My wife and I try not to have a long list of silly rules for our children to follow, but sometimes, their actions warrant rules.

Here are a few of the strange rules in Reese family law.

1. Do not stand on the table. There are clear safety issues when an 18-month old is standing on pretty much anything. Plus, no one wants the feet of anyone (even a cute kid) in, on, or around the food.
2. Do not unroll toilet paper for any reason. There are, of course, very important reasons why toilet paper needs to be unrolled. But, due to our children’s seemingly insatiable desire to unroll the entire roll onto the floor and around our home on a regular basis, we had to enforce very strict guidelines. For now, mom and dad do the necessary unrolling to prevent an in-house TP party.
3. Do not pet the dog. This would seem like something we would encourage the children to do, but the reality of the situation required a rule. Petting, when done by a young child, quickly turns into poking, pulling, hitting and prodding, none of which the old dog appreciates. A grouchy dog and children do not good mix. Hence, no petting the dog.
4. Do not use daddy’s toothbrush to clean the toilet. I do not think much explanation is required here.

While we do not really want to make up all of these rules, sometimes the behavior (or the results of the behavior) requires regulation. Now, if you think a toothbrush in the toilet is bad, consider poisonous algae in the drinking water for 11 million people or killing off a $1 billion fishing industry in Lake Erie.

The extra nutrients in Ohio’s lakes and streams are already aggravating the general public, but when fish die and people get sick or die from the harmful algae growth in Lake Erie or Grand Lake St. Marys, people are going to be angry. Angry people want someone to blame and regulate.

The Ohio EPA already formed the Ohio Lake Erie Phosphorus Task Force (including some good ag folks) that looked at all of the sources of phosphorus in Lake Erie. They looked at industry, the oft-cited lawn fertilizer runoff, urban areas, and agriculture.

In terms of agriculture, crop consultants, Ohio State University Extension research, farmers and environmental groups are at work to proactively address this issue.

Farmers are the last people who want expensive phosphorus and other crop inputs anywhere but in their crops.

“Economics is going to drive this. These inputs are extremely expensive and nobody can afford to buy nutrients that do not go into the production of the crop,” said Joe Nester, a northwest Ohio crop consultant. “With soil testing, good management, good record keeping, and a lot of common sense, we can keep those nutrients at home.”

This is not always an easy task, though. It will take careful management and new satellite-based precision technology to minimize or eliminate nutrient loss in the future, but consultants like Nester and researchers at Ohio State University are working to address this problem with technology, development of management practices and detailed studies of soils and hydrology.

Along with these efforts, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is teaming up with farmers, government conservation programs and Soil and Water Conservation Districts to implement land use plans including wetland restoration on unproductive agricultural soils and tree or grass filter strips that capture sediment and nutrients before they reach creeks and streams.

“EDF's work in the Western Lake Erie Basin reflects our ‘working lands’ philosophy that landowners and producers are the most important people to work with when it comes to making real progress on conservation across the landscape. We have other projects like this one in the Chesapeake Bay and Upper Mississippi River Basin as well as Utah, Texas, Colorado and California,” said Karen Chapman, Great Lakes regional director for EDF. “In all of these places, partnerships with producers and landowners are key. We can discuss how both land set-aside types of programs like buffers and wetlands and in-field practices like no-till, cover crops, and adaptive management tools can work in combination to improve soil and water retention, help save the producer money, and keep the nutrients on the land.”

Nobody likes rules, but the water quality problems in Lake Erie must improve. From industry and urban areas to agriculture, everyone needs to step up with proactive measures to address the problem of harmful algal blooms. After all, there is no need to have the rule if you aren’t putting the toothbrush in the toilet.

Yeeeeikes! We just got our heating bill and, although we have been setting our thermostat lower and lower in the last couple of years, it has been getting higher and higher. At the same time, unleaded fuel has been on a steady climb in the last few weeks and many people are still suffering from unemployment and an income that is going the wrong direction.

With so many numbers in our lives, wouldn’t things be easier if we could just fudge them one way or the other to get a more desirable outcome? Of course, no one can do that, except, apparently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

It is the job of the EPA to regulate, and the fine folks at the Agency in the current Administration seem to particularly love their work. In their quest to further regulate water quality through the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) permitting process, it seems that the EPA is working with numbers that favor their favorite pastime.

The EPA is developing a TMDL rule setting the pollution loads that are acceptable in the Chesapeake Bay Region that could likely serve as the basis for a national model in the future. Throughout the process, it was noticed that some of the numbers being used by the EPA were a little off.

To further investigate the issue, a coalition of agricultural groups hired LimnoTech, one of the nation’s leading water sciences and environmental engineering consulting firms. The resulting LimnoTech report found a number of significant inconsistencies between the EPA’s estimate of the Chesapeake Bay’s existing “nutrient diet” and numbers used by the Obama Administration’s Department of Agriculture.

For example, many grain farmers are employing no-till and other types of conservation tillage to reduce runoff from their fields containing sediment and nutrients when compared to conventional tillage. The amount of conservation tillage in the Chesapeake Bay region, which has a proven ability to improve water quality, is very different depending on whether you ask the USDA or the EPA.

The LimnoTech report states: “USDA estimates that seven percent of cropped acres are under conventional tillage, five percent of cropped acres have a level of tillage between conservation tillage and conventional tillage, and 88 percent of cropped acres are under conservation tillage…EPA estimates that 50 percent of cropped acres are under conventional tillage and 50 percent are under conservation practices. In general, the cultivated cropland conservation practices incorporated in USDA’s model framework are documented and statistically valid in sufficient detail to allow a general understanding of practices accounted for in the modeling, the assumptions made regarding specific conservation practices, and the level of implementation. A similar level of detail and documentation is not, however, available for the EPA model framework.”

The 38% difference between just this one set of numbers can make a very big difference in the reality of water quality and the need for further regulation.

“If USDA’s numbers are correct, agriculture has already significantly surpassed EPA targets for reductions in sediment and phosphorus,” said Rod Snyder, the National Association of Corn Growers Director of Public Policy. “It is crucial that farmers in the Bay watershed receive appropriate credit for their efforts to be good stewards of our land and water resources.”

Other inconsistencies in data and modeling were found for land use and total acreage of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, hydrology, assumptions about conservation practices, livestock operations, and manure application.

“Because the TMDL will have immediate economic consequences, the quest for more accurate data must begin immediately,” said Michael Formica, National Pork Producers Association chief environmental counsel. “Should EPA proceed without an unassailable data set in hand, all stakeholders in the Bay should question not only EPA’s pollution assignments, but also its diet for cleanup.”


The regulation that results from the EPA’s TMDL rule will have the potential to significantly impact the viability of agricultural operations in the region. The livelihoods and the economy of the Chesapeake Bay could be altered and farms could go out of business. With such consequences, we should at least expect that the numbers being used to develop the regulations are accurate. The EPA needs to create realistic, workable TMDL rules that result in clean water, but also preserve the agriculture and economy of the region.

Let’s hope that the EPA gets a better handle on accuracy with their fuzzy math before finalizing the program, because excessive regulation at the cost of jobs, the economy and family farms simply does not add up.

The LimnoTech report is available at http://nutrientpolicy.org/ANPC_News.html.