Testimony of Dina J. Moore, Rancher, Kneeland, California
on behalf of the NATIONAL CATTLEMEN'S BEEF ASSOCIATION
in regard to The Impact on the Regulated Community
of Total Maximum Daily Loads

Initiated in 1898, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association is the trade association of America's cattle farmers and ranchers, and the marketing organization for the largest segment of the nation's food and fiber industry. NCBA is producer-directed but consumer-focused, with offices in Denver, Chicago and Washington D.C.

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am honored to be here today to address this subcommittee on behalf of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) is the marketing and trade organization for America's one million cattle farmers and ranchers, representing the largest segment of the nation's food and fiber industry.

While my full-time job is as a partner with my husband and family in a commercial cattle ranch and non-industrial timber business in Northern California, I am proud to actively participate in our local watershed efforts. I have done extensive work with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL), conducting Historical Narrative interviews, assisting in public outreach and education and working collaboratively with the EPA in building a consensus on the development of TMDL's. I also founded and am the current president of our local watershed working group the Yager/Van Duzen Environmental Stewards, or YES. The Mission Statement of YES most clearly states one of my personal goals: "[t]o ensure the Environmental Integrity of our watershed while maintaining our heritage and the economic sustainability of our endeavors."

EPA has, through the Section 319 program, empowered the States to take the responsibility for developing their own nonpoint source pollution management plans. By establishing the Proposed Regulatory Provisions, will EPA be promoting a duplicative effort to that of the States by taking over the authority of developing implementation plans? States understand the need for clean waters just as landowners of a working landscape understand the need for clean waters. Each State knows how best to achieve workable, realistic water quality goals for that State. In turn, the States can promote the implementation of Best Management Practices to the landowners. The more we can empower those who are responsible for managing the working landscape, the higher the degree of success. The best approach needs to get all the way down to the grass roots level. We need to enable those responsible for managing a working landscape to work from the grass roots level up to design and implement Best Management Practices in their own watershed. The most successful way of attaining clean water must come from the watersheds up, not the federal government down.

The driving force is the fear of litigation from the more radical sector of the environmental community. Just as EPA is considering more stringent regulations, so is the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) considering expanding their listings to now include Steelhead as threatened. Because of the threat of litigation and the fact that NMFS and the State of California Division of Forestry and Fire Protection are not in concurrence as to how to best protect Steelhead, NMFS is threatening listing the species as threatened. The more sensitive species of Coho and Chinook salmon have already been listed as endangered. Unfortunately, the landowner is caught in the crossfire between a State and Federal Agency. As is the case in our watershed, we as landowners and managers have just worked with EPA on the development of the TMDL. Now, we are faced with working with the State on the Implementation Plan and NMFS on their listings. Our watershed was declared as impaired because the level of sedimentation affected the cold water fisheries, in particular the documented decline of salmon and steelhead. So which Federal Agency is in charge? As non-industrial landowners we are dealing with multiple state and federal agencies who are not working together collaboratively to resolve the problem. Those agencies have the same objectives, the same driving force of concern over litigation, but different agendas and timelines.

The entire process and building of trust and collaboration begins anew each time another agency is brought into the process. The 319 program could be the mechanism for integrated state and federal efforts. The Federal Government should not place more constraints on the State by taking on more authority thus creating more fragmentation. They should be using their powers to encourage States to implement a "one stop shop" where landowners can deal with all the agencies at one time and place. The resource, government and landowner would best served if government could address resource issues in a clear and consistent manner, with a single unified voice. There is no safe harbor for landowners that have worked collaboratively with a single agency.

