Prairie pot holes

[lunkerslayer]

https://www.agweb.com/news/business...deral-government-demands-right-drain-cropland

 

[1bigfokker]

Who wants 60-70 acres of Petersons water?

 

[lunkerslayer]

What i dont understand why Canada hasnt brought a case before a federal judges in regards to all that runoff full of salt and chemicals. There was a reason back in the 60s why the federal government made this lease agreement in the first place is because farmers where draining every pot hole. The mauve coulee was dug out with big pull behind scrapers so deep a person could only see the stack from the tractor.

 

[zoops]

Who needs ducks, deer and upland birds?!?! Drain em all so I can buy a vacation home in AZ!!!

 

[Lycanthrope]

if hes planting where he knows water accumulates thats a risk hes taking. Farmers know their fields and where water tends to sit for a while after rains.

 

[NDSportsman]

if hes planting where he knows water accumulates thats a risk hes taking. Farmers know their fields and where water tends to sit for a while after rains.

The problem is low spots that just puddle after a rain but dry up after a couple weeks. It's just enough to drowned out crops but isn't a wetland. Those are the spots ideal for tiling and productive farmland. If the FWS would work with these landowners instead of fighting them tooth and nail for every damn inch it would go a long way to improving relations. Tile would more then likely benefit those small wetland areas they are trying to protect.

 

[dblkluk]

if hes planting where he knows water accumulates thats a risk hes taking. Farmers know their fields and where water tends to sit for a while after rains.

He also purchased land tha was in a conservation easement. That 100% on him. But hey lets blame someone else !!

 

[1bigfokker]

The problem is low spots that just puddle after a rain but dry up after a couple weeks. It's just enough to drowned out crops but isn't a wetland. Those are the spots ideal for tiling and productive farmland. If the FWS would work with these landowners instead of fighting them tooth and nail for every damn inch it would go a long way to improving relations. Tile would more then likely benefit those small wetland areas they are trying to protect.

Tile in any wetland will not benefit any area they are trying to protect. Think about it.

 

[Davy Crockett]

Tile in any wetland will not benefit any area they are trying to protect. Think about it.

I think tile can improve certain wetlands , these look like puddles that get just wet enough to kill a crop but dry up can only grow mosquitoes , tile it to a real wetland and it improves it. Historic pictures are the only way to tell and if this case ends up in court they will make or break the lawsuit. I'm surprised farmers arn't suing each others over drain tile.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Guy near bismarck recently drained a pond on his property, according to the city he didnt need any permit or permission to do it, but it wasnt just a pothole, this spot held significant amounts of water in some years and he also wrecked the road where he dumped his drain into the ditch next to apple creek road. Its quite obvious but the city is going to fix it at taxpayers expense...

before

after

 

[dblkluk]

I think tile can improve certain wetlands , these look like puddles that get just wet enough to kill a crop but dry up can only grow mosquitoes , tile it to a real wetland and it improves it. Historic pictures are the only way to tell and if this case ends up in court they will make or break the lawsuit. I'm surprised farmers arn't suing each others over drain tile.

temporary wetlands ("puddles") are some of the most important ones for waterfowl and alot of other wildlife

 

[NDSportsman]

Tile in any wetland will not benefit any area they are trying to protect. Think about it.

You don't tile a wetland. The tile would actually move temporary water to the wetlands that are there that they are trying to protect. A wet spot in a field for a week is not a wetland and does not provide any benefit to what they are trying to accomplish here.

 

[NDSportsman]

temporary wetlands ("puddles") are some of the most important ones for waterfowl and alot of other wildlife

No a puddle that's there a week is not a huge benefit to anything.

 

[Davy Crockett]

temporary wetlands ("puddles") are some of the most important ones for waterfowl and alot of other wildlife

I get that , I guess I was thing along the same lines as NDSportsman where they farm around them and come back later to reseed the low spots.

 

[ndlongshot]

Guy near bismarck recently drained a pond on his property, according to the city he didnt need any permit or permission to do it, but it wasnt just a pothole, this spot held significant amounts of water in some years and he also wrecked the road where he dumped his drain into the ditch next to apple creek road. Its quite obvious but the city is going to fix it at taxpayers expense...

before

after

He drained the wetland to the east, and this spring filled in the dugout south of the yard. The year before that he leveled and filled everything west of his road as well, all adjacent to the WPA.

 

[ndlongshot]

I wish I could tell the power company to move the utility box off the corner of my lot, but thats not really how it works. What a terribly biased article of this guy stomping his feet cause he can't tile a field he knew had a WETLAND easement on. Ya know, the ones duck hunters pay for and landowners voluntarily sign up for.

 

[ndlongshot]

I think tile can improve certain wetlands , these look like puddles that get just wet enough to kill a crop but dry up can only grow mosquitoes , tile it to a real wetland and it improves it. Historic pictures are the only way to tell and if this case ends up in court they will make or break the lawsuit. I'm surprised farmers arn't suing each others over drain tile.

