead to do a traditional TMDL to make the 

case that further controls are needed and to get the discussion 

about how best to achieve those controls. 

Maybe Ben can talk a little bit about 5m. Our read of that was 

it was the slow path. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, I kind of agree. 

I was looking in the testimony from Mr. Grumbles where they 

are indicating, and this just really brings to focus. Fifteen years 

ago, EPA started the program, and we are just now asking for voluntary participation? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congresswoman, thanks for getting into this because it is important to clarify. The TMDL program, there are 

probably 23,000 or more. I know it is over 20,000 TMDLs that we 

and our State partners have done across the Country. We have a 

lot more to do. 

Mercury presents a unique challenge when it comes to TMDLs 

given the atmospheric deposition and the challenges outside of the 

jurisdiction and the science surrounding it. 

So what we were doing in response to concerns from various 

States, some of the States had concerns that if we go through a 

costly or lengthy TMDL process, that might not be the most efficient use of our resources. We could be moving ahead and implementing other programs that get at the atmospheric source that 

aren’t under the Clean Water Act TMDL program. 

What our guidance says, it doesn’t require or mandate anything. 

What it is saying to States is if that is an area where it has been 

a problem to you, we want to encourage you to move forward more 

quickly and use those other tools, and we will defer. We will allow 

you to defer some time on the Clean Water Act TMDL. But the bottom line is that as a matter of law we are still charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act, and if a State is going that other route 

and they are violating water quality standards, ultimately they will 

still be required by us to do a TMDL and to take other specific 

steps. 

We view it as it is not required. It is not a regulation, and that 

is why we are calling it voluntary. It is guidance saying, look, if 

a State, and States vary across the map as to what their priorities 

and challenges are, but we put this forward as a constructive way. 

Some States might choose to use it. 

We are very encouraged by the State of Minnesota which just a 

few weeks ago, we approved a first time Statewide mercury TMDL 

that we think may be a national model. Again, it wasn’t based on 

the guidance that we provided in terms of that 5m memo, but we 

think that is a constructive and innovative approach. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. But that just doesn’t get the problem solved 

or at least the pollution addressed faster than we need to. 

23

In reading your testimony, you focused on mercury reduction efforts 15 years ago, and we are just still talking about helping people realize they have a problem. Now how are they going to deal 

with it? 

Ms. O’Donnell, what does the EPA need to do to help States 

achieve the goals of the Clean Water Act regarding atmospheric 

deposition? 

In other words, do we need to address it faster? Do we need to 

have them up their time frames? Is there another different approach that is more current? 

What about could EPA do it through regulatory promulgation? 

What can we do to help be able to work at a faster rate to address the issues and protect our waters and address the health factor of our populace? 

Ms. O’DONNELL. Well, TMDLs aren’t going to solve the problem. 

I can tell you that. They can point to where the problem is coming 

from, but until controls are placed on the sources of mercury, we 

are not going to get cleaner water. Right now, the major sources 

of mercury are coming from air emissions. 

So, electric arc furnaces, again I point to that as a great success. 

Ten to twelve pounds a year taken out of deposition, through application of the MACT Rule, and the electric arc furnaces saw it coming and did the right thing. They stepped up, and they said we 

have got to do something with the vehicle switches. So that is a 

good example. 

I think looking at every sector and figuring out how can we control it in a cost effective way. There are a lot of substitutes available. There are a lot of different control strategies available. But 

I think that is the type of approach that is needed. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Grumbles? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I think Arleen has hit it on the head in terms 

of using a variety of tools and sources. I think it is important to 

keep in mind that the Clean Air Mercury Rule that the Agency 

issued in 2005 is the first mercury control rule for coal-fired power 

plants in the world, and it is going to lead to significant progress, 

but that alone isn’t enough. 

We need to do more. Under the Clean Water Act, we need to continue to work with States on innovative approaches, not just in the 

TMDL program but others. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Can I go back very quickly? It is just a statement? Why have we not enforced stricter standards on the automobile industry to provide alternative fuel vehicles or to provide a 

higher mileage? 

We took out lead. What we have not done, and that is a lot of 

the source of the pollution, is emissions, car emissions, besides 

manufacturing. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. Yes. I appreciate your question. I think the Administration is looking forward to working with Congress on a variety of approaches. I know the department of Transportation as well 

as EPA and Energy are committed to making progress while maintaining this Country’s economic competitiveness. 

I know you know, as you have described before, the importance 

of addressing various sectors, the transportation sector, cars. From 

a water standpoint, we know that this is one of the challenges of 

24

the future where we need to continue to use innovative approaches 

through the TMDL program and combine forces with the various 

air authorities and also focus on recycling and also minimizing the 

use of certain types of products. Arleen mentioned the mercury 

switches, getting those out of cars and having proper disposal and 

turning to other things is key. So it is a variety of different tools. 

Because it is a unique type of challenge, it is causing water quality impairments, but it is coming primarily from atmospheric deposition. It requires more collaboration and technology innovations. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Ms. Norton. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. 

First, just let me express my distress at hearing kind of circular 

arguments, particularly after what we have learned about global 

warming, about costs on the one hand, campaign contributions, 

jobs, over-regulation, regulation for its own sake. 

I just want to say enormous benefits of living in a society which 

uses all kinds of artificial chemicals, various kinds, enormous benefits. One thing that the Country, in part because of so little leadership from the Congress, has not understood and accepted is with 

those benefits come great risks and therefore some additional costs. 

If you look at young women who get cancer, I don’t remember anybody getting cancer when I was young woman, breast cancer, for 

example, children. 

You have to say we want to keep the benefits coming. I mean we 

are wearing these chemicals. We are eating them. We are sitting 

on them, hey. But we don’t even want to do any regulation. We 

have got to grow up. 

I would have thought that the global warming notion which, 

frankly, I think we may be too late for. We haven’t figured out, 

maybe somebody will, a way to refreeze the glaciers. We may be 

smart. I just don’t think we are that smart. 

Mr. Grumbles, you and I have become good friends over the 

years. I have got to ask you a question about the Clean Water Act, 

the provisions and lead in the water. We know that there was a 

terrible, embarrassing and dangerous crisis in, of all places, the 

Nation’s Capital when it was discovered a few years ago there was 

lead in the water. 

Where? In the Nation’s Capital—not in some developing country—and that people hadn’t been told of it. You got to work, and 

the District of Columbia got to work. Then people panicked all over 

the Country because they thought they might be in the same kind 

of danger. We have had a new chemical added and the rest. 

We had another scare recently because we learned what apparently had been suppressed. The District of Columbia had found 

lead in water fountains of school all across the District of Columbia. I tell you one thing. I don’t believe that is a contained District 

of Columbia problem. 

You argued when the lead in the water crisis came that we didn’t 

need updated provisions of the Clean Water Act. What we needed 

was to let the Agency do its work. What have you done to assure 

that water fountains in our Nation’s schools do not contain lead in 

them? 

25

Why wasn’t the District subject to something you had done since 

the crisis of, what is it, five years ago, four or five years ago, so 

that that could not have occurred? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. What I said was that we were not supporting 

comprehensive revisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act. I didn’t 

get into the Clean Water Act. 

Ms. NORTON. I am sorry, yes. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I will tell you where we are, Congresswoman, 

and I really appreciate this because there are two things. 

One is finalizing the revisions to the Lead and Copper Drinking 

Water Rule that I am estimating that we will finish and finalize 

by the end of this year. We have gone through the public comment 

period. We are committed. I am committed to seeing those revisions 

made, and the revisions are based in many respects on lessons that 

we have learned from the hearings and from the outbreak, the incidents that you are describing in the District of Columbia. 

With respect to schools and day care centers and facilities, there 

is most definitely a statutory issue in terms of the scope of the Safe 

Drinking Water Act as it is written in terms of how you define 

some of these public water systems. Schools, most schools are not 

public water systems. 

We have been spending quite a bit of time working. 

Ms. NORTON. It is something you don’t think you have regulatory 

authority with respect to? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. The way the statute is currently written, we 

don’t. 

We have been working on technical guidance and voluntary 

measures. We provided to schools and public health authorities, 

what I call the three Ts—testing, training and telling—information 

for school administrators and custodians and parent teacher associations to understand more about the plumbing systems in their 

schools and to work with their local and State authorities and, as 

appropriate, EPA on proper monitoring for potential lead in drinking water problems at schools and day care facilities. 

We provided that guidance. We are working with other agencies 

on that front. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Grumbles, I appreciate your response. It does 

seem that the ball is in our court. 

Our concern about lead in water, frankly, was not about old deteriorated brains like mine. I don’t think lead can do a thing to me 

yet or now. But the concern in the District of Columbia was nursing mothers and young children who certainly could be affected. My 

colleague has talked about the effect on IQ, for example. They were 

told nothing and that, of course, was not your problem. It was the 

District’s problem because it withheld the information. 

We are about to introduce a new version of the Safe Drinking 

Water Act, and I wanted you to know that because of our concern. 

I will take a look, however, if you tell me when. You say the comment period is about to close. God, you have had a long time since 

that occurred. If you tell me when it is about to close, I would hold 

off putting the bill in until I at least took at look at it to see what 

was needed, if anything. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Ms. Norton. 

26

Ms. NORTON. Could he just respond to when the comment period 

is over? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. The comment period closed. The regular process 

that we follow through the Administrative Procedure Act is that we 

need to review all the comments, and we have done that. We are 

making the decisions within the Agency on what the final rule will 

look like. 

What I am saying is that our goal and my expectation is that 

that rule, those revisions would be finalized. The final rule will be 

issued later this year. 

Ms. NORTON. When? 

Mr. GRUMBLES. I am guessing in the next four to five months. 

Ms. NORTON. I don’t intend to let this first session end without 

putting in a bill. So either you regard this as a matter of some priority or I am just going to put the bill in, Mr. Grumbles. 

Mr. GRUMBLES. It is a priority for us. Also, we can brief you on 

the direction we are heading. 

Ms. NORTON. I would appreciate such a briefing. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Let me thank the witnesses from panel one and suggest that 

members of the Subcommittee may have some follow-up questions 

for the record, and we would expect a timely response if they do, 

if the questions are forwarded to you. 

Thank you so very much. I appreciate all of you coming today 

and for your testimony. 

The second panel of witnesses consists of Dr. Michael Slattery, 

Director of Texas Christian University’s Institute for Environmental Studies; Mr. Jon Mueller, the Director of Litigation for the 

Chesapeake Bay Foundation; and Dr. Charles Driscoll, University 

Professor of Environmental Systems and Engineering, Syracuse 

University. 

As I noted to the first panel, your full statements will be placed 

in the record. We ask that you try to limit your testimony to about 

five minutes, and that little light will blink when your time is up 

as a courtesy to other witnesses. 

Again, we will proceed in the order in which the witnesses are 

listed in the call of the hearing. 

Dr. Slattery? 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL C. SLATTERY, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE 

FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY; JON MUELLER, DIRECTOR OF LITIGATION, CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION; CHARLES T. DRISCOLL, UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING, DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 

Mr. SLATTERY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

If we can have the slides. 

I am proud to be from the great State of Texas although the accent may be a little misleading as to where I am from. 

Could I have the next slide, please? 

I would like to start with a simple statement, and this is going 

to be my take home message. This is the bottom line, and that is 

that if you live in Paris, France, mercury emissions from Texas 

27

power plants will have no immediate impact. If you live in Paris, 

Texas, however, the impacts are likely to be considerable and perhaps even widespread. If you could just remember that, I think 

that would be a useful take home message. 

Next slide, please. 

The mercury cycle is certainly complex, widely recognized. It is 

an environmental pollutant that biomagnifies in aquatic food webs 

to levels that threaten the health of wildlife and humans that consume contaminated fish. My colleague, Dr. Driscoll, will talk more 

about that, I am sure. 

Next slide, please. 

In Texas, we currently have 11 reservoirs, or 10 reservoirs and 

our only natural lake, and the entire coastline under a mercury advisory for at least one species of fish. 

Next slide, please. 

If we take a step back and look at States on a more regional picture, there are currently 20 advisories for the State of Arkansas, 

38 in Louisiana and the State Oklahoma is under a Statewide advisory. 

Next slide, please. 

I think at a very simple visual or graphical level, there appears 

to be a correlation between the mercury advisories and emissions 

from coal-fired electricity-generating units or power plants. As you 

can see in this slide, the larger the circle, the greater the emission, 

and you can see this axis that is sometimes referred to as the wall 

of fire that stretches from South Central Texas up to East Texas, 

these coal-fired power plants. 

I am not using the term, correlation, in a statistical sense. This 

just is a graphical look. 

Next slide, please. 

We focus on Texas and regionally here because I am sure many 

of you are aware that Texas has been in the news through utility 

companies wanting to build 17 new coal-fired power plants, and 

five of the top ten emitters in the United States are in this great 

State that I live in. 

Next slide, please. 

Now the modeling of atmospheric deposition or transport of deposition is a complicated task. No one would deny that. Any kind of 

model involves assumptions and complications. 

But we are able to do this using several approaches, and the one 

I have been involved in, in terms of modeling the patterns of deposition of mercury, involve a model that has been widely tested and 

used and developed at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory. It is 

called the HYSPLIT model. 

Next slide, please. 

I have used that to model the dispersion patterns of mercury 

deposition regionally. 

What is really important to stress is that when you are looking 

at the deposition of mercury or any pollutant, that you look at the 

long term statistical dominant transport winds. What that means 

is that essentially any scientist can make a computer model do 

anything to foot his or her desired outcome. What we have to be 

aware of here is that there is a background transport long term 

wind pattern. That is what the input to these models have to be. 

28

This is a wind rose from Waco in Texas. What you can see here 

is that the dominant transport directions in Central Texas are out 

of the South, South-Southeast and South-Southwest. Forty-three 

percent of the time, the winds are from that direction. 

Next slide, please. 

This is the graphical output for a run of mercury deposition from 

all current coal-fired power plants in Texas. There are 17 of them. 

The yellow plumes are of greatest concerns. The yellow plumes in 

this model, this is for a wind scenario that is reflective of the dominant transport winds. This happens to be the 5th of November, 

2005, my birthday. I am not quite sure whether that is meaningful, 

probably not. 

The plumes here represent an area or cover an area of about 

15,000 square miles. That is just the yellow plumes, and these are 

the plumes in which the deposition would be most significant because these plumes are reflective of what is known as divalent gaseous mercury. This is Hg2. This is the mercury that falls out closest to the power plants. 

The blue plumes show a less intense deposition, and those 

plumes actually reached as far north as the Great Lakes themselves. 

The rates of deposition within the yellow plumes are on the order 

of four micrograms per square meter per year. Now that may not 

be meaningful if you haven’t done any kind of mercury modeling, 

but just in those yellow plumes themselves, those rates without 

any synergy between the plumes represent the equivalent to the 

background deposition rate across the United States. 

Next slide, please. 

Two more runs just to show you that these plumes under less 

dispersive atmospheric conditions on the left would impact places 

like Louisiana quite dramatically and Caddo Lake in particular, 

and on the right of that diagram is a model deposition run where 

the winds are out of the north. 

Next slide, please. 

Now one thing that has concerned me and has got a lot of attention is this issue of foreign sources of mercury. Congressman Baker 

mentioned this at the outset of this afternoon’s hearing. We hear 

very frequently that mercury deposition in the United States is not 

a U.S. issue; it is a Chinese issue. I, frankly, flat out disagree with 

that. 

This is a map that shows from the EPA web site, and I quote 

from the EPA web site, and this may well be the missing web page 

that Congresswoman Johnson was referring to. The U.S. EPA has 

stated that ‘‘Regional transport of mercury from coal-fired EGUs in 

the U.S. is responsible for very little of the total mercury in U.S. 

waters.’’

What this map shows is that any part of the United States that 

is in gray, 85 percent or more of that mercury is from non-U.S. 

sources. Now for the Western U.S., that makes sense. But look at 

Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. I simply don’t buy the fact that 

even when you are in the greens and the yellows, that more than 

half of that mercury is coming from outside sources. 

Next slide, please. 

29

This is particularly acute from a watershed perspective, and the 

Honorable Grumbles mentioned this in his oral testimony. The red 

watersheds here in this diagram, especially the darker reds, show 

watersheds that are currently not in attainment of the EPA standards of .300 parts per million, 300 nanograms per wet weight of 

fish tissue. 

When you look at the next slide, these watersheds, in particular, 

I draw your attention to the reds, the oranges and the reds. These 

are watersheds that are going to acquire up to a 75 percent reduction in atmospheric deposition with no new sources. 

This is EPA data. This is not my data. This is from the mercury 

mapping tool. 

Next slide, please. 

So, in conclusion, and I have just three, one, mercury deposition 

rates that we have found in these plumes of 4 megagrams per 

square meter per year would be adding new mercury to the environment. I haven’t gotten into the new plants and the whole TXU 

debate, and I would gladly field questions on those. 

But any new plant would be adding new mercury to the environment especially in these areas that are already stressed. 

Mercury deposition from the coal-fired plants is significant at the 

regional scale. Bear that opening statement, as simple as it seems, 

in mind. 

I take this from the EPA web site, and then I will quickly close. 

‘‘Regional transport of mercury emission from coal-fired power 

plants in the U.S. is responsible for very little mercury in U.S. waters.’’ I think that is very important and quite telling. 

Finally, next slide, please. 

Requiring utilities, in my opinion, to meet a national cap will 

really have very little effect in areas such as North and East Texas 

that are already, for lack of a better way of putting it, under the 

gun when it comes to mercury deposition. 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify and would welcome 

your questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Dr. Slattery. 

