Dann Siems: Picture just one agency for natural resources

By DANN P. SIEMS

Last update: February 26, 2009 - 6:40 PM

BEMIDJI, MINN. DNR. SWCDs. WDs. PCA. BWSR. EQB. MDH. MDA. WMO. ESD. LCCMR. LOHC. CWC. These acronyms represent a partial list of Minnesota's natural resource management entities. Each has a unique and largely independent history leading to overlapping bureaucracies with conflicting mandates. More than 150 years of history has produced a confusing maze of processes that are neither efficient financially nor effective ecologically. We have agencies staffed with dedicated and professional resource managers constrained by convoluted, highly politicized, morale-sapping bureaucracies.

Clearly, we need to simplify natural resource management. Previous proposals faltered not because they were too ambitious but because they were not ambitious enough. Instead of trying to merge established and resistant entities, we should simply dissolve current agencies and establish an entirely new agency overnight, from the ground up.

The global economic crisis, coupled with passage of the Legacy Amendment in Minnesota, provides a unique opportunity for strategic reform. Because natural resource management activities consume a tiny fraction of our state budget, savings resulting from a shift to a single agency will not alter our immediate financial picture. However, amendment revenues could catalyze lasting structural changes leading to significant cost savings and far greater efficacy over the long term.

Three ideas should frame a single comprehensive natural resource management agency.

First, it must recognize the fundamental difference between managing public resources and shaping practices occurring on private lands.

Second, it must provide clearly defined functional roles within public and private management domains. Monitoring public surface waters, for example, is a Pollution Control Agency function under our current multiagency system. However, monitoring pesticide levels in surface waters falls to a five-person Department of Agriculture unit that has no enforcement authority.

Finally, it must provide a means to deliver well-coordinated programs and activities. We currently have conflicts among spatially incongruent mandates from state agencies and local units of government. If we truly want a sustainable green economy, we need a resource management structure recognizing river basins and watersheds as natural and fundamental landscape units.

What might this new agency look like? Imagine a citizen board appointed top-down and bottom-up by diverse units of state and local government. This board would set strategic policies and present to the governor a slate of three commissioner candidates with appropriate technical qualifications and management skills. A small central staff would coordinate clearly defined functions across regional management units. At a local level, watershed-based entities similar to DNR area offices (public domain) and soil and water conservation districts (private domain) would deliver services.

A single natural resource agency would mean more local field staff and fewer central administrators. This is what Minnesotans want. This is what sustainable resource management demands. Future generations will realize major gains from our short-term, transitional pains.

Dann P. Siems is an aquatic biologist with the Beltrami Soil & Water Conservation District. This article reflects his personal views.

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