Agricultural Plan
Development
Moves Forward
The WQPP continues its efforts towards developing appropriate strategies which can protect water quality while sustaining agriculture's pivotal role in the economy of the Central Coast. Approximately forty potential strategies have been drafted based on the suggestions of growers, ranchers, agency staff, and other groups during workshops in 1996-1997.
A series of six workshops, some held in late 1997 and some taking place in early 1998, allow a wide range of participants to evaluate and prioritize these strategies. This includes two workshops each in Salinas, Watsonville, and Half Moon Bay. At the workshops, strategies are evaluated and ranked on the basis of feasibility, environmental benefits, and economic impacts.
Strategies fall into several categories:
·Encouragement of voluntary best management practices addressing erosion, runoff, fertilizers, pesticides, and microbial contamination;
·Strengthening and coordinating technical assistance and outreach to growers and ranchers, and development of "one-stop-shopping" systems for technical information on conservation practices;
·Public education and public relations to develop better recognition of watershed issues and the conservation practices already used by the agricultural community;
·Coordination and streamlining of the existing multi-agency regulatory process for landowner practices which protect water quality; and
·Development of funding and economic incentives which can assist growers and ranchers in developing practices which protect water quality.
The process of developing an agricultural plan is ongoing; if you would like to participate, please contact Holly Price at (831) 647-4247.
Watershed Heroes
This feature, which will appear from time to time in Coastal Links, highlights individuals in the Sanctuary community who, through their own actions and initiatives, are making a difference in water quality for everyone.
Mike Oliver, of California Farm Technology, grows strawberries in the Elkhorn Slough region. Oliver's farming techniques benefit the environment, save valuable (and irreplaceable) top soil, and lower costs for pesticides and nutrient replacement.
Oliver, with the help of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, has installed berms, with catch basins, around the entire low edge of his ranch. The berms, vegetated with a mix of annual and native grasses, allow water to percolate rather than rush quickly across the ground, taking soiland pesticides and nutrientswith it. This winter Oliver will test a new strawberry bed shape for slope farming, to keep the beds from losing so much soil. "I estimate I'll lose fifty to sixty percent less topsoil in a hard rain," he says.
Oliver has taken five acres out of production to establish a buffer around a pond on the property. Area students have planted it with native grasses and flowers. "The seeding has provided a good habitat for migratory ducks, and also controls erosion," explains Oliver.
"A lot of what Mike Oliver is doing is just protecting the off-farm environment, not so much his own," explains Daniel Mountjoy of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. "By reducing erosion, he's helping his neighbors and even Elkhorn Slough." (Oliver's land drains into the Slough.)
"If we want anything left in twenty years to farm, we need to take care of it now," says Oliver. "Also, you don't want neighbors complaining that your soil is ending up two miles down the road; and you save money."