I would like to welcome Jon Mueller from the Chesapeake Bay 

Foundation. Please proceed with your testimony. 

Mr. MUELLER. Thank you. Thank you for the honor to appear 

here today. 

I would like to start with the first slide if we could, please. 

This is a map of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. I am sure Mr. 

Gilchrest has seen this a few times and probably can memorize it 

by heart here. 

But the point is, as we go to the second slide, that is 64,000 

square miles and this is a map of what we call the NOx or nitrogen 

oxide airshed. So sources within that outer circle contribute to nitrogen deposition to the Chesapeake Bay region and the watershed. 

That is also true, and when I discuss mercury, you will also see 

that the airshed is a little bit bigger than, in fact, the size of the 

watershed. So we do have sources from outside of the Bay States, 

traditional Bay States of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia that 

are contributing to problems within the Chesapeake Bay Region. 

One of those problems is acidification. Mr. Grumbles talked 

about the successes of the acid rain amendments, Title IV of the 

30

Clean Air Act. With all due respect, while that is a successful cap 

and trade program, it has not been successful for all regions in the 

United States. I am sure Mr. Driscoll will address the Northeast 

and New York State, my home State and the impacts to the Adirondacks which have been quite severe. 

If we go to the third slide, we can see there is one in there that 

is the map of Virginia, if you could. There you go. Thank you. That 

was it. 

You will see the shaded areas there, Shenandoah National Park, 

St. Mary’s Wilderness area, Dolly Sods and the Otter Creek Wilderness areas, these are all areas that are continued to be impacted by acidification which is lowering the ph in the waters due 

to nonpoint source air pollution from power plants and other NOx 

and SO2 sources. So, again, while we do have acid rain amendments and they have done a lot to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions 

in the United States, they don’t address all of the problem and 

more needs to be done. 

The other problem area, and you have heard a lot of that today, 

is mercury and how mercury is a harmful neurotoxin. One of the 

things I would like to respond to is one of the comments discussed 

about how the poor and the working families are impacted by regulation. 

Well, my suggestion is that, in fact, in the Chesapeake Bay Region and this is probably true throughout the United States, that 

those same people are impacted by our failure to regulate especially when we have impacts to water quality like Chesapeake Bay 

where there is a mercury health advisory for rockfish in all Maryland waters, a very prominent recreational and commercial fishery. 

When you have watermen that their livelihoods depend on their 

ability to sell fish or crabs or other aquatic organisms that are impacted by mercury or by nitrogen deposition. 

The problem with nitrogen is that whether it comes off the land 

or through the air and directly deposits to the Bay, it causes algae 

blooms. Those excessive algae blooms either block the sunlight and 

inhibit the ability of these organisms to grow or it deprives of them 

of oxygen. When you have crabs and oysters that can’t move, they 

are severely impacted by what is called hypoxy or apoxy. In the 

Bay, that has become a significant problem. 

In 2003, the Chesapeake Bay program studied dissulved oxygen 

in the Bay—if we could go to the next slide back—that large red 

area is the main stem of the Bay and is the largest area of the Bay 

to report anoxic or hypoxic conditions which basically means death 

for all aquatic organisms that live down below that area. So, again, 

there are direct impacts to the livelihood of people that are either 

recreational fishermen or commercial fishermen who depend on 

good water quality. 

One of the other things about mercury that is a big problem is 

health advisories. Well, there was some research done by students 

and graduate folks from Virginia Tech that looked at the impact of 

fish advisories in Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and the Tidewater, 

Virginia areas. 

What they discovered was that people who live at the subsistence 

level are not greatly impacted by fish advisories. They read them. 

They are aware of them. But because of their life conditions, they 

31

have to subsistence fish or they pass the fish on to friends, and 

they eat the fish. So they are consuming the contaminants that we 

are all warning them not to eat, but because of their economic situation, they have to eat. 

If we could go to the bar chart, one of the things I think that 

astounded me in doing research for this is that mercury was the 

top cause for impairments on the 303(d) list throughout the Nation. 

Mr. Grumbles spoke a lot about the Clean Air Mercury Rule. Ms. 

O’Donnell stated that some States have sued EPA over that rule. 

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a number of other citizens 

groups have also sued EPA over that rule because it does not address hot spots which are localized areas around the plants which 

EPA’s own research has showed is actually the problem. We are 

not dealing with international sources. We are dealing with inState or local sources that are impacting water quality. 

Until that rule is amended, we are not going to be able to address those problems inherent in water quality today. 

Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Mueller. 

Dr. Charlie Driscoll from Syracuse University, we look forward 

to hearing your testimony at this time. 

Mr. DRISCOLL. Madam Chair and the Subcommittee members, 

thanks for hearing me. 

I am an academic researcher. 

I am going to try to talk about three things. First of all, I would 

like to talk to you a little bit about two components of air pollution 

on surface waters, firstly, acid rain and, secondly, a little bit on 

mercury. I will try to streamline my mercury comments because we 

have heard so much about it. But, third, I would like to seek your 

input in terms of a critical component of evaluating air pollution 

effects, and that is monitoring programs, and I will close with those 

comments. 

Next slide. On this slide, I have two figures and a map. The map 

is the Eastern part of the Country. You can see that it is colorcoded. Those areas that are reddish and orangish represent those 

areas of the Eastern part of the Country that have been impacted 

by acid rain. 

The resources that are impacted are soil—that is why I show this 

figure of soil—as well as surface waters. You may wonder why I 

am mentioning soil in a Subcommittee on Water, and that is because soil influences water quality. These soils have lost their base 

content and therefore are less able to neutralize inputs of acid rain, 

and that is going to delay recovery. 

Next slide, whole ecosystems are impacted as Mr. Grumbles said. 

This is sort of a snapshot of where we stand in terms of the current 

situation. The items on the left represent what are the status of 

various water bodies in the Eastern part of the U.S. in terms of recovery. 

Mr. Grumbles is correct that given the fact that there have been 

reductions, that areas in New England and New York and in the 

northern Appalachians are showing some limited improvement. 

Streams in Virginia are not showing any trends, and this is because the soils are very sensitive southern soils. 

32

The bottom line, though, is that for these areas, soils are continuing to acidify and that will impair the long term recovery of 

these systems. If we look to the future with the Title IV of the 

Clean Air Act, we would expect to see much of the same, but under 

the Clean Air Interstate Rule, we would expect to see some curtailment of soil acidification and additional improvement. But the recovery of these systems will be extremely slow. 

Next slide, even though my research focuses on the East, I would 

be remiss if I didn’t mention the West. The West also is sensitive 

in terms of air pollution, particularly lakes, and the contaminant 

of interest here is nitrogen. Nitrogen will impact surface water 

quality in the West because many lakes are nitrogen growth limited. 

Next slide, then on to mercury very briefly. As people have said, 

mercury is really derived from atmospheric contaminants. The critical step in this is the conversion of inorganic mercury from the atmosphere to methylmercury in certain environments, and that is 

the form of mercury that accumulates in fish by a factor of a million to ten million times. 

Next slide, so human exposure to mercury is largely through fish 

consumption. People have mentioned this, but I think maps are 

very effective. Madam Chair, as you indicated, virtually every State 

in the Country has some sort of mercury advisory. 

Next slide, one thing that I wanted to point your attention to is 

we recently completed a study for the Northeastern part of the U.S. 

and portions of Canada where we have identified a series of what 

we call biological mercury hot spots, and these are areas in the 

landscape where we have particularly high concentrations of mercury. So, as we move forward with the Clean Air Mercury rule, it 

is really critical that these very high mercury areas are identified 

for other parts of the Country and also we track the recovery of 

these systems as we try to control mercury emissions in the future. 

Next slide, I would like to close by talking a little bit about monitoring, and I can’t emphasize this enough. I think monitoring is a 

critical tool to track how effective we are at managing these air pollution programs. Some of these are extremely expensive. 

I want to bring your attention to two programs in particular that 

are under jeopardy in the current budget. The first is the Dry Deposition Program through CASTNet, that in the current budget is 

experiencing major cutbacks. The second is the Surface Water Monitoring Program which has direct implications with this Subcommittee. 

The current President’s budget has proposed to zero out those 

programs. So if you ask me a year from now whether or not I can 

give you an assessment of surface water quality, I will not be able 

to do that because these monitoring programs will have been terminated if the current plan goes forward. 

Last slide, then with respect to mercury, there were questions 

about what is the current mercury monitoring program. There is 

a network of precipitation programs across the U.S., but that only 

measures wet deposition of mercury. EPA is taking leadership in 

developing a dry deposition program which hopefully will get at 

total deposition efforts. 

33

I also wanted to call your attention to this House bill here, the 

Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Program, which was 

recently introduced in both the House and the Senate to establish 

a national comprehensive mercury monitoring program. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Dr. Driscoll. 

We will now begin the questioning. Let me say that I have a 

question for Dr. Slattery, and then I have got to run to another 

meeting, but you will not be left alone. 

Dr. Slattery, in your view, had the TXU proposal to erect the 13 

new coal-fired power plants in the State of Texas gone through, 

what impact would that have had on the atmosphere or water 

quality within the State or atmospheric deposition? 

Mr. SLATTERY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

The impact, well, there are 17 in total and 11 TXU new units, 

I believe. If that deal goes through to still construct those units, 

our work has shown, I think, very clearly that the impact would 

certainly be profound in terms of regional deposition. When I say 

regional deposition, the plumes themselves were all within about 

100 to 150 miles of the plants themselves. 

There would certainly be impacts beyond that and beyond the 

State just depending on how those plumes interact and the synergy 

between the plumes themselves. Those plants, I think we have 

shown confidently and clearly that the impact would be significant 

from a regional perspective. I guess when I say regional, I should 

point out that it is not just Texas, that it is Texas and the immediate surrounding States. The implications will be widespread for 

the region in terms of water quality. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Now, in your view, what needs to happen to avert a crisis of mercury exposure in our Nation’s waterways? 

Mr. SLATTERY. Well, I mean that is a great question and a very 

difficult one. In a sense if you are thinking about the national picture, a lot has been made of the Clean Air Mercury Rule and my 

colleague, Dr. Driscoll, has referred to that. Whilst there is certainly a good deal to be positive about in terms of that rule in a 

national reduction of 70 percent of mercury by, I believe, 2018 or 

2025 when it becomes fully into effect, the real issue is deposition 

at this regional scale. 

A national cap and trade program like the Clean Air Mercury 

Rule, whilst it may produce a national reduction of some percentage, that rule will do essentially nothing to regions where you are 

putting in new old technology coal-fired power plants. I guess that 

is the bottom line. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

The Chair recognizes Mr. Baker. 

Mr. BAKER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Dr. Slattery, what is the mechanism that results in the mercury 

being deposited on the Earth’s surface out of the atmospheric suspension? What causes the mercury to come out of that very fine 

particle that is blown in the prevailing winds? 

Mr. SLATTERY. My understanding of it is that it is one of two 

mechanisms. We talk about a dry deposition which is a straightVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
34

forward settling out of the mercury itself but also a wet deposition 

in rainfall. 

Mr. BAKER. Of the two mechanisms, the wet form would be the 

more prevalent because what does it require to have a dry deposition, very still winds, at the upper altitude? 

Mr. SLATTERY. The settling velocities of the particulates are very 

small as you would imagine. 

Mr. BAKER. Very fine particle. 

Mr. SLATTERY. They are very fine particles, and there is no question. You raised a very important point early on, Mr. Congressman, 

about the fact that these pollutants do not obey State or even international boundaries. They get transported around the globe. 

Mr. BAKER. Yes. They don’t have a voter registration. They just 

go where they want. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Oh, absolutely. They go around the globe merely 

depending on the winds. 

Mr. BAKER. Which gets me to my sort of observation about some 

of the PowerPoint presentation. There were some very significant 

yellow plumes outlined. Fifty thousand square miles, I think you 

said. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Fifteen thousand. 

Mr. BAKER. Fifteen thousand. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Yes, 15,000. 

Mr. BAKER. In scope, and based on the modeling through which 

the formula output that type of distribution. My question goes to 

what kind of data points were initially put into the formula to generate that pattern? 

It was, as I believe you outlined it, historical observations of prevailing winds, perhaps other information, but it was not necessarily 

air monitoring at the various coal-burning facilities that led to actual observational data being then cranked into the formula which 

then generated the chart. It was basically historical observations 

that if we use this generalized data, put it into the formula, this 

is what it would look like. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Now let me clarify that because that raises a very 

important point when it comes to atmospheric modeling because, as 

I said earlier, there is a catch phrase with any kind of modeling 

and that is garbage in, garbage out. We can produce anything really that we want. 

With an atmospheric model like this, the input data, we use the 

actual observed meteorologic data that is stored on the NOAA web 

site which is stored at a resolution of 40 square kilometers. 

Mr. BAKER. But that is meteorologic data. 

Mr. SLATTERY. That is meteorologic data. 

Mr. BAKER. It doesn’t tell you wind direction, speed and so forth. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Absolutely. Sorry. 

Mr. BAKER. That doesn’t necessarily tell you about air quality or 

the discharge from the facility itself that is the source, in your 

view, of the mercury that then is transported. You are looking at 

the piping mechanism through which it moves. You are not looking 

at how much water is going into the pipe. 

Mr. SLATTERY. No. You are. You are looking at both because you 

have got to have input. You have got to have as realistic as possible 

35

or even a real emission rate. You have got to have a rate of emission. 

Mr. BAKER. Right, that was my point, but is there air emission 

data that is available to you? 

Mr. SLATTERY. Absolutely. Now there is a caveat there in that 

the mercury air emission data is relatively sparse. There are five 

power plants in Texas that have widely available data on the NEI, 

the National Emissions Inventory on the EPA web site, and that 

was the data that was put in for the five power plants under the 

TXU recent coal issue. 

But, no, the mercury emission data is available on the National 

Emissions Inventory and the TRI. I actually spoke with the guys 

at the Air Resources Lab to get that data to put in. 

You have to put in full velocities for that particular type of mercury. That gets built into the model. 

Mr. BAKER. There are some assumptions built into the modeling 

as a result because, for example, at the outset I asked about the 

mechanisms by which the mercury would come out of suspension 

and be deposited. Rain would be a big factor. That would be why 

on those dry East Texas summers, stuff would leave Texas and 

likely come to Louisiana and get rained on, and that is why we 

would be the downstream beneficiary of that activity. 

Are those weather patterns part of this data? 

Mr. SLATTERY. Yes, they are. But, again, you are correct; they 

are assumptions. They are built in. They are built into the model. 

Like, for example, the 5th of November plumes, the input data are 

the emission data. The meteorologic data are the meteorologic data. 

But there is no one up there in an air balloon actually telling you 

what percentage of that is falling out as dry deposition versus wet 

deposition. 

Mr. BAKER. Well, that is one of the problems for us in the Baton 

Rouge area. A lot of our non-attainment problems with ozone, we 

believe come from the Houston automobile market, but we don’t 

have real data to prove it. 

My point is don’t we need some significant scientific expenditure? 

I can’t imagine you saying no. 

Mr. SLATTERY. No. Yes, we do. No. 

Mr. BAKER. To determine with some degree, some higher degree. 

I don’t wish to cast aspersion on your presentation but a significant 

amount of data on which to act to determine where things are coming from. For example, the lady who testified earlier from Maine 

or Massachusetts was saying they had done great work in reducing 

their own emissions, but about 70 percent of their problem now 

seemed to come from either out of state or out of country. 

We have got to find out where it is coming from if we are going 

to fix it, and that is my only point. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Can I respond to that? I mean absolutely. 

Mr. BAKER. Oh, certainly, yes. 

Mr. SLATTERY. Yes, I agree, and that goes to Dr. Driscoll’s monitoring. I mean when you look at the mercury deposition network 

and that really is, as far as I am aware, the only real hard monitoring data that is out there in terms of a national picture. I think 

Louisiana may only have three, maybe four sites. Texas has two. 

Oklahoma has one on the eastern border. 

36

It is important to be able to calibrate and test these kinds of 

models that you are producing. They have to be validated with 

hard data on the ground, and that data on the ground is extremely 

sparse. The contour maps that you see, that are produced, showing 

the deposition patterns, it is very easy to look at those contour 

maps and think that they are absolutely real, but they are lines 

from a computer. They are interpolated from actual data measurements, yes, but Louisiana has three points throughout a very large 

State. 

So you are absolutely right; we need good monitoring. I would 

agree with you completely that you need to be looking significantly 

west of your State boundary to where a lot of that mercury is coming from. There is no question about that. 

Mr. BAKER. It is sort of the difference between polling prognosis 

and election night returns. We need a few more election night returns to find out where we really are. 

I yield back. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. [Presiding] Thank you very much. 

I can’t help but think about California’s EPA. Cal EPA, for years, 

brought up the issue of pollution in California, whether it was 

automobiles, which we have the largest concentration of automobiles there, I believe, and the pollution was causing the health 

problems it was causing. So we have done a lot of the actual research to be able to identify and bring down emissions from manufacturing and others. 

But when I think of the Eastern Seaboard, I think of the trade 

winds bringing a lot of the pollution not only from California, I 

would say—I mean it is stretching it a little bit—but all the pollution that is swept into the Eastern area. It is just reaching, and 

I am not sure whether any research has been done to determine 

where else. If in Massachusetts, 70 percent is coming from outside 

sources, where? 

He is right. Where is it coming from? 

Is anybody looking at that research to identify and stop it at 

source rather than after it gets there? 

Mr. SLATTERY. Yes. I mean there is a lot of work being done on 

where this material is coming from, but the difficulty is tying down 

the specific percentages. I mean we cannot say with any certainty 

that 58 percent of the mercury deposition in pick your State is coming from a particular region. I mean that is just not how the atmosphere behaves. That very fine elemental mercury stays suspended 

for a very long time, and that becomes part of the global pool of 

mercury. 

