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News Release
7-31-09
WEST VIRGINIA AGRICULTURE COMMISSIONER TO TESTIFY
BEFORE CONGRESS ON CHESAPEAKE BAY CLEANUP PROGRAM
West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture Gus R. Douglass is scheduled to testify Monday before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Work’s Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife regarding the future of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup program.
He is expected to call for the continuation of West Virginia’s voluntary best management practice (BMP) program, which provides encouragement and technical assistance to farmers to help them install facilities and practices that protect streams from nutrient runoff.
Since 1993, nearly $33 million has been spent on conservation programs in West Virginia’s Potomac River drainage. Nearly $9 million of that total has come directly from the pockets of area farmers.
“We have shown in West Virginia that the agricultural community is receptive to voluntary agricultural programs, and that those programs are effective at protecting water quality,” said Commissioner Douglass.
As an example, he pointed to the Potomac Headwater Land Treatment Program, which initiated 269 long-term contracts aimed at reducing nutrient runoff in the Potomac Valley. More than 85 percent of the poultry and beef producers in the Eastern Panhandle participate in the program.
Through this and other programs, West Virginia was able to remove the North Fork of the South Branch River from the state’s list of impaired streams in 2003, perhaps the only success story of its type in the country, he said.
He also noted the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s (WVDA) water quality monitoring program, now marking its tenth year, has gathered a large amount of data that has been used extensively in the development of Chesapeake Bay cleanup models.
“We need good scientific information to make good decisions,” said Commissioner Douglass. “There are numerous sources that impact water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and it is unfair for the public or regulators to lay all the blame at the feet of farmers, who every day are producing the food we all need to survive.”
The West Virginia Department of Agriculture protects plant, animal and human health through a variety of scientific, regulatory and consumer protection programs, as mandated by state law. The Commissioner of Agriculture is one of six statewide elected officials in West Virginia. Currently, Commissioner Gus R. Douglass is the longest-serving agriculture commissioner in the nation. For more information, visit www.wvagriculture.org.
“The Basis of All Wealth is Agriculture.”
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