I want to recommend an essay to everyone on the Committee – “The Tragedy of the Commons”, by Garrett Hardin (1968).

You can find the essay at this Web URL:

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html

There is also an interesting Wikipedia entry on this essay at this URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

The essay was written in 1968 and has become a classic in its field. Hardin was an ecologist, microbiologist, and bioethecist.

The essay describes a fundamental concept – that self-interest inevitably leads individuals to overuse or consume resources that are held in common. Two major resolutions of this problem are regulation and privatization. Hardin uses interesting terminology for regulation, describing it as “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”.

Please be warned, the essay takes a little while to get to the meat of the subject. Hardin doesn’t really describe the concept until almost a third of the way into the text. He gets to pollution issues specifically almost half way through. He doesn’t discuss regulation until almost the end.

The essay does cover some concepts that I believe could be very useful in our discussions. The essay articulates many of the fundamental issues relevant to water problems.

We seem to be experiencing the first effects of the changes in the global agricultural market that have been occurring in this decade. This would include the increase in the acreage used for grain production, with the attending impact on soil erosion, weathering of nutrients into surface and ground waters and loss of wildlife habitat. One question arising from this situation is the future of activities like the Conservation Reserve Program. Can taxpayers afford to compete with $6 corn, $14 soybeans and $8 wheat?

We tax investments, wages and transactions of goods and services – all of which we aspire to increase. But we don’t seem to tax things like water pollution, soil erosion and habitat destruction – all of which we would like to minimize. Why?

Several presenters at the last meeting noted the need for citizen participation to deal with nonpoint source pollution. Two comments:
(1) MPCA and other agencies don't have programs that really encourage direct participation by citizens. One exception is the Citizens Lake Monitoring Program, but even here, there isn't much feedback to local citizens about lakes being monitored in their area (one can see the data on the web - good transparency, but no interpretation). Folks in my watershed organization (Friends of the Sunrise River) have noted this lack of participatory mechanisms in a recent workshop.

(2) Cliff mentioned the need for research on nonpoint source issues. Very true. We are "pretending" that we can install a treatment and get improved water quality. This worked for point source pollution (modern wastewater treatment plants are often 95% efficient), but it doesn't work for fecal coliforms in street runoff, or much of anything else. There has been virtually no federal money for urban nonpoint source pollution in recent years, and not a great deal at the state level. One potential source of research funding could be LCCMR, but to date, they have tended to prefer on-the-ground conservation measures, etc, over research. It seems to be hard to convince legislators that research done now will actually yield a payoff down the road. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, 20-30% of LCCMR's funding should go to research, banking on the premise that some research will yield large payoffs, even if other ideas are not productive. I'm not sure what percentage of LCCMR funds now go to research, but I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near this level.

Keep in mind that EPA will not rush in to the rescue. If we want solutions to water quality problems, they will have to arise from state investments. Sad, but true.