Environment, Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, it's 5.15. I'm going to call the Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 Land Conservation Committee meeting to order. Amy, would you call the roll?

Sure. Supervisor Downing.

Here in Perry.

Supervisor Doolin. Here. Supervisor Marin. Here. Supervisor Brandemeier. Here. Brian Brown.

Here.

Supervisor Blaisens. Here. And then Supervisor Freese.

We have quorum.

All right. First item on the agenda is consideration of minutes. What's before us is the 2026, or sorry, the minutes of the June 11, 2026 Land Conservation Committee. Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion. Moved by Brandmeier. Do we have any discussion, questions, corrections on? The minutes? All right, all in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right, so ordered. So next before us is C, fund transfers. There's none. D, referrals, also none. E, items requiring committee action. What we have is 2026, ACT 059, land conservation fee schedule. Do I have a motion?

I'll move it.

Moved by Marin. All right, Amy, do you have something to present here?

Yep. This is the fee schedule that we have for our department, for Land Conservation Division. So nothing has changed as far as manure storage permit fees go. These are not being proposed to be changed. The winter spreading permit fees aren't proposed, but this is where we're proposing to add the farmland preservation program fees that we discussed at the last committee meeting. So the proposal is to do a $50 fee plus a 50 cent per acre weighted rate for FPP. That fee would be charged once every four years for a status review. So when a landowner is up for status review, they would get charged the fee, and we would make this effective in 2027.

Any discussion?

I know I went around because my district is rural, and I talked to either the town chair or the village president, and two people – were okay with it and the others just didn't respond i sent them that whole powerpoint that you had so nobody seemed to be too concerned about it at least in my district that's the same reaction that i got too so yeah uh supervisor downing well i'd like to hear from ryan farmers always don't like fees but with uh

Topic, I'm going to withdraw statements because I'm part of the program.

Anything else, Supervisor Downing?

Well, doggone, Brian's in my district and I was and he's our former representative. I was sure hoping that we could hear from him. And Brian, are you sure you're not able to comment?

I guess I'd like to ask the committee first if that's proper procedure or not.

Well, it technically is outside of our ethics regulations now that were adopted since you've declared that you're part of this program. So I think it's probably advisable that we don't take any comment on that.

Okay, well, I will make a comment. It seems to me that before we knew that Brian would be part of this, it appeared to me that the farmers are concerned about extra fees. So I'm going to vote no.

Is that it, Downing?

Yes.

All right. Amy, I have a question for you. One one concern that I heard brought up before is that there are people that are farmers or maybe perhaps corporations even that are. entering into the program just because there's no friction to entering the program, which costs a fair amount of county labor time, et cetera, to validate whether or not they're in the program. Can you speak a little bit to that?

So in order to get into the program, they have to meet the conservation compliance requirements of the state. So the ag performance standards and prohibitions that are set by the state is a requirement. So a nutrient management plan, they have to meet tolerable soil loss, they have to meet a phosphorus index, and all that's kind of incorporated in their nutrient management plan. And then if they have livestock, there are livestock standards as well to not have manure running off into a stream or things like that. For us, in order to get somebody into the program, we have to do a... an initial walkover of the whole farm and a review of their nutrient management plan to even issue them a certificate. And then once they have that certificate, we're required by the state to do a status review once every four years to verify compliance with those conservation standards.

But then to follow up on that, we don't then see if the farmer actually takes the credit. Yes. I think the issue we raised at the last meeting is that when you are enrolled in something and it's a passive re-enrollment, it's easy to just stay enrolled versus now the farmers will receive this notice to have this requirement. And we do anticipate that, I will admit like a small percentage, but arguably still a percentage that has an impact on our staff workload will say, oh, why would I pay this fee because I haven't actually taken this tax credit in many years?

And we do have participants that we find out after the fact in some fashion, usually when we have to update their certificate because they bought or sold land. And we are actively updating those certificates, and we mail it to them. And then they reach back out to us and say, why did you mail this to me?

I don't know what this is.

I don't know why I'm in this program. Why did you put me in this program? We're like, well, you were in it. And they're like, well, we haven't claimed that tax credit in years. And so there are a percentage of people that we're tracking and doing reviews and paperwork and status review on that aren't even taking the tax credit. But that is not information we're provided by the state.

So were you hoping this will flush out some of those people that, because they're probably not complying with the rules of farmland preservation anyways, they're just still on the books? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, some of them are still on the books. I don't know if they're complying. Or when we do talk to them, they're like, what is this? And no, I don't want to be part of this. There's some of that. And some of them have really small acreage and maybe They used to have a lot of acreage, but now they have less and less and less, or they sold their land or changed their land ownership entity structure. There's a lot of variation as to why there's that. And so, you know, and just as a reminder, all of the counties around us, except for two, charge some type of fee for this type of service.