When you look at the contribution from U.S. power plants or 

U.S. anthropogenic emissions or the U.S. as a whole to the global 

pool of mercury, it is small. It is less than 10 percent. In fact, it 

is probably considerably less than 5 percent to that background 

global pool, and that is what is being transported around and will 

fall out over long periods of time to add to this background rate. 

My concern is the mercury that is falling out approximately to 

these plants, in plants that are deposition in an immediate area to 

these coal-fired power plants. That is my concern, and that is the 

mercury, this gaseous mercury that has a much higher fall velocity 

37

and falls out much more quickly. That is why those plumes are 100 

to 150 miles around these plants. 

Our modeling is certainly not suggesting that deposition from 

coal-fired power plants is stretching thousands of miles and depositing over that kind of geographic span. We know that that is not 

the case. It is a very regional issue, and that is why I like the term. 

I certainly didn’t coin it, but I like this term of a mercury hot spot. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. In the deletion of the two programs that Mr. 

Driscoll alluded to, what implications do these have to continue to 

identify and monitor them? 

Mr. SLATTERY. The programs, could you say that again? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. The clean air status, the CASTNet, and the 

extramural monitoring. 

Mr. SLATTERY. To be honest, I am really not qualified to answer 

that question of those two programs. I would defer to Mr. Driscoll. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Driscoll? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. Well, concerning the mercury, those two programs 

are directed for and looking at sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, 

so those contaminants in air and also in water. They specifically 

don’t look at mercury. 

The only mercury program that is in place now is called the Mercury Deposition Network which only targets precipitation mercury, 

and that represents actually, in our neck of the woods, probably 

only about 30 percent to 25 percent of the total inputs. So there 

really needs to be a better program to track mercury as was suggested by the questions. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. But why are the two programs you are talking 

about, valuable? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. They are valuable because by 2010, industry is 

going to be spending about $3 billion per year in expenditures to 

control these contaminants, and I think that it is only good management to track what the effectiveness is. What you are talking 

about is, in terms of CASTNet, you are talking about a million dollars a year. In terms of the Surface Water Monitoring, you are 

talking about $800,000 a year. So you are talking very modest programs to track the effectiveness of these very, very expensive programs. 

Without these programs in place, you won’t have a good idea how 

effective those programs are and whether we need more controls or 

less controls in the future. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Well, is the current monitoring network adequate? Is it enough to be able to do what you are asking? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. It is bare bones. It is a very sparse network. Many 

of the areas that I talked about aren’t included. The program in the 

Upper Midwest was eliminated. The program in the West was 

eliminated. So you are only talking a few sites in the East that the 

Surface Water Program currently targets. It is certainly not adequate, but it is better than nothing. 

Some of these areas that we are talking about are among the 

hardest hit in terms of acid rain impacts. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. What would you say would be needed, an increase in being able to do other areas that should be targeted? 

38

Mr. DRISCOLL. If they had a million dollars a year or two million 

dollars a year, that would be a tremendous boost to this operation. 

They could do a lot with that amount of funding. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. Gilchrest? 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

I have some questions about a cap and trade program for various 

sources of toxins with air deposition. What areas of the Country 

have benefitted from the cap and trade for sulfur dioxide or acid 

rain? 

The map you had up there didn’t look like the Northeast benefitted very much. Can anybody say what areas benefitted from 

this? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. Well, I think that the cap and trade program for 

sulfur dioxide has been beneficial. I think it has allowed industry 

to have flexibility to control the emissions. In contrast, there is also 

a proposal for cap and trade on mercury. Sulfur dioxide is less 

toxic. So I think it has been successful. 

I think there are still problems, and there will be additional controls that will be needed to basically allow these systems to fully 

recover. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Do you have a percentage of reduction of sulfur 

dioxide with this cap and trade for acid rain? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. Since we started the Clean Air Act, there has 

been about a 50 percent reduction. When the Title IV completes 

itself in about 2010, that will be a 50 percent reduction from 1980 

values. So you are talking about substantial reductions in sulfur dioxide. 

Mr. GILCHREST. So the cap and trade with the acid rain problem 

has been relatively successful. 

Mr. DRISCOLL. It has allowed us to turn the corner, and the systems are starting to recover, yes. 

Mr. GILCHREST. It seems from my perspective that a cap and 

trade with CO2 would be pretty successful too. 

But a cap and trade with mercury, given the term, hot spot, and 

given what the gentlelady from Massachusetts was talking about, 

would you recommend a cap and trade with mercury or to mitigate 

the problem of mercury, a standard regulatory policy would be better? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. As you indicate, Congressman, mercury is a very 

toxic substance. I am just a research scientist. I am not a manager. 

But a lot of people have expressed concern about the trading option 

of the Clean Air Mercury Rule. I think that the identification of hot 

spots are reason for concern in the mercury monitoring program. 

I would say my advice to EPA is if there is going to be unconstrained trading of mercury, there should be a rigorous monitoring 

program, first of all, to identify other areas of the Country where 

there are hot spots and, second, to track how they recover from this 

trading program because as we have heard, mercury will fall out 

very close to the source. So there may be very, very severe local effects. 

One of the hot spots is in Massachusetts, and following those 

very aggressive controls, we saw approximately 50 percent reduction of mercury in loons over a period of five years, really very 

39

rapid recovery. I think local emissions—we can’t emphasize that 

enough—we think are very important. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Could I ask how long does mercury, an element, 

stay in the ecosystem from where it falls? 

It is a problem with fish, and we all know it is a problem with 

IQ as the first panel stated. If you have bigger fish eating smaller 

fish, I am not sure if we need to worry about the brain power of 

striped bass versus man? But how about bald eagles or ospreys or 

blue herons? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. You are correct. Those organisms that consume 

other fish such as loons, eagles, otter, mink, all those things are 

impacted. There is increasing evidence to show that mercury cycles 

through the terrestrial food chain. So birds that eat insects, bats, 

are showing very high concentrations of mercury. Now this is an 

understudied area, so the more we study the problem, the more 

widespread we find the contamination. 

As you mentioned, mercury, it is an element. It cannot be created 

or destroyed. Once we release it, it is there. It can only be sequestered and hopefully reduced, removed slowly from the ecosystem. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much and, welcome, the Chesapeake Bay Program. 

Mr. MUELLER. Foundation. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Chesapeake Bay Foundation. 

Mr. MUELLER. Thank you. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Gilchrest. 

If I remember correctly, California did some studies on the effect 

it had on the bald eagle and osprey, and they found that it was reducing the reproduction of those species. This was 10 years ago if 

I remember correctly. 

Mr. Hall? 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Dr. Driscoll, I am sorry. I apologize to everybody for being late. 

I was triple booked with the Aviation Subcommittee, my Subcommittee that I chair, and Veterans Disabilities and this extremely important hearing. 

Just picking up on what you said, how does one sequester mercury once it is in the environment? Is that being done? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. It is being done. Mercury falls to the Earth’s surface, and it can go one of three ways. It can be actually converted 

and go back to the atmosphere so it can be re-emitted. It can be 

transported in soil, and then it will get into potentially the aquatic 

food chain and contaminate humans and wildlife, but it can be incorporated in soil and removed from the system. This will occur 

over a period of years. 

One of the critical questions that we are researching is how will 

ecosystems respond if we control mercury emissions? Will they respond slowly or will they respond quickly? The few areas where we 

have data points suggest that surprisingly many of these ecosystems respond very quickly. 

I should point out that we also have a lot of data from sediment 

records where we collect material through the depths of sediment 

cores in lakes and bogs, and we can determine the age of the material and how that mercury has changed over time. What we see 

40

over the whole eastern half of the U.S. is that we have seen about 

a 30 percent decrease in mercury deposition since about the 1970s 

or 1980s presumably due to controls on incinerators and power 

plants and things like this. I think this is strong evidence that we 

can remove mercury. 

Mr. HALL. That is good news. I am glad to hear that. 

Dr. Slattery, I guess first to you and also to Dr. Driscoll because 

being from Syracuse, he would probably have a good idea about 

this. 

If the range of the plume, from coal-fired plants particularly, that 

is depositing mercury is thought to be relatively short, 100 to 150 

miles I think I just heard. We are looking at some hot spots in the 

mid-Hudson Valley and also in the Adirondacks. We are also looking, of course, at the continuing acid rain problem in the Adirondacks. Where should we be looking for those sources? 

I mean are the coal-fired power plants that are in the Hudson 

Valley, more to the south than to the west of the county, Dutchess 

County where I come from, are they the likely source of the mercury that we are seeing in Dutchess County or would it be traveling from, let us say, the Ohio Valley? 

Mr. SLATTERY. Again, I don’t want to just simply defer to Dr. 

Driscoll on this, but I haven’t worked and I am not familiar with 

that region at all. I have just worked solely in Texas and the surrounding regions in terms of where to look for these sources. I will 

ask Charles to answer that in a moment. 

But I would make one comment in response to that, and that is 

that the plumes we were seeing emitted from the Texas power 

plants, this 100 to 150 mile stretch of immediate fallout, that was 

based on the assumption that there was no synergy between the 

plumes. We were doing this on an event type basis, a 24 to 48 hour 

type basis just to get a picture of where these plumes were going 

and what the geographic extent of them would be. And so, what 

that means is when you have several power plants like this overlapping with one another, there will be synergy and mixing and an 

increase in the travel distances and the deposition fallout. 

But I can’t actually answer specifically your regional question. 

Mr. HALL. Dr. Driscoll? 

Mr. DRISCOLL. Yes. So if there is a particular area, I can try to 

address that, but in general you will see both local, regional and 

global impacts. In Dutchess County, I am not aware of any large 

sources that are in the immediate area such as incinerators or 

power plants or industrial facilities although I could look that up 

for you if you were interested. But, clearly, it will be impacted by 

regional sources and some global sources as well. 

I mentioned the sediment cores that we have collected all over 

the Northeast, and they track very, very well with the regional historical emission estimates for the whole Upper Great Lakes area, 

explaining a large percentage of the historical mercury. So we 

think that the regional and local contribution is much higher than 

some have suggested. There is a global contribution, but I think 

the regional and local can be very important. 

Mr. HALL. Two more quick questions for anybody: How much of 

a problem is batteries, all kinds of batteries from little AAs up to 

41

camp light batteries that are disposed of by the average citizen, unfortunately? 

Unless there are household hazardous waste collection points 

which a lot of counties have or do collection days which many counties have, but a lot of them get into the incinerators and into the 

waste treatment in general. 

The second point is have you looked at tidal drying? 

I know in the Hudson River Valley, for instance, that there has 

been measurement done of PCB-contaminated dust that has blown 

between high tide and low tide. The water comes up and deposits 

sediment on the banks. Then it drops to low tide, and the sediment 

dries and is carried in the wind. There is measurable PCBs in the 

body fat of everybody who has lived for any period of time close to 

the Hudson River as a result. I am just curious if that sort of tidal 

re-introduction into the air is something that you have experienced 

elsewhere. 

Mr. DRISCOLL. Do you want me to answer? 

In terms of batteries, I think just briefly incinerators have been 

aggressively controlled and there is an effort to try to remove mercury from batteries. I think that progress has been made on that 

score. 

In terms of the intertidal zone, you are correct. It is a critical 

area probably not for the mechanism you are talking about, but in 

those environments where there is wetting and drying, that action 

can stimulate the methylation of mercury and, of course, that is the 

bioavailable form. That is a critical process particularly in estuaries and coastal waters for the production of methylmercury and 

the contamination of those water bodies. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

There is such a great interest in what you are talking about. I 

am the Chair of the Subcommittee on Water and Power in the Natural Resources Committee, and we are discussing perchlorates and 

the VOCs in our rivers and aquifers. 

What we don’t know is hurting us, and unfortunately we need to 

be able to get more information from the research community to 

find out what you have done because we need to translate it into 

how we address the future of not just legislation because that is 

not all but partnership, partnering with those that can make the 

changes. That is the general public in many instances. 

Batteries, when they go into the landfill, if they go into the landfill, which in California we have very strict standards. They have 

to be recycled. Many things are recycled. Back in the 1990s, California banned burning of trash. I remember. So that was some of 

the pollution that was hitting the atmosphere. There are many 

things that the general public began to understand was contributing and adding to the atmosphere. 

Now I am not sure. I am not on the Eastern Seaboard. I am on 

the other side. But I would hope that together, this Committee and 

the research community,—and thank you for coming and sharing 

your testimony—that we can be more forthcoming in addressing 

how we protect our environment for future generations. 

So, with that, gentlemen, thank you very much. 

42

This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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HEARING ON NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION: 

THE IMPACT OF AGRICULTURE ON WATER 

QUALITY 

Thursday, April 19, 2007, 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 2167, 

Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Timothy H. Bishop 

[chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Mr. BISHOP. We are about to get called for a set of votes, and 

that is why our Ranking Member is not here. He has gone directly 

to the Floor. So if you all will indulge us for another, I would say 

20 or 25 minutes, we have a series of votes coming up on the Floor. 

Then we will be back and we will begin the hearing. So I thank 

you for your patience and your indulgence. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. BISHOP. I would like to call the Subcommittee to order. 

Let me start by thanking you all for your patience and for your 

indulgence as we went through a series of votes. Today we will be 

having a hearing on nonpoint source pollution and the impacts of 

agriculture on water quality. 

I would like to welcome today’s witnesses to our hearing on the 

impact of agriculture on water quality. Today we will hear from 

representatives from Federal, State and municipal governments, as 

well as from academia and other interested stakeholders. These diverse perspectives will provide the Subcommittee with a much 

broader understanding on whether and the degree to which agricultural activities impact water quality. We also hope to learn more 

about how the Federal Government can further assist the agricultural community in reducing runoff. 

To begin, let me extend a warm greeting to Dr. Robert Howarth, 

who hails from my home State of New York. Dr. Howarth is a professor in Cornell University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He is one of our Nation’s preeminent scientists and 

he will be speaking on the second panel. Dr. Howarth, thank you 

for being here. 

Let me say that in large part, this hearing is about protecting 

our heritage. A very important part of that heritage is farming. 

Today the United States is the breadbasket of the world, and it 

wouldn’t have this role without the important part played by farms 

and ranches across the land. 

But there is another part of our heritage, too, and this includes 

protection of our natural resources; critical among them, protection 

of the Nation’s water bodies. The hearing we are holding today will 

look at the impacts of agricultural runoff on water quality. As we 

will learn, the promotion of agriculture and the protection of the 

Nation’s waters are not exclusive concepts. Indeed, the Federal 

Government is actively working to promote both. 

131

The question is, however, is the Federal Government doing 

enough? Let me be very clear: any suggestion that we want to end 

farming and return farmland to its natural state in order to protect 

our waters is nothing but a red herring. We seek agricultural practices that make sense, environmental sense, and economic sense. 

Agricultural runoff consists of pollutants from farming and 

ranching that are picked up by rainfall and snowmelt and eventually deposited into water bodies. These pollutants can include nutrients, pesticides, sediment and animal waste. Why is agricultural 

runoff important? It is important because these pollutants can lead 

to water body impairments, as well as threats to human health. In 

fact, the EPA tells us that the States have reported that 45 percent 

of rivers and streams across the Country are impaired, and that 

agricultural runoff is a leading culprit. 

Water body impairment is not just a box on a scientific report 

somewhere that is just checked off impaired or not impaired. No, 

there are very real-world implications that impact our communities, making it harder for ordinary working folks to make a living 

and harder for municipalities to provide basic services. Let me provide just a few examples. 

As we will learn today from our witness from Waco, Texas, the 

City of Waco has had to spend literally millions and millions of dollars to upgrade its drinking water facilities as a result of water 

contamination from upstream dairies. Through relatively simple 

dairy farm management reforms that would have been far cheaper 

to implement, those upgrades would not have been necessary. This 

money could have been spent on schools in Waco, it could even 

have been returned to the taxpayers of this community through 

lower taxes. 

Similarly, blue crabs are in decline in the Chesapeake Bay and 

commercial oysters harvesting is nothing compared to what it once 

was. On the Gulf of Mexico, one of the Nation’s greatest natural 

resources, fishermen are suffering because shrimp and commercial 

fish populations are in decline due to the infamous Dead Zone. This 

Dead Zone is in part the result of nutrient runoff hundreds of miles 

upstream along the Mississippi River. 

The Federal Government has a number of programs that provide 

opportunities for the farming community to receive funding and assistance to decrease this runoff. These programs are largely voluntary and entail farmers and landowners adopting best management practices. Many of these programs make both economic and 

agronomic sense. 

For example, water body impairment through excess nutrient 

runoff is often the result of too much nutrient being applied to 

fields. Precision agriculture means fewer nutrients which means 

that farmers have to spend less on buying fertilizer. At the end of 

the day, this leaves a bigger paycheck. 

Erosion control programs help keep valuable topsoil on the fields. 

As any farmer will tell you, healthy, abundant topsoil is critical to 

success. These programs are just further examples of what makes 

economic sense makes environmental sense also. 

The trouble is that not enough farmers are receiving benefits 

from these programs. Given that some of these practices have been 

proven to work, the onus is on us to work out why there is not 

132

more enrolment in these Federal programs. Part of the reason is 

that the programs just aren’t big enough. There is not enough 

funding for conservation programs that provide grants to farmers. 

In fact, funding is so low and the backlog of applications so long 

that there are currently 195 farmers in Iowa who have chosen to 

take out conservation loans, that is loans, not grants, through 

Iowa’s local water protection program. This just goes to show that 

farmers want to do what makes environmental, economic and agronomic sense. It is just that the Federal Government doesn’t seem 

to be there for them. 

