ESCAPED SEDIMENT BEING BLAMED ON YOU

摘要

CONSERVATION PRACTICES HAVE SLASHED THE AMOUNT OF SOIL MOVING FROM FARM FIELDS INTO WATERWAYS, BUT FARMERS ARE IN THE HOT SEAT. Last spring, a muddy lake on the Mississippi River sparked a flurry of controversy about agricultural drainage. Lake Pepin, on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, is filling with silt. Most of the sediment is carried into the lake by the Minnesota River, a turbid prairie river that meanders through some of the most productive - and heavily tiled - cropland in the world. Who is to blame for the sediment clogging Lake Pepin and other waterways that flow through farm country? It seems that lots of fingers point at farmers and their drainage practices.