The private sector will clearly incur costs from more stringent regulation. That is evident in the Forests of California. Non-industrial landowners are faced with having to cut more timber to cover the cost of greater regulation than they would like to from a stewardship or sustainable perspective. As more regulation is being mandated from multiple national and state agencies, the same land base and the same landowner is responsible for meeting the requirements that are set forth by those agencies. With this EPA proposed Regulatory Revision Federal Program being expanded, ultimately a cost will trickle down to the landowner and his only way of covering that cost is with heavier extraction from the land based resource that he manages. There is no compensation, reimbursement or incentive to the landowner for the time and knowledge that it takes to comply with regulation. As the landowners deal with more stringent regulation they will either hire help to work their land resource in their absence; or will they hire a professional consultant to help them weave their way through meeting the regulatory requirements of the different and multiple governmental agencies. Both are an out-of-pocket expense to the landowner, and the cost can be staggering. The monetary return that comes from a cattle ranching enterprise alone is minimal. The cattle and the range that they live on provide enough of an economic return to pay for their direct costs, overhead costs as well as provide families with a below poverty level of income -- even when the cattle market is in an upswing. This enterprise alone cannot not cover the previously mentioned hidden costs. Other resources will need to be developed and extracted.

While the argument is often made that there is grant money available, that too can be a cumbersome and unwieldy process. As landowners in a watershed that has been declared as impaired, we from the grass roots level are undertaking the burden of doing assessments and inventories. There are grants available to help, but many programs require matching funds, not taking into account the costs that we have incurred by writing grants or the time and energy spent hiring professional contractors to do the work and assessments for us. Although EPA does have the 319 and 205 grants available, the turn around time on getting those monies is 18 months from the time of submittal of an application to an actual grant being awarded. That time frame is simply put, outrageous.

Delisting and listing of watersheds needs to be clarified. The Proposed Regulatory Provision does help ensure that listing methodologies are more specific and subject to public review. Again, I refer to our watershed and my own experience in the Yager Creek and Van Duzen River Watershed. None of the multigenerational landowners knew that it had been listed as impaired. Pacific Lumber Company is a neighboring landowner in the lower part of the basin. The concern has been expressed that this is more a political process than a scientific process. When EPA did the TMDL, it broke the watershed into three distinct areas: the lower basin, middle basin, and upper basin. Those areas were characterized by different geologic types, channel types, distribution of anadromous fish, vegetation types and land management/ownership patterns. The results of a Sediment Source Assessment commissioned by EPA stated that natural erosion accounted for 84% of the erosion in the middle part of the basin. This portion of the watershed is comprised of ranches, and land ownership is comprised of multigenerational families. Concurrently, on our ranch we participated in an ongoing study by University California Cooperative Extension on the affects of cattle grazing in a riparian area. After an on-ground assessment using 3 different federal field assessment tools -- EPA's habitat field assessment data sheet, NRCS Stream visual assessment protocol and Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) proper Functioning Worksheet -- our stream with the EPA assessment rated 18.40 out of 20 (20 being the highest mark), NRCS rated 9.4 out of 10 and BLM's rated properly functioning. Given all of the above information, I question whether our portion of the watershed should have been listed as impaired. If this information had been available before listing, and if the small non-industrial landowners that manage the middle portion of the watershed had been involved in the public review process, it could have been a different outcome. Not only does the listing process need to be methodical and scientifically sound, there also needs to be a clear process, which can be undertaken to ensure that waterbodies can be delisted. There is no clear-cut avenue to take in a delisting process.

It all gets back to the single working landscape, the individual land owner and his need to manage the resource in a sustainable manner that meets the needs of the resource and provides his family with a living. We, as multigenerational managers of a working landscape, know that we cannot mine the resource without long-term negative affects. We have been given the resource to hold in trust for future generations. Often times we feel that we are meeting the needs of government to the detriment of the environment we are managing. My counterparts in the mainstream environmental community recognize the cost to the environment of greater regulation and are speaking the same language that we are; let's provide greater incentives and less costly regulation. Let's look at tax incentives and cash incentives for encouraging stewardship. Let's hold out a carrot rather than wield a stick.

My perspective and view is one of working together collaboratively on resolving resource issues on the working landscape. I firmly believe that those who have a longtime multigenerational commitment to taking care of the working landscape will protect it. Other options that become a reality when we are no longer economically sustainable are selling to larger industrial landowners or breaking large landscapes into subdivisions and ranchettes, which clearly cause a degradation to the environment. I recognize the important role and need that regulation has served in protecting the environment. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that further regulation will swing the pendulum in a direction that will not serve in the best interest of the resource, government or non-industrial landowner.

Thank you, for the opportunity to participate in this important decision. I look forward to a day when we all are working collaboratively on resolving the issues of managing a natural working landscape.