Tiling small wetlands into larger ones is called consolidation and its why we now have previously productive shallow wetlands that now produce walleyes and likely won't ever draw down even in times of drought.
Tile surely doesnt help temporary wetlands, it eliminates them by eliminating the watershed around it. The effects on water quality nationwide, and even here in ND are very evident. Algae blooms for everyone.

But, ethanol is great......so theres that.

 

[snow2]

Tile ruined mn wetlands which started in the 60's soil bank was next now urban sprawl has taken over, watched prairie lands turned to farm land then farmland turned to subdivisions. From Nebraska, kansas,eastern Colorado.

 

[Allen]

Tiling small wetlands into larger ones is called consolidation and its why we now have previously productive shallow wetlands that now produce walleyes and likely won't ever draw down even in times of drought.
Tile surely doesnt help temporary wetlands, it eliminates them by eliminating the watershed around it. The effects on water quality nationwide, and even here in ND are very evident. Algae blooms for everyone.

But, ethanol is great......so theres that.

Lots of people like to blame tile for flooding, etc. While I agree that in some settings, tile drainage can greatly alter surface waters, that's probably not why Horsehead, Alkaline, WoodHouse, etc are now viable walleye fisheries. The bottom line is that east of Highway 83, there is simply increased water runoff from a generally wetter climate than that of 100 years ago.

There's a pretty good paper out on this topic: https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2023/5064/h/sir20235064h.pdf

It's a pretty long and tedious read if you're not as into this topic as I am, but this series of graphics kind of summarizes the trends over the past 100, 75, 50, and 30 years.

I could run on and on with this topic, but one of the key drivers IMHO, have been wetter than normal falls and early spring when the ground is thawed but we don't have active vegetative growth. This timing aspect increases the amount of water that can collect in surface waters through much lower evapotranspiration, and make it into the creeks and those surficial aquifers that are often well connected to these Prairie Potholes.

Some of this can be picked out in this graphic from the same paper:

Note all the occurrences of blue on the left side of the above graphic. Clearly shows we are seeing higher flows in the fall over the past 30-some years for the Red River at Pembina. This is taking place all across the PPR.



As far as the original post? It seems to me that he may not have done his due diligence on the easements before he bought the land. I, in no way, shape, or form support the government trying to change the originally agreed upon easement, and I hope the courts would prevent that under the 5th Amendment. However, I often hear people complain about these wildlife easements. If you can't live with the easements, you probably overpaid for the land. I know some easements originally paid up to 50% of the value of the land. In those circumstances, I would think it should still be valued at roughly half the worth of a similar parcel of land with no easement.

Bottom line, In the eastern part of the U.S. it was very profitable for many years to buy swamp land, drain it, and resell it as productive farmland or development at a much higher valuation than one originally paid for it. Then in the early 1900s came the collapse of the waterfowl population in the eastern flyway. Congress took action in the form of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Corps of Engineers, and USDA programs to support the waterfowl population by making it difficult to reduce the number of acres of productive wetlands. Hence all the WPAs, Refuges, etc across ND. Nonetheless, people still buy wetlands with the intent to "develop" the land and then they get all sorts of bent out of shape when they run into the Swampbuster rules.

Lycan, that drained wetland you pointed out may be an illegal drain (I literally don't know the rules well enough to know for sure), the city doesn't care because they aren't required to enforce federal law. Either the Corps of Engineers under dredge and fill regulations, or the USFWS under swampbuster would be the ones I'd expect to take enforcement action if deemed necessary.

Separate topic (kind of), but anyone know the story behind that pile of fill placed into that wetland east of Bismarck on Highway 10?

Someone sure spent a lot of time and money hauling fill to the above site (rocks, concrete, dirt, etc) only to now have not done anything with it over the past decade.

 

[ndlongshot]

Alot of great points, Allen. And i think we agree on alot of it. I would nuance your transevap point by also acknowledging the lack of native prairie/grasslands which once occured and the rapid loss of those acres into crop systems. That land has compaction issues can essentially act as a large funnel to these basins. In the past the prairie was a giant lung, or spung which collected precip until saturation before filling catchment basins or wetlands. Lack of veg cover and below ground holding capacity coupled with wetter precip patterns, surface drainage, subsurface (tile), and you end up with completely different hydro-dynamics than we did historically. Talking about how this all impacts aquifer recharge is a whole nother topic. The 1957 photography is a stark contrast to todays. The world was a lot different. Was it dry? Was it average? Are we wet now? I question some of the data/data collection on this topic prior to the 1950s and the accuracy of such. The old timers say they never saw water like this, because they didnt since settlement days from 1890 forward.

Also, swampbuster is regulated by Dept of Ag through the farm bill for conservation compliance. Dont drain wetlands after 1985 if you want taxpayer support.

Great topic over a beer or three.