July 15, 2001

Washington, D.C.- Each year thousands of landowners work with their local conservation officials to take advantage of the conservation programs established in the last farm bill. These programs help farmers and ranchers conserve their land for future use, through crop rotation, irrigation techniques, and soil erosion prevention methods. Those who have been able to use the programs overwhelmingly attest to their success, and have urged Congress to continue them when it considers updating the farm bill this year.

However, there's been just one problem: thousands more eligible landowners have been turned away from the program because it hasn't been adequately funded. The conservation bill I introduced last week will fix that problem.

My bill, H.R. 2480, "The Conservation Investment Act of 2001," will expand and update existing conservation programs, as well as create a new program to preserve America's grasslands.

The bill will expand the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, to $1.2 billion per year. This is six times the amount authorized in the previous farm bill. That's a hefty increase, but consider that only a fraction of the landowners eligible for the program in recent years have been able to take advantage of it.

Every year, the EQIP program, which provides technical and financial assistance to farmers and ranchers who face threats of soil or water erosion, runs out of money, and every year we lose opportunities to help farmers and ranchers preserve the resources that provide America's food supplies. Since passage of the last farm bill, the EQIP program has averaged from three to six times the number of applications than could be approved through the available funding.

My bill will also expand the Conservation Reserve Program, which enables producers to retire highly erodible or environmentally sensitive cropland. The bill increases the national acreage available under CRP to 40 million acres, an increase from 36 million acres under current rules.

I'm also creating a new Grasslands Reserve Program, which will protect 3 million acres of grasslands through 10, 15, or 20 year easements. Owners of grasslands would be paid to use environmentally beneficial grazing practices. Landowners would be allowed to use their grasslands for limited grazing and haying.

And my ongoing efforts to fund the repair of the nation's 10,000 watershed dams, 2,000 of which are located in Oklahoma, would also be addressed in this bill by providing$60 million per year for rehabilitation. It's critical that we establish funding to repair the crumbling nationwide watershed dam system established 50 years ago. The dams are now reaching the end of their 50-year lifespans, and no funding currently exists to maintain them. More than 400 communities in 35 states have requested assistance to repair more than 1,400 dams since the original law was passed last November.

Overall, the bill will provide $37 billion for conservation programs for landowners over 10 years. It will expand and update existing conservation programs by $1.6 billion per year. Lots of people say conservation is important, but it's high time we back up our words with adequate funding to these important programs.