Today we hope to learn more about what the Federal Government is doing with these programs, whether it is doing enough and 

if we all work together, the Federal Government, the States, the 

farmers and conservationists, what more needs to be done. I welcome the witnesses to today’s hearing and I look forward to their 

testimony. 

Now I would like to recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Baker, 

for any opening remarks he wishes to make. 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and appreciate the interest in the subject matter and the calling of this 

hearing on this important topic. 

Data which is not all that recent, but still relevant enough for 

this hearing, indicates that less than 3 percent of the American 

population is engaged in or in some way acts in concert with a 

principal farming operation. That number is continuing to decline. 

Concurrently with that decline in number of producers, we are 

also seeing commercial operators grow the scope of farming operations in geographic size dramatically. In my state, unless you are 

at least 2,000 acres, in the soybean business, you are probably not 

going to be economically viable. Which leads to an observation: 

these folks are sophisticated people trying to make a living producing from the land which is the essential core of their long-term 

economic viability. They are folks that are necessarily going to do 

what they believe best for the preservation of that natural resource. 

And as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, fertilizer isn’t cheap. And 

the less of it you use, the better off your yield is in the bank. So 

the idea is to use sophisticated production technologies to increase 

the yield, keep costs down, and for us to help keep farmers alive. 

We do not need to rely on foreign nation’s generosity to feed our 

people. 

In fact, in looking at the end result of this process that we have 

been engaged in, the atmospheric transport of mercury, for example, that filled the room up last week, we appear to be on a course 

of designing a new set of regulatory standards for all sorts of environmental activities. I only hope that at the conclusion of this 

work, we find economically viable methodologies, which will enhance the ability of people to continue to produce. 

I would also point out that in looking for causes of water contamination, we should not divert our attention too far from urban 

centers, where weekend landscapers use material this time of year 

to weed and feed their lawns. Just a casual observation I have 

made, not too many appear to be reading labels. They are walking 

around slinging it out by the handfuls. That stuff winds up in the 

133

same groundwater supply as everybody else’s by product, and we 

need to be carefully examining all sources of potential contamination to determine what if any action might be taken to assist in 

that arena. 

Finally, aging municipal water treatment systems. It is not uncommon for, in a severe storm, to have systems back up and overflow and that contamination finds its way again untreated into 

public water systems. For these reasons, we have a lot of work to 

do, Mr. Chairman. I am hoping that throughout the course of our 

discussion we will learn here today from learned individuals perspectives on how we can help, not hinder, and how we can accomplish these goals in an economically responsible manner. 

With that, I yield back. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Salazar, do you wish to make an opening statement? 

Mr. SALAZAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, I appreciate that we are addressing the topic of water 

pollution, specifically the issue of nonpoint source pollution. There 

is no question that having a clean and safe water supply is important to all of us, including those of us who are in agriculture. Ecosystems work together. Healthy wildlife populations, vibrant plant 

systems and clean water each contribute to the overall well-being 

of our environment. 

But I must assure you that America’s farmers and ranchers are 

the best stewards of the Nation’s land and water resources. Their 

production and profitability can only be as good as the land from 

which it comes. So appropriate care for land and water resources 

makes both environmental and economic sense for them. 

As a farmer and rancher myself, I fully appreciate the importance of a healthy, functioning ecosystem. I firmly believe that we 

can have agriculture and a clean water system in this Country. 

I think it is important to recognize that agriculture is a regulated 

industry. Extensive new regulations were put in place in the 109th 

Congress to control discharges from concentrated animal feeding 

operations, known as CAFOs. In fact, there has been a significant 

shift over the past several years in Federal efforts to regulate and 

prohibit production area discharges from CAFOs. In addition, 

CAFOs must utilize and comply with strict nutrient management 

plans when applying manure to agricultural fields, to ensure that 

manure is applied at agronomic rates. Any violation of these requirements can result in substantial penalties in certain situations, 

even imprisonment. We should consider these new regulatory requirements that ensure protection of our waters and give them 

time to work. 

There are also several programs in place under the Clean Water 

Act that specifically address nonpoint source pollution. This Congress should consider increased funding, and I associate myself 

with the Chairman’s remarks, that the Government does not do 

enough for agriculture. But this Congress should consider increasing funding of these programs to levels that will enable States to 

address nonpoint pollution as intended. 

Agriculture producers are also taking measures to be as environmentally friendly as possible in their operations. We just had a 

hearing in the Ag Committee. Just one example is the implementaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00161 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
134

tion of the projects of the USDA Farm Bill conservation programs 

that work to improve water quality. We discussed the buffer strip 

initiative that is being proposed. 

From 2002 to 2006, NRCS disbursed over $2.7 billion to ag producers for projects to improve water quality. But as the Chairman 

said, there is still not enough. Most of those projects were through 

the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. In the same time 

period, they spent almost $1.2 billion conserving and improving 

wetlands, mainly through the Wetlands Reserve Program. 

Family farmers and ranchers are excellent stewards of their 

land, natural resources, and water. Their livelihoods depend on it. 

We should enable them, through programs like these, to continue 

to produce our Nation’s food and fiber in an environmentally sound 

and sustainable way. 

Last year for the first time in the history of the United States, 

the United States became net food importers of specialty crops. 

That is a scary thought to me. I think it is the responsibility of this 

Committee, this Congress, to ensure that we preserve and protect 

our water sources for today’s use as well as for future generations. 

But it must be done in a way that does not negatively impact the 

slim margins that farmers face today. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to today’s hearing. 

I yield back. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Salazar, thank you. 

Mr. Gilchrest, do you wish to make an opening statement? 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just very briefly. 

Thank you for holding this hearing. This is an issue in many 

parts of the Country. In my Congressional district, the biggest industry is agriculture. It wraps around the Chesapeake Bay. 

Just a couple of comments. There are a myriad of programs in 

the Department of Agriculture that attempt to address nonpoint 

source pollution, particularly in agriculture. What we have been 

doing for years and what we really want to try to do in this Farm 

Bill is to pump more money into those programs to help the farmer 

whose only source of income is production agriculture, but give him 

ready cash to be a part of the solution of reducing runoff from herbicides, pesticides, too much nitrogen, too much phosphorus, et 

cetera. That is in the form of cover crops, CRPs, forested buffers, 

grass buffers, technical assistance on the kinds of crops to plan, 

you name it. 

This Country is a lot better off and our taxes are a lot lower with 

a landscape carpeted with farms as opposed to a landscape carpeted with sprawl. You don’t need a lot of bureaucracy to take care 

of an agricultural area. But you need a lot of bureaucracy and you 

get a lot more pollution from sprawl. 

So if we just recognize that economic viability for communities, 

but especially agriculture, rests on the Federal Government being 

an assistant in helping with money, with technical assistance, with 

expertise, the farmers dealing with their stormwater runoff. Because that is what this is. Agriculture has a problem with 

stormwater runoff, just like an urban area does. But you can sure 

capture that stormwater runoff with the expertise that we now 

have in-house. 

135

So I want to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing. The 

hypoxia Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a classic example of 

something that we can solve, the dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay 

which is caused by urban and ag runoff. Like the previous speaker 

said, the farmers in Maryland have applied, there are more farmers applying for those kinds of dollars to deal with that kind of 

stormwater runoff, which in essence is what it is, because we all 

know from our seventh geology class or geography class that water 

runs downhill. And the way we absorb that is something that is a 

well-known quantity: preserve agriculture, put money into these 

programs and we all benefit. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Brown? 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

If I can just ask the former speaker, what he had against straw. 

Mr. GILCHREST. What I have against what? 

Mr. BROWN. Straw. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Straw? I like straw. It’s a good bedding for cows, 

horses, hogs. I think I said sprawl. I didn’t say straw. 

Mr. BROWN. Oh, sprawl. 

I thought you said straw. It must be your southern accent. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. For a small fee, I will gladly interpret 

for you. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, this morning Mr. Brown wanted 

an interpreter for me. Now I think we need one for him. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. BISHOP. If there are no other members who wish to make an 

opening statement, we will now proceed to the first of our two panels. We are pleased to have a very distinguished panel of witnesses 

here with us this afternoon. First, we have Mr. Richard Coombe, 

Regional Assistant Chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Next will be Mr. Craig Hooks. Mr. Hooks is the 

Director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds, which is located in the Office of 

Water. And our final witness on the first panel will be Mr. Wiley 

Stem, Assistant City Manager for the City of Waco. 

We are pleased to welcome you all here this afternoon. We ask 

that the witnesses try to limit their testimony to a five minute oral 

summary of their written statements, and their full written statement will be entered into the record in its entirety. 

We will proceed in the order in which you were introduced, so 

let us begin with Mr. Coombe. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD COOMBE, REGIONAL ASSISTANT 

CHIEF, NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; CRAIG HOOKS, DIRECTOR, 

OFFICE OF WETLANDS, OCEANS AND WATERSHEDS, OFFICE 

OF WATER, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; 

WILEY STEM, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER, CITY OF WACO, 

TEXAS 

Mr. COOMBE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 

136

today to describe the relationship between water quality and agriculture and the activities the Natural Resources Conservation 

Service is participating in to provide assistance to address this 

issue. 

This topic is of special interest to me, as I served as CEO of the 

Watershed Agricultural Council, Inc., of the New York City watershed. This watershed project was a showcase example of how agricultural forest landowners took successful, proactive steps to protect the water supply of the city of New York. For over 70 years, 

NRCS has been committed to working with America’s private landowners through a locally-led, voluntary, cooperative conservation 

approach. This approach has proven time and time again that 

when given sound information, guidance and technical assistance, 

farmers and ranchers voluntarily adopt, install and maintain conservation practices. 

Our mission effectively describes what we do: helping people help 

the land. Water quality is a primary indicator of our environmental 

health. And the quality of water reflects what occurs on the land. 

Water quality concerns from agriculture are generally defined as 

nonpoint source pollution. This pollution comes from diffuse 

sources, which makes identification of the source of water quality 

problems difficult. Often, water quality problems are the result of 

actions by many landowners, both rural and urban. 

Mr. Chairman, if you visit any one of the 3,077 counties in the 

United States, you would likely find that agricultural producers 

work with NRCS. Our conservation technical assistance program 

provides direct conservation planning, specific conservation practices, or systems are developed and farmers and ranchers may utilize our Farm Bill cost share programs and other authorities. 

Let me highlight a few of our voluntary programs. First, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is the flagship of 

the Working Lands Conservation Program portfolio. Funding for 

EQIP in the 2002 Farm Bill greatly expanded the program’s availability. Sixty percent of these funds are directed to address livestock-related resource concerns. The Department’s 2007 Farm Bill 

proposal recommended consolidating and reauthorizing existing 

cost share programs into a newly-designed EQIP, which will simplify and streamline activities and includes the creation of a new 

regional water enhancement program. 

The Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program stimulates 

the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches. In fiscal year 2006, CIG was implemented with three 

components: national, the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and State. 

The Wetlands Reserve Program provides funding to landowners to 

retire cropland from agricultural production if those lands are restored to wetlands and protected with a long-term or permanent 

easement. Our 2007 Farm Bill proposal seeks to add more than 1 

million additional acres to WRP, bringing the overall enrollment to 

more than 3.5 million acres. 

The Conservation Reserve Program, administered by the Farm 

Services Agency, provides technical and financial assistance to eligible farmers and ranchers. There are more than 36 million acres 

enrolled in the program and planted to cover crops to stop soil and 

nutrients from washing into waterways. 

137

Finally, the Conservation Security Program provides assistance 

on tribal and private working lands which rewards producers who 

practice good stewardship on their agricultural lands and provides 

incentives for those who want to do more. NRCS has offered the 

program in 280 watersheds and rewarded nearly 19,400 stewards 

on 15.5 million acres. 

Every year, NRCS measures the changes of the resource based 

on private lands through the National Resources Inventory (NRI). 

The NRI is a statistical survey of natural resource conditions and 

trends, and it assesses soil erosion, land cover and use, wetlands, 

habitat diversity, selected conservation practices and related resources. In 2006, the NRI shows a 43 percent reduction in cropland 

soil erosion between 1982 and 2003. This reduction did not happen 

by regulation, but through voluntary cooperation at the local level. 

Mr. Chairman, we have excellent information about our program 

outputs, but we still are working to quantify our data on environmental outcomes of our programs. As a result, starting in 2003, in 

collaboration with USDA and Federal agencies, we initiated the 

Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) to scientifically 

assess the environmental and related outcomes from Farm Bill conservation programs at both the national and watershed scale 

through 2008. 

We believe that farmers and ranchers are making important 

gains in conservation on working lands. We are sharply focusing 

our efforts and will work together with our partners to continue to 

make improvements to water quality. 

I look forward to working with you as we move ahead in this endeavor. I thank the Subcommittee and will be happy to respond to 

any questions. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Coombe. 

Now we would like to welcome Mr. Hooks from the EPA office. 

Mr. Hooks, we look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. HOOKS. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am Craig 

Hooks, Director of the Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds 

in the Office of Water at the U.S. EPA. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss EPA water quality programs for agriculture. 

EPA’s 2002 National Assessment Database summarizes State 

water quality reports and categorizes the quality of the State-assessed waters as good, threatened or impaired. States assessed 

their rivers, streams, lakes, ponds and reservoirs and found that 

agriculture was the most frequently identified source of water quality impairment. 

The National Nonpoint Source program, under Section 319 of the 

Clean Water Act, is EPA’s primary program to manage nonpoint 

source pollution. The most significant category of nonpoint source 

pollution is agriculture, and as such, it deservedly receives more attention than any other nonpoint source category. 

The Section 319 program is administered by EPA, but implemented by the States. States develop and implement watershed 

plans that assesses water quality programs holistically throughout 

a watershed, analyze and quantify the sources and causes of water 

quality programs and impairments, estimate the pollutant reductions that will be needed to solve water quality problems, and idenVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00165 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
138

tify the best management practices that will be needed in various 

places to achieve the needed pollutant reductions. 

In terms of EPA’s relationship with USDA, EPA and USDA bring 

different strengths to solving water quality problems at the local 

level. USDA conservation programs have built a long history of 

trust among agricultural producers. EPA and State water quality 

agencies can provide funding for some activities that may not be 

funded by USDA programs to help make a watershed project a success. For example, EPA funds can be used to conduct water quality 

monitoring, to improve understanding of water quality issues and 

potential solutions, develop watershed plans that enable a community to identify priority needs and priority locations for implementation, hire a dedicated watershed coordinator, often a conservation 

specialist, who is rooted in a local community, who can educate the 

community and help design and implement solutions and demonstrative innovative management practices. 

EPA water quality programs and USDA conservation programs 

are most effective when we are able to work together in a concerted 

and coordinated manner to focus our resources in the same watershed. 

I would like to mention water quality trading. One of EPA’s tools 

for supporting agricultural conservation practices is water quality 

trading. Water quality trading programs allow facilities facing high 

pollutant costs to meet their regulatory obligations by purchasing 

environmentally equivalent or superior pollutant reductions from 

another source at lower cost. Trading programs transform pollutant 

reductions achieved by implementing agricultural conservation 

practices into a valuable commodity that a producer can sell to an 

industrial or municipal facility. 

So in conclusion, we have made a major investment in the implementation of programs and practices to protect and restore waters 

that are impacted or may be impacted by agriculture. However, 

much more work remains to be done to achieve the program’s longterm goals. We will continue to work with this Committee, our Federal colleagues and the many partners, stakeholders and citizens 

who want to accelerate the pace and efficiency of water quality protection and restoration. 

This concludes my prepared remarks and I will be happy to respond to any questions you may have. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Hooks, thank you. 

We will now proceed to Mr. Stem from Waco, Texas. 

Mr. STEM. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is Wiley Stem. I serve as Assistant City Manager 

for the City of Waco, Texas. 

I am pleased to be here today on behalf of the American Waterworks Association and its 60,000 members. AWWA member utilities serve safe water to over 80 percent of the American people and 

AWWA is both very concerned and very qualified to speak about 

the subject of this hearing, nonpoint source pollution. 

Nonpoint source pollution is a very serious problem, and one that 

is not effectively addressed by the Clean Water Act. I would like 

to illustrate this problem by describing the situation we face in 

Waco over the contamination of our municipal water supply. 

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Lake Waco is the only viable public drinking water supply for approximately 150,000 central Texas citizens who live in our city and 

in surrounding communities. In recent decades, Lake Waco has 

been severely damaged by pollution running off of agricultural 

lands and our watershed. Numerous studies and peer review publications concluded that high concentrations of phosphorus in Lake 

Waco are caused by runoff from agricultural operations in the 

North Bosque River watershed. 

More specifically, this runoff occurs as a result of concentrated 

animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, over-applying cow manure to 

their waste application fields. The dairies in question, which by the 

way are industrial scale operations, and not traditional family 

farms, are applying manure to their fields as a means of waste disposal, rather than for agronomic purposes. 

The excessive phosphorus in our watershed has caused algal 

growth in Lake Waco. These algae, in turn, cause serious taste and 

odor problems with the water. In addition to phosphorus, animal 

waste also is a significant source of pathogens. Although Waco 

takes great care to treat its water to safe levels, in other cities 

there have been several well documented cases where a chain of 

events, including breakdowns in water treatment, has resulted in 

people being killed or seriously sickened by pathogens associated 

with animal waste. 

