July 10, 2007 Meeting Minutes

Attendees:  Dianna Marsh (ADEQ), Tonya Norwood-Pearson (AACD), Dennis Becente (Hopi Tribe), Mac Herrera (FS), David Cook (Gila Co. Cattlegrowers), Phill Jacquez (NRCS), Cy Sokoll (NRCS), Rose Marie Leon (FSA), Sherman Reed (NRCS), Karol Brill (AZDA), Tiffany Ground (AZDA), Andria Martin (AZDA), Joel Querta (Hualapai Nation), Erin Taylor (UofA), Bert Clemmens (USLD), John Blueyes (Navajo Nation), Katie Eskew (NRCS), Heather Reading, (Nature Conservancy), Don Decker (NRCS), Jim Christenson (Cooperative Extension), Doug Witle (ASLD), Steve Smarik (NRCS), Bruce Munda (NRCS), Gary Parker (GRI-IDD), Doreen Gatewood (White Mountain Apache Tribe), Al Hendricks (FS), and Steve Barker (NRCS).

Notetaker:  Vicky Bennett, NRCS

Mac Herrera: Explained programs with Forestry Service. There are 3 branches, the national, Research, state & private branch. Division of Forestry was begun in the 1980’s. The forest service was established in 1905. We think it is important to work through the states. One of the ways to do so is to provide grants for forest health, funding for fire, funding for volunteer fire assistance, state fire for equipment training, and cooperative forestry.

We don’t just have programs to have programs. Our programs must benefit resources. There are a lot of social and economical benefits from these areas. There are a lot of environmental benefits. According to the farm bill coalition, 2/3 of the water is dependant on forest lands. Forest lands are threatened by wildfires, forest health, and development. Since 1997, a lot of mills have been lost. We have to really ask ourselves if we are meeting the challenges of the present issues. Forests are being threatened at a very high rate. Fires, pressures from recreation, and mounting challenges with no increase in funding are issues.

Land use is also changing. 80% of our people are living in urban or suburban areas. Changes of ownership have occurred. Are the values of the landowners going to stay the same or change – a question that needs to be considered when assessing the resources. We need to take a hard look at what we are doing and where we are going. We need to decide if we are keeping up or not.

There’s been a lot of dialog in Washington to try to work more closely in state and local issues.  With regard to the new Farm Bill the House recently proposed is that some programs be eliminated and that EQIP absorb those programs.

It sounds like the woody biomass grants may be increased. Urban and community forestry program is run through the states. We’re looking at this program to try to help for urban and suburban areas. People in these areas are not aware of the benefits.

The forest legacy program allows landowners to put forested areas into conservation easements.

Partnerships – as an agency, we’re trying to see if our culture can change a bit to work with partners to get the work done. In 2005, we had almost 20M in grants that went out.  There’s been a little bit of a track record, but we need to do better. There is a person on every National Forest that works on partnering.

We look forward to trying to work with you.

Al Hendricks:   I’m going to give you a cursory look and my presentation will not be nearly as polished as Macario’s.   Over 35 years ago, I decided to go into forestry. I’m currently sitting behind a desk and don’t get out as much. Now I’ll talk a little about forest landowner assistance in Arizona. We offer technical and financial assistance. We do management planning with them. We help with project design and layout. We provide consultant referrals and contracting assistance. 

We’re hoping that we can continue to find financial assistance for landowners in the future. We address insect & disease resistance, wildfire hazard reduction, assist in creating sustainable forest ecosystems; try to achieve landowner objectives. We get involved with utilization and marketing and forest land conservation.

We recently entered into a forest Stewardship Spatial Analysis project to determine where we could be of more assistance to property owners. We feel we have a tried and true technical assistance program. We have projects going on where we are partnering different sources of funding from different agencies.

Steve Barker:  Provided an overview of our planning process, our mission goals, and strategic plan, as well as the 9 steps of planning. Spoke of quality criteria that have been developed. He stated that National has a list of 80 resource concerns. Arizona has determined a smaller list of concerns to address. He asked the State Technical committee to look at the AZ list and determine if that list needs to be added to, subtracted from, in order to properly serve the resource concerns in Arizona.