I see you're off on mute, Supervisor Downing. I don't know if you went back on. Do you have something you'd like to say?

No, thank you. I just left it on. It's off now.

Just wanted to make sure. Thank you. Supervisor Doolin?

Yes, thank you. This is the program through DATCP, correct? Correct. Okay. Well, I would like to, for disclosures and recusals purposes, as I work for DADCAP, I'm going to abstain from voting.

I'd like to make a comment. Given the presentation that you gave us, and that was very thorough, and I learned so much from it, I feel like I understand that we don't want to keep putting fees on farmers and we don't, you know, we don't want to be charging things when we don't have to, but also there's the reality that things cost money and these services cost money. And we, you know, you are providing a service and we can't keep, you know, piling on. And if people are going to be involved in this program and they're going to pay the fee, they are getting money back if they're, you know, if they're really interested in it. So I don't know, to me, it just, it makes sense. Again, no one wants to be, adding fees on top of fees on top of fees for people who are trying to make a living by farming. But I also think it's a service that you provide that deserves to be paid for.

And ultimately, just it's the land owner that can take the tax credit. So the land owner isn't always a farmer in some cases. So the farmer may be renting the land and farming it. but may not own the land. That's a good distinction.

Do you know what... Do we have any insight as to the proportion of that?

The vast majority of them are probably not farmers of the participants when we talk with them. Maybe they were historically. It might be a retired farmer, but somebody else is operating the land, but A lot of the folks that we work with, a vast majority of them are renting their land to somebody else. They're not farming it themselves.

I know in my area, there's a lot of the bigger legacy farmers that are renting out the smaller farmers land. So, you know, so they've got thousands of acres that they're managing.

Right. Any other questions or comments?

Yes. Downing back with the question.

All right, go ahead, Supervisor Downing.

Well, I wish I had the presentation up in front of me again, but do I recall, Amy, that the department received some state monies to run this program?

We do not receive money specifically to administer farmland preservation program. We receive our soil water resource management grant, which is for staffing to implement our land and water resource management plan. And we receive funds to do nutrient management, cost sharing, and structural practices. But we do not receive any additional funds from the state to implement farmland preservation.

Are you able to use any of that first money you talked about towards managing this program?

It goes into the budget and helps cover staff, but it doesn't cover all of the

staff necessary to implement the program so the answer is uh sort of yes sort of yes sort of no okay thank you any other questions or comments maybe just a big picture one since like this is all kind of encompassing the budget that's coming up and like everybody who is involved with county money is taking a hit somewhere and so i don't know i mean it's just sort of like spread the joy kind of thing for everyone if you look at a big picture and it's still a net positive it's you know if you look at the how much money you could get back from the state for this program all right um i guess i i will just make one final comment if there are no others

I do view this as largely an unfunded mandate from the state. You're not going to get into this program and be subject to the fees unless you are getting money back, which is, as we saw in the presentation, more than what the fees are significantly. All of our neighboring counties have some fee. I don't think this is terribly out of line. And I appreciate the presentation that you put here and all the information put forward. If there's no other questions or comments, what's before us is approval of the land conservation fee schedule. All in favor, say aye.

Aye. So ordered. You didn't ask for opposed.

Oh, sorry. Opposed? Aye. Thank you. All right. Moving on. F presentations. We have 2026 presentation 073 overview of cost share programs.

