http://nature.berkeley.edu/cooperative-extensionThe first time I heard of TMDLs, I said this management strategy would eventually result in shutting down farms, to leave " space" in the assimilative capacity of a watershed for human waste impacts.
The thought of a nation that hasn't got sense enough to use public policies to direct population to under-occupied watersheds, rather than run farming off of prime acres to allow too many people into others, reminds me of something my old elementary school history textbook said about famines in ancient Egypt.
This one decision gives owners or 600,000 crop acres a conversion to grass or timber choice. I knkw this seems far away to you guys, but the Chesapeake Bay watershed slices through the northern edge of our Virginia county ( Dinwiddie), along a ridge that is generally the bed of the Norfolk Southern railway...an old Indian trading route, where there are virtually no streams to ford/ trestle over.
When we idle very productive land for no really sensible reason, we have stepped onto a slippery slope. What starts in one watershed has huge potential to end up as policy in all others. Have at the " takings" talk.
Just thought you might like to see into the future....