The City of Waco has both an obligation under the Safe Drinking 

Water Act and a moral responsibility, which we take very seriously, to make sure that water we deliver to our residents is safe, 

odor-free and pleasant to drink. In order to meet this obligation, 

Waco has been forced to spend millions of dollars in recent years 

for additional water treatment as a direct result of the pollution in 

our watershed. The cost of upgrades in equipment and facilities 

which we must employ to deal specifically with this problem is projected to nearly double the cost of a project we are undertaking to 

ensure that we have adequate water supplies for now and the future. The cost of that project is estimated at approximately $90 

million, of which $40 million is attributable to poor water quality 

caused by animal operations in our watershed. 

As described in more detail in my statement, the City of Waco 

was forced to sue a number of the dairies in our watershed, using 

Superfund. These suits were not for the purpose of enriching the 

city, but to force the dairies to adopt better practices that reduce 

the levels of polluting runoff from their fields. I would note that 

there are efforts underway in Congress to relax the provisions of 

Superfund by excluding animal manure and its constituents, such 

as phosphorus, from coverage under the law. I urge you to strongly 

oppose such relaxation of Superfund. 

I would also note that while Waco had to sue agricultural operators to adopt certain programs in our watershed, those same programs could be adopted voluntarily with support under our Nation’s comprehensive farm bill. Congress is expected to pass a new 

comprehensive farm bill this summer. I urge you to expand the 

conservation programs in it to at least $7 billion annually, as proposed by representative Ron Kind and several other members of 

Congress. Protecting drinking water supply should be a top priority 

for those funds. 

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Finally, I would be remiss if I did not thank Representative Chet 

Edwards for his tireless efforts to procure funds for the City of 

Waco to help us deal with these problems. I hope that you will 

strongly support the Water Resources Development Act and the 

funds Congressman Edwards is seeking to assist Waco and upstream agricultural operators in the important work of securing 

adequate and safe supplies of water for our citizens. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear today and I will 

be happy to answer any questions. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Stem, thank you very much. 

We will now proceed to questions for the first panel. Let me start 

with a question that will be both for Mr. Hooks and Mr. Coombe. 

The question has to do with coordination between the USDA and 

its Federal partners, such as the EPA, in an effort to continue to 

decrease agricultural runoff. 

In what ways is increased cooperation important, in what ways 

will they be valuable, and how would you suggest going forward to 

achieve that level of cooperation? We will start with Mr. Coombe. 

Mr. COOMBE. Mr. Chairman, I would refer to the Chesapeake, for 

example. We have a predictive EPA watershed model, which is utilized so much in the press. It measures BMP, best management 

practices. In our particular program, conservation practices are 

what we use. Consequently, the jargon is different. So we are working closely to have these two work together. 

We have just signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 

October between the EPA and USDA with regard to putting actions 

in place to deal with the Chesapeake together. At the departmental 

side, both agencies or both departments have an MOU in the works 

to improve communication between leadership and focus on financial and technical resources. 

We also have in the new Farm Bill proposal of the secretary, of 

a Regional Water Enhancement Program proposal which would be 

looking at large watersheds. Last of all, recently the regional directors met in Philadelphia at the request of Don Welsh, Region III 

Administrator, myself and others. That is an example of where 

each of us that oversee all of the States within the region of the 

Chesapeake have met. 

Mr. HOOKS. Thank you for your question. I think one of the areas 

that USDA and EPA can work together really are at the local level. 

I think there are some examples of us working together in a much 

more concerted and coordinated fashion. Just recently USDA’s 

NRCS office worked with the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality to develop a fund in 2007 called the Water Quality 

Initiative Program that will invest EQIP dollars to fund one on one 

technical assistance to farmers and landowners at priority sites 

within a watershed. 

One of the key features that we have promoted, that we attempt 

to promote through our nonpoint source program, is our ability to 

work cooperatively and through this voluntary program at the local 

level. So in terms of our ability to again work with the USDA, I 

would say that we need to take a serious look at some of the programs and identify what priority watersheds we need to work in, 

and then work closely together with USDA in those areas. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

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Mr. Coombe, is there a backlog in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program? 

Mr. COOMBE. Mr. Chairman, there certainly is. All of our programs are over-subscribed. And with regard to EQIP contracts, for 

example, we have a backlog at this time, unfunded applications of 

over 41,000. There is about an 8.9 percent participation rate, up to 

2,128,982 farmers across the Country. 

Mr. BISHOP. And what are the implications of this backlog? 

Mr. COOMBE. The implications are that with regard to our expenditures since 2002 to 2006, 2,773,159,000—well, I have my digits off, but over $2 billion have gone for water quality programs, 

parts of programs. EQIP is a major one, WRP, et cetera. I am saying that all of our programs are over-subscribed, and we believe 

that these are extremely important to watersheds. We take a national view, but realizing all land is in a watershed, and many of 

the members will have different watersheds they think are important. But we are over-subscribed. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

Mr. Hooks, there is an EPA report entitled the National Water 

Quality Inventory. It is my understanding that the Clean Water 

Act stipulates that that report be released every two years. It is my 

further understanding that there has not been a full report released since the year 2000. So my question is, why is it that we 

have not had a report since 2000 and when do we think we might 

see the next report? 

Mr. HOOKS. I am actually hopeful that you will see the report 

within the next few weeks. I think part of the reason for the delay 

in the report has been to a change in the type of reporting that we 

are doing. We have moved to an integrated reporting mechanism, 

combining both our 303(d), our impaired waters list, along with our 

303(b) reports. We have moved to a different electronic reporting 

mechanism. That also caused certain delays in the reporting of the 

report. 

But we are starting to make significant advances and improvements in the reporting. The reports are coming to us electronically 

and we will be able to get these reports out in a much more timely 

fashion. 

Mr. BISHOP. But you think that report will be available within 

the next two to three weeks, did you say? 

Mr. HOOKS. Probably in the next two to three weeks. 

Mr. BISHOP. Okay, thank you very much. 

My last question is one that has a local implication for me. I represent a district that includes two estuaries of national significance: Peconic Bay and Long Island Sound. It also is an area where 

agriculture is one of the more dominant industries. My question is 

for areas that include estuaries of national significance, particular 

farm land that borders estuaries of national significance, should 

the programs that currently exist to curtail runoff that are voluntary, should we be looking to make some of them mandatory 

when we are dealing with an estuary of national significance? Mr. 

Coombe or Mr. Hooks? 

Mr. COOMBE. May I? I just feel so strongly on this, Mr. Chairman. In 1989, Surface Treatment Rule required all water systems 

142

to be filtered. The New York City watershed is one of the largest, 

1.45 billion gallons. I own a farm within that particular watershed. 

We suggested that the low density land use pattern, 85 percent 

in ag and forestry, was the preferred land use. The city decided instead to regulate us. The rest is history. They saw their way because in the area of the Croton system, which you are familiar 

with, highly urbanized and industrialized, they had to filter their 

water. They would have Croton-ized the Cat-Del if they had done 

that. 

So in my humble opinion, and I feel very strongly on this, when 

you are dealing with nonpoint source pollution on diffuse sources, 

from agriculture and forestry, you have to have access. That is one 

of the things we have had 70 years of experience with, 71, 72 years 

at NRCS. And that is the trust on the part of the farming community and the forestry community to utilize our science-based technology in order to protect the land. You have to get on that land 

and you have to win them over. 

So I believe that there can be a combination. Sometimes you 

need the hammer in the regulation. But to get the work done, you 

need the voluntary, incentive-based program. We have a 43 percent 

reduction in sediment from 1982 to the year 2003. And that was 

done on a voluntary basis nationwide. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. Mr. Hooks? 

Mr. HOOKS. I think one of the hallmarks of the 319 program at 

this point, it certainly is a voluntary program. One of the things 

that we focus on is education and training with the farmers and 

the local communities. 

I think one of the central tenets is in trying to promote the watershed approach, it is important that we have a plan that is based 

on sound management techniques and based on sound science, 

where we need to go in, assess what the natural resources are, 

identify what the goals are, determine what sort of priority problems we are going to focus on and then develop a specific management approach to the problem. 

Then we need to evaluate, and also bear in mind that we can 

apply adaptive management after we monitor and see what sort of 

progress we are actually making over time. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

Mr. Baker? 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Hooks, I am not questioning the underlying assumption 

about the hearing, but I think it is something that I need to understand better, and that is that agriculture represents a problem 

with regard to nitrogen runoffs. 

Within the agency, has there been significant academic study, either by outside source or within professionals in the agency to, for 

example, looking at the water in the Mississippi River, which flows 

by my front door every day, comes from everybody from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains? It is utilized by our industry, we 

have to take it out, treat it and use it for commercial purposes. And 

when it goes back to the river, it is cleaner than when we took it 

out. But we still have concerns about water quality, even doing 

that. 

143

But how much of pollutants, I learned a great deal in this atmospheric deposition here, and as they say, a significant problem, particularly in proximity to coal-fired generators, do we know whether 

the nitrogen is 100 percent runoff? Is it 50/50? Is it 70/30? And is 

that based on studies that get us an awareness of where our problems really are? 

Mr. HOOKS. Currently, actually, the agency’s science advisory 

board is conducting a study at this point. One of the programs that 

EPA participates on is the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force. 

They requested the science advisory board to look at actually both 

nitrogen and phosphorus and the contribution that it makes to the 

Gulf of Mexico. 

The numbers that I have seen, there is an estimate that approximately 74 percent of the nitrogen that is coming down the Mississippi is from agricultural sources. 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. How did they get to that number? Did 

anybody do a study or is that modeling, or how did we come to that 

conclusion? 

Mr. HOOKS. I don’t know that personally, but I would be more 

than happy to research that. 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. My reason for bringing this point up 

is, there are too few resources to address all the identified problems all at once. So we really need to prioritize. So a very carefully 

focused scientific analysis of where we believe the best taxpayer 

benefit would be yielded, for example, I know in high density animal operations, the milking parlor, as it is called in the evening, 

represents a concentration of animal waste that is pretty considerable. At least in my state, we have had dairies actually put in 

mini-sewer treatment plants to treat that material before it is disposed of. That is an obvious one. 

But I am not altogether convinced, if you are looking at several 

hundred acres where you have crop rotations of beans in the spring 

and you go to an alternate crop in the fall, even grassland, that 

that kind of simple operation represents the environmental threat 

that I am hearing about. That is my point. My colleagues think I 

am not sensitive to the environment. We drink the wastewater you 

send down, that is where we get our drinking water, out of the 

river. So we are pretty sensitive about it. 

The point is, I don’t want agriculture just to be plowed under 

here as the bad guy in all this. There are a lot of good people in 

business who spend their money to clean this stuff up because they 

rely on the viability of that land for their future kids’ generations 

to come economic vitality. 

So I am just requesting that in our prioritization of where we 

spend money, let’s at first have arms-length professionals take a 

look at the field and figure out who are the number one violators 

and how can we help those folks through voluntary programs correct those actions to help us all. But there were wildly varying 

numbers, as for example, in the Chesapeake Bay, as to whether atmospheric deposition was responsible for 10 percent or as much as 

50 percent of the deposition in that lake. We don’t know. 

So it is hard to rush to a judgment and spend a lot of money 

when we might find out later we would have been better served 

somewhere else. How long do you think it is before that scientific 

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study that you say is now engaged would be available to the Committee? 

Mr. HOOKS. They are due to release a draft report in July of this 

year and have a final report, I believe, in October of this year. And 

I share your sentiments. It is an extremely complex and difficult 

issue, particularly the Gulf of Mexico issue. 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. I represent sort of a rural area, and 

we have a lot of septic tanks that dump a lot of water into a lot 

of roadside ditches. I hope nobody from the EPA goes down there 

and checks them, but I have a suspicion that some of those 

wouldn’t quite meet your standards. I think when you aggregate 

hundreds of thousands of people’s activity as opposed to a single 

farming operator, the equities might need to be readjusted there. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Would the gentleman yield just for a quick second? 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GILCHREST. The Chesapeake Bay program has actually 

helped us, through pretty critical analysis, to figure out where all 

these, where the nitrogen is coming from, where the phosphorus is 

coming from. And even where the septic systems are contributing 

nitrogen. In the State overall, there is 5 percent of the nitrogen 

going into the Chesapeake Bay from septic systems. 

But if you take that down a few other notches, in certain areas 

it is 50 percent. If you look at a little tidal pond to the Chesapeake 

Bay, it will vary. And it is about 40 percent from agriculture, about 

28 percent from air deposition for nitrogen, and about, I am not 

sure, maybe Mr. Coombe knows. But anyway, we have classified 

urban, suburban, agriculture, septic tanks, sewage treatment 

plants and so on. 

I do want to buttress one of your comments, and that is, I think 

my state, my farmers, nothing against Colorado, Pennsylvania, 

Louisiana, but we really have reached a level of state of the art in 

best management practices for agriculture to reduce these kinds of 

runoffs. And it is because of the collaborative effort in the Chesapeake Bay Program, EPA, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the agricultural community. They have really integrated their cooperation 

together to move forward. 

Mr. BAKER OF LOUISIANA. I thank the learned gentleman. 

I would just merely point out that the type of diligence that the 

Chesapeake Bay groups have exhibited is the kind of diligence I 

am suggesting ought to be required nationally. Before the Congress 

spends a bunch of money, we ought to know what the net effect is 

and are we helping the problem or not. I am merely suggesting, I 

don’t think agriculture generally, at least speaking for my state, is 

as bad as some folks may think. 

I yield back. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Baker, thank you. 

Mr. Salazar? 

Mr. SALAZAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ranking Member Baker, I couldn’t agree with you more. In Colorado, we have several streams that are impaired. We have the 

Fountain Creek that flows out of Colorado Springs, through the 

City of Pueblo and on down the Arkansas River. Probably the largVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00172 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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est contaminant of the Arkansas River. And most of the contamination does not come from agriculture, most of it comes from the City 

of Colorado Springs. 

As we build more cities, with more concrete and more pavement, 

when we have heavy rains it flows into the streams and that becomes a great contaminant. I am just concerned that agriculture is 

becoming the scapegoat here, and we have to be careful that we 

don’t over-regulate agriculture. 

Mr. Stem, you mentioned that in Waco, agriculture contributes, 

I don’t remember the number, but you said somewhere in the 

neighborhood of 30 or 40 percent of the contaminants to the river. 

Have you done an assessment as to what the City of Waco actually 

contributes when you have heavy rains or floods? 

Mr. STEM. There have been assessments done. The Texas Institute for Applied Environmental Research at Tarleton State University, which is in Stevenville, in the heart of dairy country, did a 

study of the watershed. I believe the number, the urban runoff 

number was around 7 percent. It has been a number of years since 

I read the study. It was less than 10 percent. I think the waste application field contribution from dairies was in the 30s or 40s. 

Mr. SALAZAR. Well, that seems a little optimistic to me, when I 

look at what has happened in some of the Colorado rivers. I guess 

I would ask Mr. Hooks, what is your assessment of the mercury 

issue in our rivers and streams and lakes, based on the pollution 

by, for example, electric generation power plants? We have a study 

or a graph here, I have, that was issued by the EPA, which is an 

inventory of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Thirty-two percent 

of the greenhouse gas emissions come from electric generation, 28 

percent from transportation, our vehicles, 19 percent from industry. 

Agriculture only represents 7 percent of that contamination. 

I understand that these electric generation plants contaminate 

the water with heavy mercury deposits. Can you address that, 

please? 

Mr. HOOKS. Yes. The mercury contamination is also an extremely 

difficult issue, particularly in the water program. The majority of 

the mercury that is deposited into our surface waters, oftentimes 

the majority of it can come from out of state, which makes it extremely difficult for State regulators to deal with on a case by case 

basis. 

I think the thrust of what we are trying to do is to work with 

States to develop comprehensive management mercury reduction 

programs, to the extent that we can. Certainly programs with the 

Office of Water’s purview, we basically have indicated that States 

have the ability to delay implementation of their TMDLs for mercury impairments. 

So to the extent that we can, with the tools that we utilize within 

the water program, we try to understand the science, we try to understand the States’ ability or lack of ability to meet those types 

of mercury standards. 

Mr. SALAZAR. Thank you. 

Mr. Coombe, are you aware of the new Greenbelt Initiative that 

the USDA is working on, and something that has been requested 

for the Ag Committee to include in the 2007 Farm Bill program, 

which basically creates greenbelts? I think part of it is to help with 

146

noise pollution, part of it is to help with water pollution. Are you 

aware of that initiative? 

Mr. COOMBE. No, I am not. 

Mr. SALAZAR. Okay, thank you. This is something that I believe 

will help, especially with the farms and ranches that are along rivers and streams. We are going to be looking at that with the Ag 

Committee. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. Dr. Boustany? 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First, let me start off by saying I want to associate myself with 

the comments of my colleague from Louisiana. I still have this 

question about, do we really know enough about monitoring and 

data collection on all this to really have an understanding from a 

watershed basis on what is the role of agricultural runoff versus 

suburban and urban runoff in this problem? 

First, my younger brother actually is a research scientist with 

the NRCS at the wetlands center down in Lafayette, Louisiana. I 

have been with him the center, obviously, seen his laboratory work. 

I have also gone out in the field with him on occasion. I have been 

to some suburban developments where there are ponds, they are 

trying to create beautiful grounds. And the ponds are repetitively 

overgrown with duckweed. And when you get down there and collect this duckweed, it has the strongest nitrogen smell you can 

imagine. So we know there is a lot of nitrogenous waste getting 

into the water. 

I have also been out to a number of farms in my district, which 

is largely a rural district in southwest Louisiana. I haven’t seen 

that same problem. So it seems to me there are farmers that are 

doing a pretty decent job of approaching the problem. Just anecdotal, but again, I think we really need to make sure we are getting good, clean, accurate data and a full understanding of this. 