Figured we'd go through some cost share programs because you'll probably be talking about them in budget and then we've been approving payments and I know it's been like what are these payments associated with? So just kind of a quick rundown of the cost share programs that the county offers to landowners and some of the requirements that are tied to those cost share programs. So just to give you an idea, we have a couple different flavors of funding, we call it. There are voluntary programs, which a vast majority of our programs are voluntary. And then in some cases, there are enforcement-related programs. And then we use a combination of different funds. So we have bond money, which is very similar to capital money that the county has, where it's structural-based practices. And then we have seg money from the state, which is very similar to operating money with the county level. And they can be used for different types of practices, typically more of our softer management practices. And then we receive a variety of funding sources. We have obviously county funds and local dollars there. We get state funds. We have federal funds. And sometimes we even get private or nonprofit funds that come in to help cost share practices. So one of the big ones is our Soil and Water Resource Management Grant. And this is from the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. So it's state dollars. It's an annual allocation. I do have the budget codes if you're interested in budget codes. We have two pots of money that come from the state. We get one pot, which are the bond funds, which can be used for those structural practices. And we prioritize that money outside of the Yahara watershed. And the main reason for that is the Yahara Watershed is identified in Madison's adaptive management plan for their wastewater treatment facility compliance schedule. And we're not allowed to use state dollars to meet a WPDS permit requirement. And so that's written in state code. We can't use those funds within the Yahara Watershed. So we use those throughout the rest of the county, and we cap those funds at $14,000 per contract. So we use it for smaller projects, a lot of grass waterways, grazing stuff, things like that. The other pot of money we receive from the Department of Agriculture is our SEG funds, and those are used for management practices. And the two primary practices we do there is nutrient management planning and cover crops. So those are the two practices that we primarily do there. Another big program that we have, this is a county budget allocation, is our continuous cover program. This is kind of our version of the Federal Conservation Reserve Enhancement, or Conservation Reserve Program, not the Enhancement Program, but the Reserve Program. They're 15-year contracts, so a lot of times when you see on that payment list why there's a really high payment, it's a 15-year contract and they're getting all of that payment up front. And we account for the nutrients, the infiltration, and carbon sequestration as far as ecosystem services go. We have three primary categories that landowners can enter into through that program. They can do grazing. So they can take row crops and convert that to pasture and implement managed grazing on that. We have what we call our habitat and working lands. So there they can convert row crops to either warm season or cool season plantings, wildlife or pollinator habitat. And then we have buffers. So they could do riparian buffers along streams. We could do prairie strips. We could do harvestable buffers. Things like those buffers. And so that is a county budgeted program. Yahara Clean implementation is also a county budget allocation. And this is to implement the Yahara Clean compact that was developed in 2012, I believe it was. This funding is available within the Yahara watershed. And we have kind of three program areas that we cost share funds out of this pot of money. One we call clean, and that's to implement structural practices, so things that are built on the landscape, grass waterways, grain stabilization structures. It could be roof runoff structures, gutters, things like that. But we prioritize the focus on practices that improve water quality because We want to take credit for and calculate the phosphorus benefits of those practices. And then we also provide incentives if a landowner decides to leverage other funding. So if they say, for example, get federal funding for a project, we will come in and give them a little bit more on the top to make it. We won't give them 100%, but they'll get up to 90%. The other program that falls under this is our Soil Health Equipment Program. This program is used to assist landowners with purchasing equipment to implement soil health practices. So this might be a no-till drill, might be a different type of planter. We've cost shared shade structures for grazing operations, mobile shade structures. Compost churners for folks that are interested in composting their manure. It does require the implementation of companion practices. So if they're doing a no-till drill, they should be doing no-till, and they're probably implementing cover crops as well, residue management, and things. And then the third program that we have in this funding pool we call our wetlands program. And this would be to support the restoration of historical wetlands cropland. So cropland maybe that was historically drained to reconvert it back to wetlands. Then we have a similar pot of money called... We call it our Conservation Practice Implementation Fund. And this is... We use this available outside of the Yahara Watershed. We're actually slowly working on making the Clean Funds and the CPI Fund one account. But they have a very similar program requirements. So we call it CPI to implement structural practices. Again, there's incentives if you leverage additional funding. The Soil Health Equipment Program is also available in this area, as is the Wetland Program. We have another funding source that we call Chapter 49 implementation. So Chapter 49 is our ordinance. And there are times that if under state law you require somebody, this is where you get into the enforcement side of making somebody do compliance, the state requires us to offer a minimum of 70% cost share. So we use this pot of money for those enforcement cases where we're obligated to give 70% cost share. We also have other funding sources that I'll talk about that we use for that as well. But this is a county budgeted allocation. We have what we call our WINS expenditures. So this is a county budgeted allocation that comes from our service agreement partially through Yahara WINS. And we primarily use this funding to support