Cost share programs are designed to convince the landowner to move ahead with conservation planning. If we go into federal lands, we have to have a signed coordinated Resource Management Plan. On state land, the producer must get a signed approval from the state department. There will be one plan for the complete operation under the control of one entity, using the same equipment, etc. 

He provided examples of systems, increased incentives for less adopted practices, higher water quality incentives, wildlife habitat incentives, and outcome based contracting.

Sherman Reed:  In the last meeting, Eric Banks went over our payment schedule. The old concept of 50-60% cost share is history. We will still have a higher flat rate for Native Americans, and the limited producers’ rate should come out at a similar cost share as we have had. The cost list will have flat rate amounts for each practice. Components had to be reduced down to 6 per practice. The payment schedule documents the payment rate for all practices. By Aug. 6th, packages will be developed for use in the field. The cost list being provided is not final. More work will be done in the next couple weeks. There is opportunity for local work groups to evaluate and determine substitutions, costs can be reviewed and adjusted according to the allocation area. We need to train ourselves to think – incentives – rather than cost share.

Priority resource concerns: need you to review and determine if there are any resources missing, let us know.

You have a copy of the National, State and local ranking questions. I used area 1 in the example. The national questions are set up by our national office, so they can’t be changed. He discussed National Priorities and the fact that the questions cannot be changed. The state technical committee can provide points for state questions. What are the statewide resource concerns that should get more points for in the allocation area, then what are the local resource questions that should get more points for in the allocation area.

Cy Sokoll:  I’d like to suggest that the wording of state and local questions begin the same way that National questions are stated. I think there’s some confusion with the wording of state and local questions.

Sherman Reed:  As you know, they are talking about combining some of the programs, we are going to operate as usual until we hear differently.

Cy Sokoll:  Can we provide guidance to the local work groups prior to their meetings? I think they would have a better response to be able to review it prior to their local work group meeting and that if you provide guidance as to what they need to look at, prior to their meeting so they can prepare.

Steve Smarik:  Discussed primary objectives.  We’re going to attempt to use a combined cost list. Payment schedules should be under the same payment schedule and like projects receive the same incentives.  WHIP and EQIP will be using the same cost list, however, there is a difference in the percentages of cost share for the two programs and for entities within each program.  There are practices that incentives cannot be provided through WHIP.  The WHIP ranking process is much the same as for EQIP. Since WHIP is a statewide program, there are currently no local questions.  Local questions are possible if the group wants to determine them.

He then discussed the ranking of Requests for Proposals. When ranking Requests for Proposals, we can rank the entity on their performance history. This is on Grants.gov, which opens the doors to some entities we weren’t reaching.

Bruce Munda:  There are at least two questions concerning invasive plants for Arizona. The list also includes some native plants. We wanted to identify species that we want to specify as our invasive plants list. These are species we would like to treat in AZ.

CIG purpose is a great way to get groups together and stimulate ideas for new approaches for dealing with natural resources. There are two tiers, National and State. EQIP funds this program. State competition changes year to year. The STC will determine whether or not the state participates. It is announced every year in January. They are reviewed by the STC then forwarded to National for competition.  State & local units of government, individuals, for-profit producers are eligible. CIG will fund up to 50%, the remaining 50% must come from other sources, to include in-kind services. There are special provisions within the program.

Dismissed for lunch.

Meetings of the various program subcommittees met after lunch.

Comments made when reconvened after lunch.

1)  The State Technical Committee would like to know what are the local workgroup resource concerns and what are their priority?

2) Local Workgroups should prioritize the resource concerns (High, Medium, or Low  OR use a 1 to 10 scale), delineate Resource Concerns by land use i.e. Rangeland, Cropland, etc. and send back to State Tech Committee.

3) Prior to STC meeting: send out information that we (NRCS) need their action on (Practice Costs, Resource Concerns, Practices and their components).

4)  Conservation Plans needed prior to ranking:  Concern from Gila River Indian Community on water records and the influence of drought may have on current application records which may be reduced to lower availability of irrigation water.

Forest Landowner Assistance (967 KB)
Planning Policy Changes (967 KB)
Invasive Plants (967 KB)
Work Groups (967 KB)
Forest Service Presentation (967 KB)
Conservation Innovative Grants (967 KB)
 

< Back to State Technical Committee main page