A couple of questions. One, Mr. Hooks, with the 319 program, 

you mentioned some success stories in your testimony. I looked 

through them. Are there any other problems, disparities among the 

States, in your experience with this as to their effectiveness in implementing the program? 

Mr. HOOKS. I think you would almost have to look at that problem on a case by case basis. There are plenty of examples where 

farmers have done an outstanding job in terms of their conservation practices on their local farms. Then there are ceratin areas 

where we need to do additional work. 

Again, one of the thrusts that we try to promote is looking at the 

problem from a watershed standpoint, so that we can look at a 

community of farmers, or a community of even urban potential inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus, what have you, on a watershed basis, 

so that we are trying to make significant progress and improvements on a watershed downstream. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. So are you suggesting that there are many area 

where there is room for a lot of improvement in the implementation of this program? 

Mr. HOOKS. Again, it is probably on a case by case basis. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. That is a fair enough answer. 

147

Mr. Coombe, on the Wetlands Reserve Program, you mentioned 

retiring crop land. Are there other alternatives being looked at, 

such as strategic planting of wetlands plants to try to get the same 

result? Are you aware of any research or data along those lines, 

rather than retiring acreage of crop land? 

Mr. COOMBE. Yes, there are a few. A quick comment to your 

statement before. The discharge of nitrogen and phosphorus is two 

times higher per acre from urban as opposed to agriculture. That 

was helpful. And with regard to Mr. Stem’s comment, the North 

Bosque river is a CEAP special emphasis watershed that is the 

water supply for his community. We are monitoring water quality 

very closely there, and should have results by 2008. 

In terms of riparian areas and the Wetlands Reserve Program in 

our Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP) too, we are 

doing a lot of study through the Agricultural Research Service, 

which has developed agriculture-based models for crop land. We 

are also developing models with regard to the value of specific 

types of plantings along riparian areas. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. I see my time is about up, so I will 

yield back at this time. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. Mr. Arcuri? 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. 

Just a couple of questions. I have a district in upstate New York 

that has very heavy dairy farms. I couldn’t agree with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle more. I hear them constantly 

complaining about the fact that they are being blamed for runoff 

and they are trying to do the right, but obviously it is very difficult, 

especially for the small farmers. 

My first question is to you, Mr. Stem. When you were speaking, 

you made a distinction in terms of using the Superfund to go after, 

I think you said, some of the larger dairy farms. Do you find the 

same problem coming from the smaller dairy farms? Do you have 

those in your area? 

Mr. STEM. In the North Bosque watershed, which is the watershed that feeds to Lake Waco, I believe there are 64 CAFOs that 

would be 500 head or more. Last I heard, 10 or 12 what we call 

FAFOs, which would be less than 500. Generally, we don’t have the 

waste management issues with the smaller ones that we do with 

the bigger ones. 

But the problem in the North Bosque is that it is kind of overpermitted, and many of them just don’t have enough land to apply 

their waste at agronomic rates. So there are some problems with 

some of the smaller ones. But primarily the over-application is with 

the larger ones because they have so much waste to deal with. 

Mr. ARCURI. Mr. Hooks, does EPA treat the small farmers differently than the large dairy farmers? 

Mr. HOOKS. Well, it certainly, the 319 program is a voluntary 

program. So obviously, the mechanisms that you might employe to 

educate or to train might be different. But the essential thrust of 

the program is the same, to provide technical assistance, financial 

assistance, promote technology transfer and demonstrate projects, 

both on small scales and large scales. So we try not, I don’t think 

we discriminate between the large and the smaller farmers. But 

the thrust of our message and our program is the same. 

148

Mr. ARCURI. I would just like to point out, and I have had a series of town hall meetings throughout my district, which again is 

very dairy-oriented. Most of them are small farmers, but they say 

the same thing. They want to do the right thing, they want to try 

to take the right steps. The problem is, the price of milk is so low 

that they really can’t afford to do the things that are necessary to 

do. So I think that is something that we really need to be cognizant 

of. These farmers, I think sometimes people tend to demonize them 

as the cause of this problem. And they are trying to do the right 

thing, but the economics of it is very difficult for them. 

Just one more question. We are finding many more organic farms 

sprouting up. Do you see any difference in terms of the problem 

with the organic farms as opposed to the traditional farms? 

Mr. HOOKS. Actually, I am not that familiar with the farming 

practices of organic farming, to give you a decent response right 

now. But I would be more than happy to obtain some additional research and provide an answer to you on that. 

I did want to make one correction in terms of do we treat small 

farmers and large farmers any differently. For large CAFOs, those 

industries are regulated by NPDES permitting. So there is a distinction there, based on the size. 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you very much. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. Mrs. Drake? 

Mrs. DRAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for 

being here. 

The district that I represent borders the Chesapeake Bay. It has 

been my experience, talking with our farmers on the Eastern 

Shore, and also farmers I have talked to across Virginia, that they 

are very supportive of agricultural conservation measures. They 

understand the importance for the environment, and they know 

that it also helps them in their own practices. 

So my question is, there are so many programs that are out 

there, but there is confusion and I think limited coordination between agencies. So Mr. Hooks, what is the EPA doing, or Mr. 

Coombe, what are we doing to make sure that we are better educating our farmers, and the ones who are willing to participate in 

these programs? How are we making sure we are getting the information to them? 

Mr. COOMBE. That is what we are all about. We are helping people help the land. We provide technical assistance. We are in most 

every county in the Country. As a farmer myself, NRCS is just the 

place we go for technical assistance, et cetera. Certainly, one of the 

most exciting things that we do, I think, is that we have State 

Technical Committees that represent a whole series of groups, and 

especially the farming community, that helps us set our priorities 

with regard to how we are spending the dollars in our national programs across the Country. And along with that, in terms of working with the communities, once again, Secretary Johannes in his 

2007 Farm Bill presentation has agreed with you. So has the Chief 

of NRCS, Arlen Lancaster. And they do want to simplify and merge 

the programs together, so that our cost share program and our conservation programs from the standpoint of easements would be 

more simplified and yet still directed, in order to put conservation 

on the ground. 

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We think that is one of our strongest points. One of the reasons, 

Mr. Chairman, I go back to your question with regard to the voluntary approach. It is important to change behavior patterns on 

lands by private individuals. We think this is the best way to do 

it, and that is what we are all about with our programs. 

Mr. HOOKS. I think one of the distinctions from USDA’s programs and EPA’s is our ability to hire watershed coordinators, 

which typically USDA does not fund, use its moneys to fund that 

type of a hire. Right now, we spend approximately about $100 million per year doing the things that I mentioned earlier in terms of 

education and training. States or other entities below the State 

level have the ability to bring watershed coordinators on board fulltime for that purpose, to basically go out and talk directly to the 

farmers. 

Mrs. DRAKE. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield back. I know we have a vote. 

Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

We have a 15 minute vote on the Floor right now. There are 

about 11 minutes left. I think we will have time at least for one 

more set of questions. 

Mr. Baird? 

Mr. BAIRD. I thank the Chairman. Mr. Hooks, as you may be 

aware, Puget Sound is engaging in a great effort to try and clean 

up that magnificent waterway. One of our challenges, frankly, is 

nonpoint source pollution, the subject of today’s hearing. 

I wonder if you have any knowledge of that or any thoughts you 

would like to share about the role your agency might play in working with the Puget Sound and trying to improve its water quality, 

vis-a-vis nonpoint source? 

Mr. HOOKS. As you are aware, while I have been focusing my 

comments primarily on the 319 program, we certainly have the 

NEP program in Washington, which is one of the hallmark programs for EPA. It is kind of the poster child for partnership and 

collaboration. 

They also are a large part of the solution in dealing with 

nonpoint source and point source pollution, working in collaboration with the many partners in the region and in the area. 

Mr. BAIRD. We appreciate your collaboration. 

Another issue that I played a role in has to do with the issue of 

harmful algal blooms. Many of us have a pretty strong feeling that 

that may be exacerbated, if not caused, by agricultural runoff, at 

least in some areas. It is a multi-million dollar threat to shellfish 

and other fishing industries. I wonder if you could comment on that 

issue? We tried actually a couple of years ago to include some language, actually ran into some opposition from agricultural interests 

who didn’t really even want us to study the possible contribution, 

let alone study measures to control this. I wonder if you have any 

insights into that, what the contributing factor is and what needs 

to be done? 

Mr. HOOKS. In large part, again, it is going to be focusing on education. We are very much concerned about the HABs, or harmful 

algal blooms, around the Country. They can contribute to red tides, 

brown tides. Certainly dealing with the whole physteria epidemic 

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on the east coast over the past couple of decades has also raised 

awareness of this issue. 

It is something that we just need to keep after. Again, developing 

an effective watershed plan that is based on sound science, trying 

to figure, again, what are the priority areas that we need to develop and work on, what are the best management practices to deal 

with this nutrient over-enrichment, and do it in a concerted way, 

do it so that it makes sense. I try to identify what are the high priority watersheds that are contributing most highly to the nutrient, 

usually nitrogen in the marine environments, what are the highest 

priority watersheds that we need to focus our energy and attention 

on. 

Mr. BAIRD. Is EPA aware of the economic and health consequences of harmful algal blooms? I know there are powerful interests that might discourage you from attending to the upstream 

contributors to this. But are you aware of, for example, the impacts 

on the shellfish industry and other fishing industries and the economic impacts of that and the tourism industry, should harmful 

algal bloom hit a recreational area? 

Mr. HOOKS. We are very aware of that. Hence the pressure to try 

to deal with this very serious issue. Oftentimes, obviously, the 

human health impacts associated with particularly some of the 

toxic blooms that occur on occasion as well. 

We are very aware of it. We continue again to work with the 

local community, work with our local coordinators, and again try 

to assess the natural resources and develop a plan that is effective 

that is effective and that is going to work. 

Mr. BAIRD. Do any of the other panelists want to comment on either of those issues? 

Mr. COOMBE. I would just make two comments. Once again, back 

to the gentleman from Maryland, the data in the Chesapeake is 

showing at least two times more nitrogen and phosphorus runoff 

from urban development and suburban development. We are actually losing the battle, somewhat, because of the urbanization. 

Second of all, we in USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service have put forth salmon habitat improvement programs and dollars through the EQIP, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program I alluded to before. So it is a high priority. 

Once again, we know agriculture is part of the problem. We also 

know we are part of the solution. We believe our voluntary incentive-based programs at the local level are helping with the problem. 

Mr. BAIRD. I can tell you, some of my agricultural folks, especially the smaller producers, cranberries and others, really appreciate EQIP dollars. They use them very, very well, and very productively to keep the water supply clean. So thank you for that. 

I yield back. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. We have about six minutes left on the 

vote on the Floor. So Mr. Gilchrest, take it over. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two very quick 

things, I will take 30 seconds. 

One, you can have a CAFO operation as long as you use BMPs, 

including nutrient management, and you have enough land, that is 

the big issue. The other thing is, Mr. Hooks, if you could contact 

my office, I would really appreciate understanding a little bit more 

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about the trading system you described there earlier. And if it is 

a cap and trade or if it is a trade, I don’t think we do it in Maryland, but I sure would like to take a look at it. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to talk to you 

further, Mr. Hooks. 

Mr. HOOKS. I would be more than happy to do that. 

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Gilchrest, thank you. 

I think we will now excuse the first panel with our thanks and 

appreciation for your time and for your expertise. We will recess 

for about 15 minutes. When we return, we will start with the second panel. Thank you very much. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. BISHOP. The Committee will reconvene. 

We will now move to our second panel of witnesses. The second 

panel consists of Mr. Roger Wolf, Director of Environmental Programs at the Iowa Soybean Association. Next will be Mr. Scott 

Faber. Mr. Faber is the Director of the Farm Policy Campaign at 

Environmental Defense. We will then have Dr. Robert Howarth 

from Cornell University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary 

Biology. Then our final witness will be Dr. James Baker, a Professor Emeritus from Iowa State University, representing the Iowa 

Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. 

Again, I will ask that you limit your verbal testimony to five 

minutes. Your written testimony will be entered in its entirety into 

our record. Let us begin with Mr. Wolf. 

TESTIMONY OF ROGER WOLF, DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS, IOWA SOYBEAN ASSOCIATION; SCOTT 

FABER, FARM POLICY CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE; ROBERT W. HOWARTH, PH.D, DEPARTMENT OF ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY; JAMES BAKER, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL AND BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING, IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY 

Mr. WOLF. Good afternoon, and thank you. 

On behalf of our 6,100 farmer and dues-paying members, I want 

to thank you for the invitation to talk about our perspective on agricultural nonpoint source pollution and water quality. 

The Iowa Soybean Association has the distinction of being the 

largest State-based row-crop commodity association in the Country. 

Over the last decade, Iowa Soybean Association has established 

itself as a leader in helping improve agronomic, economic and environmental performance in agriculture. We believe this is unique. 

We believe our programs are a model of what cooperative public 

and private partnerships with farmer leadership can achieve. In 

fact, we believe we are providers of solutions to these issues. 

Our participants include dozens of partners from the public and 

private sector, as well as 500 individual farmers working on 1,500 

fields across the State. We are currently working in eight sub-watershed efforts that are within four major river basins. 

Of course, you mentioned my testimony has been entered into 

the record. It is quite long and I hope you do look at it. It recognizes that despite the fact that agriculture has made significant inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00179 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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vestment in conservation applications, challenges do remain. It addresses the question we all must answer, which is how best to 

achieve water quality the public demands, while also meeting demand for food, fiber and fuel. This is an exciting time in agriculture. If you are a farmer, it is the best time to be in agriculture. 

Our recommendations involve system changes as well as policy 

and program changes, changes that are designed to provide measurable improvements in environmental performance from agriculture. Our specific recommendations for advancing agriculture’s 

environmental performance include: establish an Upper Mississippi 

River Basin initiative to provide a framework of inter-governmental, multi-jurisdictional and public and private collaboration, 

and implementing and funding a strategic, performance-based resource center plan for environmental performance. Maybe this 

could be done as a geographic initiative within EPA, or maybe it 

could be done as part of a priority area in the upcoming Farm Bill. 

We need more support of public-private partnerships, empowering local communities of farmers to work on providing these solutions. We need support, we need a means for diffusing and institutionalizing the innovation. That is one of the things Iowa Soybean 

has done over the last decade, is this innovation programming, so 

that we can mature agriculture’s capabilities to perform. Frankly, 

we need to sophisticate our system. We need to go beyond best 

management practices. That is one of the foundations of our program at Iowa Soybean. 

We need increases in funding for technical and financial assistance on farms. That is critical. We need support of applied evaluation involving monitoring and measurement of management providing site-specific and location-specific feedback that can be used 

to validate performance and incorporate results over time. Farmers 

benefit first from that information and we believe we can best capture environmental improvements with that kind of information. 

We need to incorporate these adaptive management and performance-based approaches into watershed programming. Then we also 

must define realistic time frames to achieve some progress on these 

water quality issues. 

How did we arrive at these recommendations? They are based on 

the experience that we have at Iowa Soybean and the fact that we 

have stepped up to the challenge and embraced opportunities. We 

have heard about the issues from the other speakers and from your 

opening comments about nitrogen in the Mississippi River, the Gulf 

of Mexico. Certainly, the issues in the Chesapeake Bay, we share 

those issues. 

The Iowa Soybean Association, which manages the farmer checkoff, has invested over $2 million of farmer funding to address these 

issues and leverage that with State and Federal grants, all to work 

on this issue. Nonpoint source pollution is challenging because it 

occurs as part of a dynamic, open system. This is also what makes 

farming challenged. The difference is we have invested significantly 

in mastering management capabilities driven for profitability. ISA 

programs are designed to help tune in our management capabilities 

to address environmental objectives. 

Multiple tactics are used to do this. We use precision agriculture 

technology, we used applied science in fields to collect performance 

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data. Performance data is used to adjust practices. This is all done 

as a proactive effort, for economic reasons for agriculture and to address water quality issues. 

Mr. BISHOP. If you could limit your remarks to perhaps another 

one minute. 

Mr. WOLF. This approach works, because it gets quantifiable results and it is replicable. We are already seeing it evolve into a 

working model for landscapes across Iowa and beyond. That is why 

we think that the Upper Mississippi River Watershed and the subwatersheds within should be targeted with a focus on making 

progress on nutrients. 

In closing, members of the Iowa Soybean Association hope you 

will consider our work to be a touchstone and our people to be a 

resource as your Subcommittee considers work ahead, and Congress works on the next Farm Bill. Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Wolf, thank you. Now we will hear from Mr. 

Faber. 

Mr. FABER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just start by saying how much I appreciate your holding this hearing, and to especially thank Congressman Salazar for his leadership in introducing 

the Eat Healthy America bill and its proposal to increase conservation spending in the next Farm Bill. 

I would especially like to applaud the work of the Iowa Soybean 

Association. They have done incredible things to help farmers improve the efficiency with which they are applying fertilizers. We 

are getting real reductions, 10 to 20 percent reductions in the 

amount of fertilizer that is being applied to farm fields in Iowa. It 

is proof positive that farmers can significantly increase the efficiency with which they using their nitrogen and it helps all of our 

water quality problems. 

You have already heard that it has been more than 30 years 

since we pledged to clean up our rivers, lakes and bays, and that 

it has been more than 20 years since the first deadline to clean up 

our rivers, lakes and bays was passed. You have heard today also 

that thousands of our water bodies remain too polluted to meet the 

goals of the Clean Water Act. Farmers and ranchers manage more 

than half of the American landscape. So it is no surprise to any of 

us that agriculture has a significant impact on the environment. 