implementation of cover crops in the Yahara watershed. And right now, in order to kind of spread the money around and get as many farmers at least trying cover crops, we cap it at about $50 or 50 acres per contract. so they can do 50 acres of cover crops and get a cost share for that. So targeted runoff management, this is a competitive grant that's offered through the Department of Natural Resources, and this we have to apply for on an individual basis, and it's to implement the agricultural performance standards and prohibitions, which we have in county ordinance. So it would be for also implementing our county ordinance. You can also use this funding to implement requirements in a TMDL, a total maximum daily load, which the Rock River watershed is part of. And so these are competitive grants though. So we apply in April, find out at the end of the year if you get one to implement a practice going into the future. But the state allows us to get up to $225,000 towards a practice for a landowner. And a landowner can't apply for this on their own. They have to work through the county to get that. DNR also has what they call their Notice of Discharge Program, which is also another competitive grant. But this is for discharges of manure or processed wastewater to waters of the state. So a more significant resource concern case that we would go in and they would be up to 70% of the practice. So if we had a case where manure storage was the selected practice, manure storage is pretty expensive. we could apply for one of these grants and potentially get up to 70% towards the newer storage, which is something that at the county level we don't have that kind of funding to help assist with. Other funding we use a lot with federal programs. So EQIP is one. We work closely with our NRCS partners, our Natural Resource Conservation Service partners, on helping landowners apply for those types of grants. CRP is the other program, the Conservation Reserve Program, which is similar to our Continuous Cover Program. We assist landowners. When we have a landowner who wants to do continuous cover, we also tell them about CRP and let them choose which one works best for them. Because they're similar programs, but they do have differences as well. There are also state programs like CREP, which is basically CRP, but for stream riparian areas. They get an added bonus on top of that if they take a riparian area and put it in a permanent buffer. And then sometimes we get things like SARE grants. I think in the past we've gotten funds from Clean Lakes Alliance. There's other funding that we've received that way as well. So just a little bit on cost containment. Cost share, our cost share contracts are based on actual costs. but not to exceed those average costs that the committee approves in the beginning of the year, or the lowest of three bids. So a landowner can either say, yep, your average costs, we'll just go with those, or they can say, no, we want to go out and get bid, or maybe we don't have current average costs for a practice because it's not a practice we do very often, and we may recommend the landowner get bids. We calculate those average costs annually, and we typically bring that to the LCC in January or February for approval. And then the landowners can choose to seek three bids on their own, or they can ask us for assistance in that bidding process. Ultimately, though, it's the landowner that's selecting the contractor. As far as credits go, we do a lot of tracking our ecosystem services. track nutrients, infiltration, and carbon sequestration for all the applicable practices. That's kind of what our Watersheds and Ecosystems Services Division does. And then our cost share contract language, this says will be, has been updated to reflect this information. So I forgot to update that slide. I apologize. But we've updated our contract to explicitly state that. So when a landowner signs the contract, they know that we're taking those credits. Just a note on CAFOs. They are not eligible for state funding, so we can't apply for a state grant or use our state DATCP money for CAFOs. We also say that they're not eligible for county funding if it's a requirement that they're supposed to do as part of their permit. So if it's an activity that their permit says you have to do, that DNR has told them they have to do, we're not going to cost share it. But any practices that they're doing to exceed state performance standards or permitting requirements or to meet the TMDL, we do assist with. So that's usually more cover crops we assist sometimes with because those are going above and beyond Sometimes grass waterways, they may have stabilized it, but we would want to do a more permanent stabilization. They are eligible for federal cost share funding, so we do assist them with getting applications in for that. Chapter 49 compliance, just as a quick note here, is that for voluntary programs, we review compliance with the Ag performance standards and manure management prohibitions. And they get a notification that they're in compliance once the practice is done. So they are put on notice that now you're in compliance. One of the nuances of that is that once you're in compliance, you have to maintain compliance and we're not obligated to cost share it again. And then we do schedules of compliance and things like that to help people kind of work towards compliance because a lot of these practices are expensive. You may have to work with your bank or we know that there's other players involved that we have to work with. Manure storage, we have cost shared manure storage. Just to kind of give you an idea of some of the conditions that we do put on manure storage if we cost share it. There's a minimum of six months storage shall be constructed. That's in order to prevent them from the second bullet spreading during frozen and snow covered conditions. So if we cost share manure storage, they have to put at least six months. Usually folks are putting in closer to eight just because spring and fall and things get wet. We don't cost share expansions. So if they're expanding, that's on their own dime. We cap our cost share at $100,000 per practice for manure storage because manure storage is so expensive that we wouldn't have enough money to cover a project, but we at least put some money towards it. Again, cost share funding for enforcement cases, though, would be determined on a case-by-case basis because those cases we may have to offer 70%, and then we would probably be seeking other grants to help. And then all of these conditions are put in an addendum that's unique to that contract. And that's what I've got. Just a real quick one through. Holy cow. I know.

