Despite accelerating development, agriculture remains one of the most important land uses in western Pennsylvania. Washington County, for example, next door to Pittsburgh, still has a third of its total area in farmland (about 180,000 acres) and ranks fourth among all Pennsylvania counties in the number of active farms.

In occupying such a dominant part of the landscape, agriculture is also a major contributor to water pollution. Sediment from eroding cropland and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous arising from livestock and chemical fertilizers flow from farms to nearby streams, degrading the water quality of our region’s streams and the Ohio River watershed downstream. But now, thanks to a cooperative effort between WPC, 23 local organizations, the Governor’s office, Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), farmers in 16 regional counties have access to a federal program designed to improve water quality and wildlife habitat by rewarding good land management.

On March 22, U. S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Governor Ed Rendell, Senator Arlen Specter, Congresswoman Melissa Hart, Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, and representatives of the Pa. Department of Environmental Protection joined farmers, sportsmen and farm leaders at the Richard McElhaney farm in Beaver County, to announce the establishment of a Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) in Pennsylvania’s Ohio River Basin. CREP will make available $146 million to help western Pennsylvania farmers implement agricultural conservation practices that will improve water quality in streams such as Wheeling Creek, the Beaver River, and French Creek here in western Pennsylvania, as well as the Ohio and Mississippi rivers all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

WPC began laying the groundwork for expansion of CREP into western Pennsylvania in 2002. With support from numerous local organizations, WPC submitted a CREP program application to Governor Rendell. The governor endorsed the application and forwarded it to the USDA for approval. The Ohio River Basin CREP program will be administered by the USDA’s Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service and will seek to enroll 65,000 acres of environmentally sensitive agricultural land.

In our rolling topography, and in a challenging farm economy, farmers often feel forced to cultivate all available land, even steep slopes or stream riparian areas that would be better left in vegetative cover. Farmers enrolled in CREP, however, will enter into contracts with USDA and receive payments in exchange for implementing management practices that prevent soil, chemicals, and organic nutrients from flushing into nearby streams. Examples of management practices include planting trees and grasses on steep slopes, and maintaining vegetative cover in natural watercourses, instead of cultivating these areas. The CREP payments offset losses in short-term income that farmers often face when attempting to conserve farmland resources. CREP can even help farmers who want to keep their land in active agriculture resist the pressure to sell to developers.
CREP has been available to farmers in the Susquehanna River Basin, where 200,000 acres are eligible for CREP, since 1999.

The management practices encouraged by CREP not only reduce sedimentation and nutrient loading in streams, but also improve wildlife habitat. CREP provides hope that farmland game, such as ring-necked pheasants will nest successfully in fields planted to warm season grasses and along woodland edges. CREP can also restore habitat for endangered and threatened grassland birds such as the short-eared owl and upland sandpiper. And familiar but declining farmland birds that many western Pennsylvanians remember from their rural youth, such as eastern meadowlark, bluebird, and bobolink, will likewise benefit from CREP.
CREP, actively at work in the Ohio Basin, will help to maintain working farm landscapes and livelihoods in western Pennsylvania, while protecting our region’s natural heritage at the same time. These lands are the fields, farms and forests that, if nurtured properly, can anchor our region’s conservation commitment even deeper. WPC is a leader in the growing effort to sustain farm economies in ways that protect the natural resources that make them possible. Through the expansion of CREP into western Pennsylvania, our region becomes part of a national commitment to cleaner water, healthier land, diverse wildlife, and more stable rural communities.

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