We heard that Mr. Hooks earlier today. 

To comply with the Clean Water Act, our States have developed 

thousands of pollution reduction plans, TMDLs, and many of these 

plans heavily depend upon agriculture to reduce loadings of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment. One of the questions we heard earlier was about the Chesapeake Bay. About 46 percent of the phosphorus that reaches the Bay comes from agriculture, and about 40 

percent of the nitrogen comes from agriculture. So clearly, we are 

asking our farmers to do a lot to help us meet our Nation’s water 

quality goals. 

I think the good news is that our farmers are really eager to help 

solve these water quality challenges. There are many examples. 

Let me just provide a couple. About 41 percent of our farmers now 

employ conservation tillage practices, up from 26 percent in 1990. 

Farmers are widely employing the installation of buffer strips and 

grasses to help filter out runoff from our farm land. And overall, 

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literally hundreds of thousands of farmers are implementing scores 

of different kinds of conservation practices that help us apply our 

fertilizers with much greater precision and help filter the nutrients 

that are intended for our crops. 

With additional tools and incentives, our farmers could do much 

more to help address our water quality challenges. Right now, more 

than 100 million acres of crop land are still eroding at 

unsustainable rates, despite the great gains we have made in the 

last 20 years. Most farmers still do not conduct basic soil tests. 

Less than 40 percent of our crop land is subject to a test for nitrogen before we apply fertilizers. Less than 15 percent of our farmers 

employ technologies that automatically change fertilizer applications to reflect nutrient needs. This is not a criticism, it is a recognition that our farmers could do much more to apply nitrogen 

with greater precision and to intercept runoff before it comes off 

the field and into our surface waters with the right tools and the 

right incentives. 

Congress has many opportunities, including reauthorization of 

the Clean Water Act, the Energy Bill, but especially renewal of the 

Farm Bill, to help reward farmers when they help address our 

water quality challenges. We heard Mr. Coombe talk about the fact 

that many farmers are unable to get conservation funding when 

they see it from USDA. 

What is really tragic about that is that we have gone from a 

point where folks like the Iowa Soybean Association and Environmental Defense used to argue about agriculture’s contribution to a 

point where now we are working together to seek those funds. 

Farmers are bringing their money to the table to share the cost of 

the installation of the myriad practices that can help address water 

quality. Every year, we turn away about 50,000 farmers who are 

putting their money on the table to help solve these significant 

water quality problems. 

Doubling annual conservation spending, as has been proposed in 

the Eat Healthy America bill and Mr. Kind’s Healthy Farms bill 

would dramatically reduce the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and 

sediment getting into our surface waters. We have hired some agricultural economists and other experts. They have estimated, for example, that nitrogen losses would fall by 11 percent nationally if 

we double conservation spending as you proposed in the Eat 

Healthy America Act. There would be a significant reduction, far 

more than we have achieved in the last 30 years, in the time since 

the Clean Water Act has been passed. 

What Congress needs to do much more than simply expand these 

programs, we agree with ISA that Congress should do more to improve the delivery of these programs by bringing groups of farmers 

together in small watersheds to help meet local environmental 

challenges, what the Administration has called cooperative conservation. What we have frequently found is that when farmers 

work together, neighbor to neighbor, peer to peer in these small 

watersheds, we can often solve these water quality and wildlife 

challenges much faster and at less cost and provide far more insights into the benefits of significant practices. 

Congress should also take the opportunity with Farm Bill renewal to reform our land retirement and restoration programs, like 

155

the Conservation Reserve Programs, to focus more enrollment on 

lands that are best able to intercept and filter our farmland runoff. 

So let me just finish by saying, and reiterating that farmers are 

eager to help solve these big environmental challenges. Many of the 

challenges that farmers can implement, such as better nutrient 

management and better pest management, also help reduce their 

input costs. Many of them simply require changes in behavior, such 

as changes in the timing of fertilizer applications. But many of 

these practices also cost more money, create new risks. Those are 

costs and risks that should be shared by the taxpayer. 

I hope we will take advantage of this Farm Bill to reward, rather 

than reject our farmers when they offer to help share the cost of 

clean water. Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Howarth? 

Mr. HOWARTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

Subcommittee, for inviting me today. I am delighted by your interest in this topic, and Mr. Chairman, thank you also for your kind 

words of introduction earlier this afternoon. 

I am going to focus on nitrogen pollution in coastal waters of the 

United States. I am going to draw heavily on a National Academy 

of Sciences report that came out in 2000 in a committee that I 

chaired, but also from more recent reports from the Pew Oceans 

Commission and from the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy that 

came out in 2004. 

For context, what human activity has done to the nitrogen cycle 

and nitrogen fluxes globally is one of the most severe aspects of 

global change. We are changing the rate of nitrogen cycling much 

faster than we are changing climate change. It is much more in our 

face. 

To put it in perspective, in the 55 years since I was born, the 

rate at which human activity creates reactive nitrogen, the nitrogen that can cause water pollution, has increased seven-fold globally, a massive change. There are a lot of local scale, regional scale 

variations. It plays out differently in different parts of the world. 

Agriculture is a big part of that, and the creation of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is a big part of that. Again, just to get the rate of 

change, half of the nitrogen fertilizer that has ever been used in 

this planet has been used in the last 15 years. So we are talking 

about rapid and massive changes globally. 

There was some discussion earlier about various systems and 

how much nitrogen came from various places. I will tell you that 

the science on the Gulf of Mexico-Mississippi River is solid enough 

that I can say with some assuredness that nitrogen is coming 

largely from agricultural sources in the Mississippi River Basin, 

certainly more than 60 percent, probably more than 70, 75 percent, 

possibly more than that. There is uncertainty, but it is agricultural. 

Having said that, we look elsewhere and it is not so clear. Chesapeake Bay, agriculture is a big component, as you have heard. I 

think there is more debate about the exact numbers than you 

might have heard so far. But atmospheric deposition is also important. And this is nitrogen that comes from car exhaust and from 

power plants. If you follow the science of that closely, the numbers 

are changing rapidly. There is a lot of scientific discovery there. 

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But the consensus at the moment of the scientific community 

would be that both of those sources are important for the Chesapeake Bay. If we look nationally, we need to deal with both of 

those. If we want to focus on the Gulf of Mexico, then it certainly 

is an agricultural issue. 

As a result of this increase in nitrogen cycling, over the past few 

decades in particular, nutrients are now the largest pollution problem in the coastal waters of our Country. They are one of the largest threats to the ecological integrity of these systems. We do not 

have a nationally consistent monitoring system for what the damages in coastal waters are. We just do not have that. And that severely limits what we can say in a quantitative sense, when we 

look and say how bad the situation is. 

But the best available evidence is that a majority of our coastal 

and marine ecosystems are degraded. Probably a third of them are 

severely degraded from nutrient pollution; another third moderately degraded. So it is a big problem. 

I have gone into more detail in my written testimony on what 

some of the issues are. I will say that the best evidence is that 

there is an increased frequency duration and extent of harmful 

algal blooms as a result of this nutrient pollution. We certainly 

have created dead zones as a result of this nutrient pollution. We 

have lost biodiversity. We are damaging fish and commercial shellfish. 

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there is a lot of regional 

variation in what the effects of nutrient pollution are. As a scientific community, we partially understand that and we partially 

don’t. Some areas are much more sensitive to the problem than are 

others. We sort of understand that, we don’t entirely understand 

that. 

As a scientist, that leads me to urge you to be very cautious. Because once we hit a tipping point where we severely damage these 

systems, there is every reason in the world to believe it is going 

to be more difficult to have them recover. It is not a simple matter 

of going back to where you are. It is a harder road to go. 

So we don’t know, system by system, where that tipping point is 

exactly until we reach it. But that is a reason to be cautious and 

make sure we don’t get too close to those tipping zones. 

I can see my light is flashing here. I have a minute to go. Let 

me jump to what I think is a critical thing for the Congress to consider, and that is the role of monitoring of what is going on. If you 

turn to page 5 of my written testimony, I have a figure there which 

is taken from the 2004 U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, a bipartisan commission. They show the change in surface water monitoring in the United States from the 1970s to 1990s to now. Monitoring is a fraction now of what it used to be. That severely limits 

our ability to track whether we are making progress or not. 

Similarly, the monitoring of atmospheric deposition is far, far 

less than it was in the past. So the scientific community is unanimous in believing that we really need to restore solid national monitoring programs of nutrient fluxes, of sources of nutrients. And we 

need to for the first time establish a nationally consistent monitoring program to truly, consistently determine what the effects 

are. 

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Thank you very much. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Dr. Howarth. Dr. Baker? 

Mr. BAKER. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you and 

the Subcommittee for inviting me to testify on this important subject. I am Jim Baker, formerly of Iowa state, now with the Iowa 

Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. I will concentrate on, the emphasis of this will be on nitrogen in the Corn 

Belt. 

I want to start out by making five points, based on research on 

field plots and watersheds, such as shown in this slide, on the Corn 

Belt. Before I make the first two points, you need to understand 

three things. First, that the rate of nitrogen applied to corn has 

been nearly constant the last 20 years. At the same time, corn 

yields on average have increased at least 2 percent each year, 

therefore removing more and more nitrogen. 

So we are now at a point that inputs into row crops are generally 

less than outputs. This is true whether you are looking at fields or 

a whole State like Iowa. Recently, the Iowa Department of Natural 

Resources, with inputs from the USDA ARS and Iowa State University, did a nutrient balance for the State, shown in these two 

graphs. On the left, for nitrogen are the inputs which include fertilizer as well as manure and inputs like atmospheric deposition on 

the right are outputs, which include of course yields, but also loses 

to the environment. You will note for both nitrogen and phosphorus 

the balance is negative. 

So the first point is, a negative nitrogen balance means soil organic matter is being lost through a process called mineralization. 

This is bad because it results in the release of carbon dioxide to 

the atmosphere, reduces soil quality, sustainability and the soil’s 

ability to produce and also increases water quality problems. 

In the second point, given this negative balance, current nutrient 

water quality impairments in the Corn Belt are not mainly due to 

the mismanagement or the use of ‘‘excess’’ fertilizers and manures. 

On the third point, background you need for optimum corn production, there must be an optimum level of nitrogen in the soil. For 

the producer, it is very economically advantageous to add nitrogen 

to this level either in the way of fertilizer or manure. The nitrogen 

in the soil must be in a form which is nitrate. That is readily available to crops, but it also then means that that form and that nutrient is readily available to be lost with water. So some nitrogen loss 

is going to occur whenever excess water in the way of precipitation 

and in some cases irrigation drains from the land, particularly 

when that water drains through the soil as a sub-surface or tile 

drainage. 

So the third point is that impairments are mainly due to past 

conversion from prairies and wetlands by our forefathers to intensive grain crops with nutrient inputs and sub-surface drainage 

where it is needed to produce the productive lands that we have. 

And in terms of the fourth point, the background that you need 

to understand, the level of nitrogen in the soil and the amount of 

excess water are both much less for sod-based rotations, including 

alfalfa and CRP ground. Constructed wetlands are a proven technology for removing nitrate from water passing through them. To 

158

be effective, though, these wetlands must be carefully sited within 

areas of significant nitrate loss to remove that nitrogen. 

So reductions in impairment, actually they will take substantially reductions in nitrate loss, will come mainly through changes 

in cropping and/or implementation of off-site practices. 

The fifth point, although we have learned a lot from past research, there is still a need for additional research to refine proposed but yet unproven management practices and technology. 

Likewise, beyond that, there is need for research on totally new or 

innovative management practices and new cropping systems. And 

of course, with the new pressures on agriculture to provide energy, 

this will provide additional water quality challenges that will need 

to be addressed. 

So the fifth point is that there is a need to create and fund a regional nutrient management, environmental research center. Currently this is being proposed through Iowa State. Our agricultural 

dean, Dr. Wendy Winterstein, that testified at a Farm Bill meeting 

last week in Council Bluffs, made the point that she is willing to 

lead that effort with engaging the other land grant universities 

across the Corn Belt. 

I have a few seconds left. Let me make a final point relative to 

the Iowa Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. Again, with 

background Federal USDA and Iowa cost sharing, it was put together to construct wetlands for nitrogen removal in the tiledrained areas of north central Iowa. This program languished for 

about two years because of initial permitting issues. Even now, current regulations for assessments limits construction of these wetlands to about 20 sites a year, when it is estimated that 8,000 to 

10,000 are needed to reduce nitrate losses. 

The last point is, regulatory impediments are currently limiting 

the adoption or efficiency of some of the off-site practices that we 

think are effective. 

And my last slide then is what we would like to have help with. 

We need research, new information. We need to be able to get help 

to fund implementation of that new information and we need some 

regulatory relief. Hopefully we can develop a new landscape that 

might include more buffers as well as changes in the field itself. 

Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Dr. Baker, thank you. 

We will now move to questions. Let me start with a question for 

both Mr. Faber and Mr. Wolf. We have heard a lot this afternoon, 

and in the testimony there was a great deal of talk about good 

practices, having farmers perform soil tests, installing buffers, restoring wetlands and so on. 

What is the best way to encourage more farmers to adopt these 

and other practices that will help point us towards a solution? 

Mr. WOLF. Thank you for the question. 

One of the things that our program does in Iowa is we go into 

a watershed and we ask a fundamental question: can you validate 

and verify the performance of your practices. First, farmers want 

to know, do they work agronomically and do they perform economically, because they are driven by bottom line issues. Our programming helps them collect data and the data really, it defuses the 

whole question. This becomes very compelling. In some of our waVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:25 Oct 24, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00186 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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tersheds, we have 60 to 70 percent of the farm fields enrolled, collecting data. Then the farmers have the data, they can look at it, 

and all of a sudden you have their attention, because it addresses 

their bottom line. They want performing solutions. 

The other interesting thing that we found is that what one answer works in one watershed, you go right over to the next one and 

it is a different answer completely. If they hadn’t collected the 

data, they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it. So it is just applied evaluation. It is very compelling. It addresses their bottom 

line. And if we strategically do some things in the watershed, we 

think we can provide some water quality solutions as well. 

Mr. FABER. What is so unique about what the Iowa Soybean Association has done is that they have really gone beyond what most 

farmers do, which is use State recommended rates for fertilizer applications, and instead tried to calibrate their applications to fit the 

needs of that particular farm, in many cases finding they were applying more nitrogen than they need to. So that reduces their costs 

of their inputs, but also helps improve the receiving waters nearby. 

So I think Roger has hit the nail on the head, that in many 

cases, simply providing more information, more technical assistance to producers. One of the big challenges facing NRCS is that 

we have doubled the size of their conservation portfolio, but we 

have not at all increased the number of staff who are available to 

deliver those programs. So the era when USDA experts used to go 

out into the field and work with producers to help them think 

about nitrogen applications, installation of buffers, the myriad 

practices you can implement, is now over. All those guys are stuck 

in the office, administering contract applications for EQIP. 

So one big challenge is getting more technical assistance in the 

field. But I think there is also a number of practices, many of the 

practices you would implement simply require more information. 

Some of them require an incentive payment, just to get the farmer 

to try to adopt a new practice, or because he is going to incur a 

new risk, such as changing the timing of his fertilizer applications 

from the fall to the spring or splitting his spring applications. A lot 

of the things that get us the most bang for the buck don’t cost the 

farmer any money out of pocket, but increases the risks, that is 

that there might be a wet spring and he won’t be able to get out 

there and apply the fertilizer when he would ideally like to. That 

would ultimately reduce yields. 

Then of course there are practices that simply cost money, installing buffers, installing artificial wetlands. Those are things that 

reduce yields, that take land out of production and that do cost 

money. So it is a mixture of things that are needed to get farmers 

to take those steps. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Howarth, you sort of hand to race through your comments on 

monitoring. So I thought I would give you an opportunity to go 

through those thoughts in a somewhat more leisurely fashion. 

Mr. HOWARTH. I appreciate that opportunity. Thank you very 

much. 

There are several points here I would like to make. First is there 

is not, as I said briefly, there is not a nationally consistent monitoring program of what the effects of nutrient pollution are in 

160

coastal waters. So we have monitoring that is done in the National 

Histories Program, we have monitoring that is done through the 

NOAA Reserve Programs, we have State and local governments 

doing monitoring. 

When our National Academy committee sat down to try to see if 

we could look at a consistent pattern, or when NOAA has tried to 

do this before us, what you find is that the measurements are 

made in different ways, different methodological things, different 

sampling time periods. As a result, you really are hard pressed to 

say that what the trends are in particular areas, or in a highly 

quantitative sense, what the scale of the national problem is. 

So I mentioned that there is a consensus that we have two-thirds 

of our coastal waters degraded from nutrient pollution, a third 

moderately and a third severely degraded. That is based on 

NOAA’s polling of local expert judgment. They go to estuary by estuary and they sit down with the local government officials and 

they sit down with the local academic officials and they sit down 

with the stakeholders and they say, what do you think it is here? 

When people do that, that is the answer you get, we have a big national problem. 

But in terms of objective data, where we contract things and 

really look at progress or degradation, we cannot do that. There 

has been a proposal on the books at least since our 2000 committee 

report, and it was endorsed by the Pew Oceans Committee and by 

the U.S. Ocean Commission. There is a huge amount of monitoring 

going on. With a little bit of coordination at the Federal level, it 

could be done in a nationally consistent way and nationally reported, which it is also is not, and we would have a national data 

set, which would be invaluable for determining if we are making 

progress. So that would be one recommendation. 

The next is that the U.S. Geological Survey has done historically 

a great job of looking at nutrient flows and sediment flows in rivers, starting in the early 1970s and going until the mid-1990s. That 

program, that series of programs, has been severely cut since that 

time. 

