This was an excellent program when I participated live. Dan Egan and Harold Van Es were an excellent team, each bringing expertise to the discussion. Thank you for arranging it, and thank you for the recording. This is an important issue for our watersheds which we all need to know more about.
This a very good topic to get out in the foreground of the public eye. The last time I read a fishing regulation guide I was discouraged by all the warnings of not eating the fish in most of our water bodies... In the last month I was visiting a stream and could smell sewage and noticed nasty blooms of algae I think. THey were covering every surface of the stream bed. The land owner followed the source to a runoff ditch pipe from a large dairy farm where uphill there were silage pits, the runoff of which can be 100x worse than sewage runoff. The DEC was notified and the farmers promised to do what they could to help fix it. Ultimately the solution was dilution... waiting for Spring rains to clean it up. I agree we need to prevent this runoff better. I think planted, forested, vegetated buffers should be used downstream of fields. If a stream channel begins at or runs through a field it should be left unplowed and as a buffer to capture these excess nutrients. Keep our fields covered with cover crops as much as possible and avoid plowing and applying manure right before major rain events...
This was an excellent program when I participated live. Dan Egan and Harold Van Es were an excellent team, each bringing expertise to the discussion. Thank you for arranging it, and thank you for the recording. This is an important issue for our watersheds which we all need to know more about.
This a very good topic to get out in the foreground of the public eye. The last time I read a fishing regulation guide I was discouraged by all the warnings of not eating the fish in most of our water bodies... In the last month I was visiting a stream and could smell sewage and noticed nasty blooms of algae I think. THey were covering every surface of the stream bed. The land owner followed the source to a runoff ditch pipe from a large dairy farm where uphill there were silage pits, the runoff of which can be 100x worse than sewage runoff. The DEC was notified and the farmers promised to do what they could to help fix it. Ultimately the solution was dilution... waiting for Spring rains to clean it up. I agree we need to prevent this runoff better. I think planted, forested, vegetated buffers should be used downstream of fields. If a stream channel begins at or runs through a field it should be left unplowed and as a buffer to capture these excess nutrients. Keep our fields covered with cover crops as much as possible and avoid plowing and applying manure right before major rain events...