Survey: The environment and DU's thoughts on it.

[ieoeja]

5. Software engineer and Landlord in Chicago. Farm and Timber in southern Indiana.

4: With the exception of oil, I can't think of anything we are using faster than we can replace.

5: People in the southwest are not experiencing water shortages because we used up the water. They are experiencing water shortages because they moved into a desert where people died of thirst even when the population was low.

6: Since I don't agree with 4 and 5, I can not very well agree that we "must" act "heavily". As a farm and timber owner I can assure you we are doing quite a bit to retain topsoil, watersheds and forests. I am not against doing more.

For instance, the man I rented my farm violated terms of a program I inherited along with the farm that was supposed to retain some topsoil. And the gov't never once checked on us.

I did not realize what the program was at the time only figuring it out this year when renewal time arrived and realized this is something I can *not* renew because of the damage. I was pretty unhappy with the damage well before that anyway.

Of course, it wasn't exactly him either. He hires guys to do the work, and without guidance they just plow over and disc under everything in sight. When I was growing up there and working the farm with my dad, we left the waterways in our fields even without getting gov't aid. The hired yo-yos don't.

There is now significant erosion and the farmer in question just spent a great deal of his money trying to mitigate the problem. As a problem he has now lost far more acerage than he would have had it been done properly in the first place.

As to the timber, my dad used to have a State Forester mark trees for harvesting on our Classified Forest & Wildlife Habitat every few years. Today, I have to hire a Forestry Consultant to have that done. An owner obviously has less incentive to keep a forest properly maintained when he has to pay to have it done. So privatization of this was a mistake from an environmental viewpoint.

There is still plenty of incentive. Property taxes are super low as long as I keep it classified. The classification makes the wood more valuable commanding a higher price for the harvests. And I *have* to hire a licensed Forestry Consultant and follow good environmental practices to keep it classified.

I also have quite a few acres in abandoned strip mine. We had a small portion of it reclaimed a couple decades back because we were unable to stop people from dumping in it. And we can't have people dumping in a wasteland of toxic pits and slag heaps! Another example of hired yo-yo in that the local bulldozer they hired thought it would be cool to push over the 7' diamater oak tree. My dad wanted to shoot the idiot when he discovered it. Not the Department Of Reclaimations fault. They just hired a local yokel who did something stupid. That said, the gov't is moving very slowly at fixing these old sites. And it would be prohibitively expensive for the people who got stuck with these to do it ourselves.

A neighbor has land for sale with no access and which is, unfortunately, over 50% abandoned strip mine. I wish they had had it for sale during the 2009 stimulus as I was contacted about reclaiming that very land then! Apparently, they thought I owned it. Had it been for sale then, and the state would commit to reclaiming it, I would have bought it. I contacted them now, but the funds have dried up.