222 The Environmental Debate
an unprecedented opportunity to redirect this
money to permanent retirement of marginal
farmlands and to restore a network of forested
riparian corridors across the land, and even to
bring back extensive tracts of the old tallgrass
prairie, all in a manner designed to continue pro-
viding income and support to farmers.
In farming regions and in urban areas, land
use is reflected in the waters. Improper manage-
ment of the land has seriously degraded our riv-
ers and lakes and estuaries.... Chesapeake Bay
[is] a large estuary that collects the waters run-
ning off the land from six states. The streams
and rivers that drain this watershed are con-
taminated from farmland fertilizers, pesticides,
animal waste, the destruction of forests, and
residues from urban streets. In consequence
that bay in nearing ecological collapse. The
once abundant oyster reefs are crumbling, and
the once extensive beds of sea grass that shel-
ter and nourish spawning blue crabs are dying,
smothered by sediments that accumulate as soils
erode, having been exposed by deforestation and
excessive tillage. Oyster and crab catches have
declined to less than 1 percent of historic lev-
els. Similar declines in fisheries are occurring in
every region of the country.
The Clean Water Act, which mandates the
restoration of our waters to a “fishable and
swimmable” standard, has proven inadequate
to the task, in large measure because after thirty
years of effort federal administrators and the
courts have been unable to bring the states for-
ward as effective partners in the regulation of
land use to restore the nation’s waters.... [T]he
Clean Water Act should be revised to promote
stronger federal-state partnerships in managing
the use of water resources and in regulating the
effects of land use on our rivers and lakes.... [O]ur public lands,... the flamboyant
red-rock landscapes of Arizona and Utah, the
distinctive life forms of the Sonoran and Mojave
deserts, the towering forests of the Rockies and
the Pacific Northwest, the lands of Alaska, are a
unique and enduring part of our heritage. They
[T]he Endangered Species Act, which,
although not usually characterized as a land use
planning statute, has become one of the most
effective federal laws affecting land use. It has
been most successful in California, in large meas-
ure because that state government, through both
Republican and Democratic administrations has
worked out a partnership with the federal gov-
ernment for regional open space planning.
... [A] conflict occasioned by the listing of
an endangered bird, the California gnatcatcher[,]
... in turn triggered a land development morato-
rium and led eventually to a pattern of coopera-
tion on land use that has been extended to other
regions of California....
... The farmlands of [the Midwest], planted
fencerow to fencerow, have obliterated the tall-
grass prairie, which lives on only in memory
and in small patches in old cemeteries. The vast
fields of corn and soybeans have so completely
preempted and replaced the old prairie that the
natural world seems to have vanished beyond
any realistic hope of retrieval.
Ironically, the historical emergence of this
region of all-consuming industrial agriculture is
due in large measure to federal land use policies.
Farm country is one place where no one disputes
either the reality or the necessity of federal lead-
ership in land use, even though it goes by the
name of “farm policy.” Federal farm policy has
influenced use of the land since the beginning
of the Republic, nearly always directed toward
expanding production through the draining,
clearing, and planting of more land.
Now, however, farm policy is nearing the
threshold of a revolutionary change, made nec-
essary by the globalization of the agricultural
economy and emergence of the World Trade
organization as the arbiter of agricultural poli-
cies that subsidize prices and encourage over-
production. In coming years, the United States
will be required to begin dismantling produc-
tion subsidies, which reach as high as fifteen
billion dollars or more per year. As these pro-
duction subsidies are withdrawn, there will be