More rain, not tiling to blame for higher stream flows

I am providing additional comments to the April 25th, article on The Minnesota River, on page A10.

First off, Scott Sparlin has put a lot of time and effort into the many groups that he belongs to and all of his hard work should be commended. Scott and I were both on The Citizens Advisory Committee for The Minnesota River, which was made up of citizens from many different areas that had diverse interests in the river. Although we did not always agree on a lot of things, Scott, I, and the rest of the committee did agree on two things unanimously. Number one was to put joint power agreements together, which is an agreement for areas where water sheds cross county boundaries. This was a good idea.

The second thing we agreed on was to have a river commission, or board, to be established with individuals from the area, instead of all politicians and agencies. Doing this would keep it local and grass roots, not to be perceived as another level of bureaucracy, another good idea.

The government in their infinite wisdom joined these two rather diverse ideas together and formed a Minnesota River Joint Powers Board. This was not a good idea because it was made up completely of county commissioners against our intent. After wasting lots of time and money they disbanded, just as many of these boards have done in the past. This should not have been a surprise.

The present direction people are working toward for better water quality is water storage. One way is they are recommending an increase in soil organic matter (SOM). Raising SOM is a great idea with many benefits, but a significant increase in water storage is not one of them. For example, they are suggesting a 1% increase in SOM would be able to store one inch of water, yet 1% of the top six inches of soil is roughly only 1/16th of an inch. I do not understand how magically we could get one inch of water into a 1/16th inch of space, this is not possible. Matter of fact, the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), has refuted this claim, but it keeps being repeated by people without checking the facts.

Having water storage and releasing it so that you have enough room for the next rain is a great idea. Storing water without releasing it leaves no space for the next rain event to go. The focus needs to be on catching and releasing, instead of catching and storing. Lakes need to fluctuate more like in the past. Looking at the farmland in this area after a large rain event, many of these wetlands, and low-lying areas, store a lot of water temporarily. They came back again, not permanently gone due to tiling. If you drain the soil and allow for these to not be full when you get your next rain event, you are creating storage by tiling, a great idea. In Watonwan County a few years ago, up to 30% of the land was covered in water due to heavy rains, causing no crops to be planted or harvested that year. This is free storage of water to society at the expense of the farmers.

Satish Gupta and many others have done research in these areas as well. Some of their conclusions are, “increased precipitation is the main driver of increased streamflow”, and “tiling has minimal impact on stream flows”. We will also probably have a different set of problems as we move to a dryer weather pattern. Today the dryness in the Dakotas, Canada, and Western U.S. seems to be looking more like it was 100 years ago, this dryer weather pattern will also be hard to manage.

有一个标志沿着公路南曼卡多的the Cumming Ferry Landing which states, “Spring Floods occurred every few years, but the record flood of 1886 provided the fateful demise to ferry service in North Mankato”… “Pleasant Street was completely submerged, and the ferry landings were washed away”. Was it a lack of water storage 135 years ago that caused that? No, it was too much rain. One final comment, most of the native elders in the area believe the correct spelling of Minnesota is Mni osota, pronounced Mni oshota. This means smoky or cloudy water which the Dakota people demonstrated by dropping milk into the water. This makes sense as the Minnesota River has mud banks, where sediments enter the River making it cloudy.

Greg Mikkelson is a Lake Crystal farmer and is with the Minnesota Natural Resources Coalition.