There's a lot there. Start again. So many acronyms.

A lot of acronyms. I tried to say them.

Thank you, Amy. Any questions from committee? I just have one, which is the federal programs equip CRP. Have we seen any interruptions or any problems with that, or have those been happening as expected?

They've been more challenging to get landowners into. We've got a lot of applications in, but getting funding has been more challenging. depending on the practice and what we're doing. There was a while we had a dedicated pot of funds for Dane County through what they call RCPP or Regional Conservation Partnership Program grant that we had through NRCS, which was like a special pot of EQIP just for us. And those we were able to get a lot of projects through, but that money has run out. So now we have to compete against our local work group, which is a multi-county area, or we have to compete on a statewide level for these grants. And it's a matter of figuring out what the priorities are that year for NRCS to get the application to rank high enough, because they go through a ranking process.

Thank you. Any other questions? Online, no. All right, well, thank you, Amy. I guess moving on to G, reports to committee. First is the approved contracts report for July 2026.

Is that at least a little bigger?

These are all the contracts that have been approved since our last meeting. Most of them, what you're gonna start seeing are a lot of cover crop contracts come through because it's that time of year, folks are gonna start planning for harvest and then after harvest, they're gonna wanna plant their cover crops. So we're getting a lot of those contracts going. So I don't know if there's any specific questions about any of the ones on the list.

Any questions? Yeah, I just have a general question. For these cover crops, what is the typical cover crop that, like, what are the sorts of cover crops that they use? And is it typically chemical or mechanical termination that the county supports here?

So as far as cover crops, we only share cover crops that overwinter. Okay. Because we want to have the vegetation in the fall and the spring. which does mean that that cover crop will need a termination methodology. And so it varies by farmer, I think, as to how they terminate that. We have some folks that roller crimp. We have some folks that use chemicals. It really varies. Our Dane Demo Farms is actually doing research on timing associated with termination and methodology. And the primary cover crop, I would say, I don't know, Brian can correct me, but I think it's cereal rye is the primary one. We do have folks that are trying some like mixes. I've talked with a few farmers who like to throw sunflowers into their mix, and then the neighbors really like that. So it varies, but I would say cereal rye is probably the most common one.

You just wrote a little bit on there.

Well, part of it is we don't want them to till because it disturbs the soil. Yeah. So there's this fine balance that we're working through.

I don't know which, yeah.

Thank you. Anything else?

Downing with a comment.

Go ahead, Supervisor Downing.

Well, we heard an interesting presentation at the extension meeting about using barley, working barley into this. And the Will, whatever his name was, Michelle can probably tell me, said they're experimenting with this and have contacted brewers to see if they'd be interested in the crop. And the interesting thing is the winter crop might sometimes be less productive, but it still has a market. So there are things going on in this area. Michelle, you got more?

Well, unfortunately, I'm using my iPad right now, and my notes on that particular thing are in here. But yes, I thought it was kind of an exciting thing. It explains why there was some rye seeping through, because in one of his, was it this last year? It was a really flourishing crop, and then the rye came through and kind of integrated with it, and it pretty much destroyed the... harvest or that particular one from last year but I think it's interesting to have like to be possibly you know get back to you know food production that's traditional in Wisconsin which was you know barley and things like that I guess apparently we the barley that's used in brewing in Wisconsin is not is not not from here anymore so thought it's kind of cool

But yeah, I can't remember Will's last name either. So we're in the same boat. Isn't that then kind of defeating the purpose of having it be a cover crop? I'm sorry. I'm like, I don't get it. Okay. Yeah.

No, I mean, you can use barley as a cover crop. It just traditionally isn't known to overwinter.

Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah, our winters are getting more mild, so sometimes it's surprising us and coming back in the spring. But we do have farmers that use barley or they mix barley with cereal rye for cover crops.

Anything that will overwinter and be growing in the spring. Now, it's Will Fullrider, our county ag extension agent.

Yeah.

Thank you. Supervisor Dowling?

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Amy. I guess next is the approved payments report, July 2026. Yeah.

These are all the payments that were approved since our last meeting. Most of them have been the continuous cover program. So a lot of folks sign up for continuous cover in the spring, get their stuff planted in spring, and then we're processing the payments once things start growing. A few equipment grants that you can see in here as well, but mostly continuous cover program.

Any questions, comments? All right. Thank you. Next is H, future meeting items and dates. The next Lion Conservation Committee meeting will be August 20th, 2026, or by call of the chair. I, public comment on items not on the agenda. I don't think we have any for this meeting, I don't believe. J, such other business as allowed by law. If anyone has anything I do have one thing. Following adjournment of this meeting with my appointment to lakes and watershed and election elected chair of that Commission, I will be stepping aside as chair of land conservation committee. So at the next meeting, which is August 20th, Henry will be chair and Amy will put election of vice chair on the agenda for that meeting. All right, next is Kaye, adjournment. I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

Moved by Maryam. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed?

It's ordered.