A lawsuit filed last year by Earthlaw, on behalf of conservation and wildlife groups and the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, was settled out of court without farmer input.
Farmers are good stewards of the land and care about the environment.
The settlement provisions announced by NRCS State Conservationist Dean Fisher include a provision for working through the State Technical Committee to make recommendations about wetlands delineations procedures including mapping conventions. The settlement agreement does not solve the problem of South Dakota NRCS being out of compliance with Swampbuster provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill. Farmers are committed to providing input to this process, despite the fact that their busiest season of the year will soon be upon us. In the past six years, farmers have restored 800,000 acres of wetlands nationwide. In the past four years, farmers and the NRCS have built more than 500,000 miles of buffers along streams and rivers.