So when we develop models or statistical procedures, which 

would allow me to say what the extent of agriculture’s problem is 

versus car exhaust or other things, we are using those data sets 

collected from the 1970s and 1990s, and particularly what happened in the 1990s. Since then, we have had climate change, we 

have different weather patterns. That is going to change the nutrient fluxes. We can model that all we want, but we cannot verify 

whether or not those changes are real. Because the monitoring 

data are no longer there. And we need those sorts of data. 

The third point is the measurement of what is coming from the 

atmosphere. For acid rain, but also for this problem of nitrogen pollution, the national atmospheric deposition program has been curtailed slowly over the last several years. It is scheduled to be further curtailed in the budget that the Bush Administration sent forward. Other atmospheric monitoring problems, like CASNA, which 

also deal with mercury pollution, are being cut back. Those really 

need to be expanded, not cut back. 

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on that. 

161

Mr. BISHOP. I have one final question. You perhaps may have 

heard me describe my district earlier. It is the eastern half of Long 

Island, very rural, particularly as you move further east, two estuaries of national significance. An emerging industry is aquaculture. 

It has been embraced by the Long Island Farm Bureau and the 

acquaculturists are now members of the Long Island Farm Bureau. 

So I guess my question is, how can we best focus on how we 

could improve aquaculture? Dr. Howarth, this is perhaps best a 

question for you, or Mr. Faber, I am not sure, or Dr. Baker. Any 

of you that wish to comment on that. 

Mr. HOWARTH. Okay, sure. Aquaculture, as you know, our national fisheries, our world fisheries are depleted. They have been 

over-fished, they are damaged by pollution, they are being altered 

by climate change. As I say in my testimony, it is difficult to say 

exactly how much of a problem is due to each of those in any locality. It is very frustrating as a scientist. Those things interact synergistically and they are damaging our fisheries. 

One hopeful response is to try to at least make some of that fish 

protein back up through aquaculture. There is a huge potential 

from there. It requires good water quality as the basis of that. You 

really need to have high quality water to do that. You certainly 

have that in the Peconic Estuary. Long Island Sound is a little 

more problematic, but that is okay, we can maybe make it better. 

And of course, as with any agricultural activity, aquaculture is 

the same. It is not entirely free of risks, and we should carefully 

think about the risks for particular types of aquaculture in particular water bodies and whether they have a long-term sustainable use or not. I don’t think that has been adequately done yet. 

Mr. BISHOP. Any other panelists wish to comment? 

Thank you. Mrs. Schmidt? 

Mrs. SCHMIDT. Thank you. 

I would like to direct my question to Dr. Howarth, if I could, 

please. And maybe Dr. Baker might want to comment, or Mr. Wolf 

or Mr. Faber. 

I looked with curiosity at your testimony, and I think that you 

are making some assumptions here with your data, simply because 

as I believe you just stated, your data pool is not as nice as you 

would like it to be. One of the things that I have a concern with 

is in your end on page 6, when you want to mention the current 

national expansion of producing ethanol from corn. My question to 

you is this. We all want to be sensitive to the environment. I think 

we can all agree that we need to get off of oil for whatever reason, 

we need to get off of oil. 

In getting off of oil, you have to get onto something else. There 

are folks out there that don’t want us to have nuclear power because they have concerns. There are folks out there that don’t want 

us to expand the coal, because they have concerns. There are folks 

out there that don’t want us to use ethanol, because they have concerns. 

My question to you is this: how are we going to reduce our reliance on oil, whether it is foreign or domestic, if we don’t look at 

the broad alternatives? Because I don’t think, and I think you and 

I will agree on this, there is going to be one source that is going 

to replace oil. So maybe you can help me there. 

162

Mr. HOWARTH. Yes, thank you for the question. I did indeed add 

that at the end of my testimony and I didn’t have time to mention 

it today. It is something I feel is very important to address. 

We certainly do not have a sustainable economy based on oil. We 

need to be developing other energy sources. We need conservation. 

That is not my expertise. Water quality is my expertise. For background, I have just been asked over the last several months by the 

International Council of Science and by the United Nations to lead 

an international effort of scientists to look objectively at what is 

good and bad in all of the ways of various biofuel alternatives. We 

are just getting started on that. I am not in a position to give you 

that analysis yet. 

I am in a position to say that every water quality person I have 

talked to across the Country is really alarmed by the ethanol production from corn, if it grows at the rate that many of us expect 

that it will, as the President and others would like. 

The reason for that is that corn, I think Dr. Baker can comment 

further on this, he alluded to it in his testimony as well, but corn 

inherently is going to lose some nutrients downstream. It is a 

major source of the water quality problems we have from agriculture in this Country. We can improve that. There are a lot of 

things we can do to make it better. But there are some fundamental limits. In some places, you want to be growing less corn, 

you want to move towards other sorts of cropping systems, if you 

really want to deal with Mississippi nitrogen flow, for example. 

If we greatly expand corn production without a great deal of care 

on that, we are taking on high risk. So what I am actually urging 

is not that, I know what the final answer is, but that we badly 

need objective science behind that before the Nation goes too much 

further in policy decisions which will set an economic infrastructure from which it will be hard to pull back, if in fact they are not 

the best, most sustainable choices. 

Mrs. SCHMIDT. A follow-up. One of the other biofuels that you 

can look at it soy diesel. But we also have a problem, or what I 

am hearing is that there is a concern with growing too many soybeans, because they also put the nutrients into the water system. 

So if we can’t do corn and we can’t do soy diesel, what do we do? 

Mr. HOWARTH. I agree with your starting premise, which is there 

is not a single bullet that is going to solve the problem. We need 

multiple choices. Again, I will answer your question in a second, 

but my fundamental premise is that we want to have a good, objective analysis of all the environmental pluses and minuses, so that 

whatever course we go down is the most sustainable for the long 

term, economically and environmentally. That analysis has not yet 

been done, to the best of my knowledge. There is an urgent need 

for it. 

There are alternatives to either soy diesel, which I have not studied that closely, or corn ethanol. We can grow other crops to make 

ethanol. We can grow other crops to make methanol, which is in 

fact a lot easier. We can produce methane, and the technology is 

more available for that. We can directly burn things such as 

switchgrass and the energetics of that. In my quick analysis, the 

environmental benefits would be far better. 

163

But I don’t think the final answers are in on that. I am just urging that careful analysis be conducted. That needs to be funded. 

Mrs. SCHMIDT. Mr. Baker, would you care to comment? 

Mr. BAKER. Sure. I think Dr. Howarth makes two points that I 

would agree with, that first the corn system is a leaky system. We 

can’t retain all the water and all the nutrients there when we grow 

corn. The second point I would be in agreement on is that we do 

need to proceed carefully. 

But probably not quite as alarmed as he indicated some others 

might be. 

When you look at what we can do, for example, in Iowa, the projections are that this year we will plant 11 percent more corn acres 

than we did last year. And of course, where will that be planted? 

Well, in our State that will come from soybean acres, primarily. So 

these areas are fairly similar in their environmental impact. Actually, in terms of the issue of a negative mass balance or more consumption of organic matter, soybeans, even though they are a legume and produce nitrogen, they don’t nearly produce enough to 

equal what is removed in grain. So on average, we are probably 

mining the soil about 80 pounds an acre with soybeans. 

So switching some of those acres from soybeans to corn may actually help that soil organic matter issue. And of course, the impact 

in terms of nitrate leaching is very dependent on the rate of nitrogen fertilizer, although given what the high value of corn and the 

cost of nitrogen, although it has gone up, it hasn’t gone up as fast, 

there is a chance that the new economic optimum rate will bump 

up, which could enhance the leaching of more nitrogen. 

The other point that one does need to be concerned about or 

think about is, in Iowa, or other States where there are other corps 

like alfalfa or even CRP, bringing those lands out of those sodbased rotations and putting them into corn could cause some water 

quality problems, but they wouldn’t be nitrate leaching problems. 

Because those lands are not in tile-drained landscapes. They are in 

landscapes that aren’t nearly as productive and have erosion problems, which is why they are either in CRP or in alfalfa. 

So I think again I would totally agree that we need to look at 

this carefully. I mentioned that as one of the research needs for 

this research center that we would like to see started. 

Mrs. SCHMIDT. Thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. Mr. McNerney? 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I certainly appreciate the panel’s willingness to come here and 

testify today. I understand that farmers are anxious to find solutions, as we all are. 

I have a couple of basic questions. I see a soybean representative, 

but no one from the corn community. What is the relative proportion of soybean to corn in terms of adding to the nitrogen build-up 

in our waterways. Dr. Howarth, do you have an answer to that? 

Mr. HOWARTH. I don’t have a good answer. Dr. Baker can address it as well. But much of the analysis that has been done looking at corn and soybean in rotation has classically been done over 

the last decade. And again, the best estimates on what the relative 

contribution of nitrogen sources is is based on models and monitoring data from the 1990s situation. The way that farming is 

164

being done now is differently, quite frankly. So that throws uncertainty into it. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. And I certainly appreciate the need for data. 

That was pointed out several times. It is something that we should 

be willing to help with. Adding scientific value to the discussion always makes the solution more apparent. 

There were some things that I was a little confused about. But 

what sort of farmer are we talking about? Are we talking about the 

mega-farmers or are we talking about family farms? What is the 

market of these farmers? Is it for food or for livestock or for ethanol? What are the sort of general parameters we are looking at 

here? 

Mr. BAKER. In Iowa, of course, the State has about 36 million 

acres. Ninety-five percent of that is in agriculture. And depending 

on how you count them, we probably have 90,000 producers. So the 

average farm size might be 400 acres. But of course, we have a 

wide range of people within the State. 

But by and large, a major part of our corn and soybean production comes from producers that probably at most either work with 

a relative, son, brother, have one hired man. These are not, at least 

in terms of row crop production, these are not mega-operations. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Okay. I was a little confused about the nitrogen 

balance you discussed. It looked like more nitrogen was being put 

into the system than was leached out through drainage. Is that a 

proper understanding? 

Mr. BAKER. No, what I was showing in the determination balance or mass balance sometimes is confusing. But in the case of my 

discussion, I was really talking about organic matter in the soil, 

about 5 percent of which is nitrogen. If you use the analogy that 

that was a bank account or checking account or non-interest bearing account, if you put money into that account, for example, in the 

way of fertilizer, and you take money out of that account in the 

way of yield, if those are equal, your account balance will stay the 

same. The problem we think we are getting into, again, particularly in a corn and soybean rotation, where soybeans remove probably 80 pounds an acre more than is added. And in the corn situation, depending on where you are in the fertility, you probably are 

negative as well. 

Over time, that bank account is going to go down. In other 

words, the amount of organic matter in our soil is going to go down. 

Right now, in many of our soils in Iowa, it is at about 3 percent. 

It has extreme value. If you have traveled in the Midwest, you see 

these black soils. The reason they are black is the organic matter. 

One of the terrific advantages of that organic matter, in addition 

to buffering nutrients, is its ability to provide structure and to hold 

water. 

We can store about two inches of water per foot of soil that is 

plant-available. So out of maybe 18 inches that would be transpired 

through the plant, we can provide a storage, if we are wet in the 

spring, of 8 of those inches. So we can easily go through a month 

of no rain and still not impact yields. That is because of that organic matter. 

So we are not at a point where it is a ‘‘red emergency.’’ It is just 

something that we think we need to look at when we are making 

165

decisions on using fertilizer to reduce water quality impacts that 

we aren’t at the same time reducing soil quality. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I would like to ask the Chair for one additional 

minute. 

Mr. BISHOP. Proceed. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I am from the San Francisco Bay Area and the 

Central Valley immediately adjacent to that. Is there relevance to 

this discussion of the Bay Area, the delta in particular? What is 

the nitrogen build-up in that area, and how dangerous is it in your 

opinion, Dr. Howarth? 

Mr. HOWARTH. Well, San Francisco Bay certainly has many 

water quality problems, as I am sure you know. The South Bay in 

particular does. The relative contribution from agriculture there, I 

am not familiar. It has been modeled, I have seen studies on it. But 

I have not looked at those recently. But that information is available. The U.S. Geological Survey has modeled that using their National SPARROW Model. I have a lot of confidence in that model. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Anywhere along the West Coast, do you have 

any familiarity with that issue, of nitrogen and dead zone activity? 

Mr. HOWARTH. Well, there is a newly-described dead zone off of 

the coast of Oregon. Oregon State University has been working on 

it for the last couple of years. That is probably not a result of nutrient pollution from land. It is probably a natural phenomenon and 

it might be aggravated by climate change. That is their hypothesis 

at the moment. So there are natural things that can go on here as 

well. 

The larger problem, many of the West Coast estuaries do have 

problems with nutrient pollution. There are problems in San Francisco Bay, as I say. Puget Sound has problems, has been developing 

a dead zone. I believe there is some discussion and disagreement 

about the relative contributions of agriculture versus other sources 

in Puget Sound. I was in a discussion on that just two days ago. 

But it is fair to say that the distribution of estuaries that is affected by nutrients is about the same as elsewhere in the Country. 

The prevalence of dead zones is a little bit less, just because those 

systems tend to be a little bit less sensitive to that particular response. They are more likely to get harmful algal blooms or other 

problems. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

Dr. Boustany? 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

In Dr. Howarth’s testimony, he remarks that pollution can be 

lessened through management practices, such as planting winter 

cover crops. Are there agronomic issues with this practice? For example, getting cover crops established in the autumn as the growing season is ending, or accomplishing springtime planting when 

cover crops are already established there? Could each of you maybe 

comment on that? 

Mr. HOWARTH. Although I wrote that in my testimony and I believe the scientific evidence for the use of cover crops is the way 

to reduce nitrogen pollution is very, very strong, I am not an expert 

166

on the economic aspect of that. So I will defer to my colleagues who 

know more. 

Mr. FABER. There has been an enormous success story in the 

Chesapeake Bay region with the use of cover crops. For a modest 

payment, I think it is about $10 or $15 an acre, has gotten farmers 

to now routinely plant cover crops and reduced the loss of nitrogen 

from soil. It actually just came out, this great desk reference for 

those of you who really want to know every detail on the environmental benefits of conservation on crop land. One of the issues 

would cover crops is certainly when you are removing them and the 

impact on phosphorus and other soil quality issues. But properly 

managed, cover crops are among the most cost-effective ways to 

help address some of these water quality challenges. 

Mr. WOLF. I would like to add that farmers have lots of questions 

about how cover crops could be incorporated into their system. It 

really depends on the individual farmer. There are some farmers 

that could benefit from the forage that a cover crop could provide. 

There are a lot of farmers in Iowa, well, I shouldn’t say a lot, but 

some farmers that are experimenting with it. 

But there are some questions that need to be answered. So we 

are just beginning some work with the Sand County Foundation in 

Iowa that are really going in and applying our evaluation techniques, looking at the questions of cover crops and what impacts 

they have on the agronomic performance, the economic performance for the farmer. And then ultimately the water quality issues. 

Because if we are asking farmers to use it as a mitigating practice, 

we have to address some of the risks that Scott Faber identified 

earlier. If nitrogen needs to be mitigated and cover crops become 

a viable strategy, then we may need to incentivize to cover some 

of those risks. 

Mr. BAKER. We have interacted with the agricology group at the 

University of Maryland, as Scott mentioned. Maryland does pay 

$15 or $20 an acre, because they work there. Of course, in Iowa, 

with 25 million acres of row crop, at $20 an acre, you can see that 

that would be a very big program for us to implement. 

The other part of it is the climate differences. You have pointed 

out very well that the issues that we deal with, we have producers 

that have considered this and some that have even tried it, and 

their description is it is a management nightmare. And again, it is 

not to say that it couldn’t work. We really need to figure out how 

to get around these problems. But you have the problems of establishment in the fall, because of our climates, cold, and after crops 

are harvested there is not enough time. And then in the spring, 

with wet and dry soils that a producer has to plant into, getting 

that cover crop killed and getting the soils warmed up and dried 

out is a problem. We have yield reductions. In measurements that 

have been made relative to water quality in limited studies, they 

have shown to be effective at holding nitrogen against leaching. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. What about phosphorus management with regard 

to winter crops? 

Mr. BAKER. With regard to cover crops? 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Yes, winter cover crops. 

Mr. BAKER. The issue there may be more, when you look at the 

potential of nutrient loss or phosphorus loss from a soil, at least 

167

in our conditions in Iowa and much of the Corn Belt, leaching is 

not a big issue. We do have, for example, probably 50 parts per billion of phosphorus in our drainage water. But that is probably onefifth to one-tenth what we have in surface water dissolved. Then 

a bigger issue is what is in the sediment. 

So probably the biggest benefit that you might see from a cover 

crop is not so much the cover crop taking up and holding phosphorus as much as preventing erosion, wind and water erosion. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Okay. Do any of you want to comment on that? 

Mr. HOWARTH. I would concur. The issue for nitrogen loss is, nitrogen is highly soluble. So we are talking about keeping things 

from moving in groundwater and crops holding it there is the issue. 

Phosphorus is not highly soluble so it is an erosion issue. Cover 

crops help for both. Some management practices do not work well 

for both. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. I understand there may be some suggestion that 

you could increase phosphorus pollution by the use of cover crops. 

Mr. FABER. I don’t think that is the case. In fact, probably the 

opposite is true. Because you are reducing erosion and phosphorus 

binds to the sediment, you are probably reducing phosphorus solution as a result of planting cover crops. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. This brings our hearing to a close. I 

thank you very much for your testimony, particularly thank you for 

your patience. It has been a long afternoon. 

Thank you very much. 

[Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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