Darter and shiner newbie ID questions

Hey Todd-

The upcoming ditchification of the Portage is getting pretty controversial. I keep hearing little snippets about it, mainly about people not wanting spectacular floods. I'm up in the Black Swamp hill country, so I'm not on the official distribution list for any info. But I presume that the architects of this plan are the same ones who wanted to dig out a WPA tile line through my farm to replace with a 4' drain (and charge me for it!), so water can flow uphill. If they had looked out the window of their pickup, they would have seen that the culvert under the road they were driving on had collapsed, blocking the flow of water. So they're not the sharpest spoons in the drawer.

Yep. And that's the ticket right there... Get everyone else to understand what OTHER costs are associated with that couple thousand dollars, give them an alternative, and suddenly Mr. Trench really isn't very popular any more.

I mean he's the guy that's been costing everyone, because he CHOOSES to farm in a flood plain (which is as much a part of the stream as the main channel, it's just dry more often than not) and we tolerate this why? We pay out that money why?

Because he gets on the phone and harasses people and so they get out the equipment and 'clean' the ditch to shut him up? That's my guess.

I'm trying to round up research and the supporting papers for something that I heard recently (from what I hope is a reputable source) that created zones in farm fields in terms of "distance to waterway". The study showed that farming something like the last 50 feet next to a ditch or stream (depending on stream order) was a net LOSS over the 10 year cycle.

In effect, all those crop years in the "most fertile soil" were still outweighed by one or two losses in the same term. We're paying for this why? This doesn't even account for run off and fuel emissions that we all "pay for" whether they're in real dollars or not!

Now, one question I had is whether those losses are offset by government subsidies. That's a known problem. If the government is the crutch these guys are leaning on, then that's something we all can address.

But it's also extremely problematic that I just spent 30 minutes on ISI and Google Scholar and couldn't find a single reference

I'm going to get on the horn and drill some people about this. They've had some lingering comeuppance to address with me, and they better have their facts in line. I may be on nature's side, but I'm still a scientist and a skeptic, and I've been reasonably polite so far. But they called down the thunder, and now they've got it... It's showtime! lol

Might be cool to put together a pdf flyer out of this.

Todd

That's *really* interesting. The guy that farms my folks' land leaves out a swampy area when he plants because he knows that it's not worth the gamble. The complainer, on the other hand, plants every square inch that he can. I don't think he has any woodlots left on his land, and he'd be in there tiling that swampy area if it was his. If he's losing money on some areas, I say it serves him right.

Hi Paul! Nice to see you on the forum. Welcome!

Hey Paul! Welcome to the NANFA Forum!

Yeah some of these guys aren't the brightest bulb in the basket. And it really sucks to have to settle to the lowest common denominator.

Yep Susan, that's usually what it is... They just want to shut them up. Sometimes I want to blame the County Engineers, but I think they just don't want to deal with it either.

And I've seen guys plowing with 5 or 6 discs, out in space, over the ditch. "To the edge" is merely just where the tires have to stop.

Todd