Group Works on County EQIP Priorities
An Environmental Quality Incentive Program Development Group met April 15 in the Glasscock County Community Center to determine what priorities should be used in spending the county’s 2003 EQIP monies. The recommendations from the group of approximately 14 agricultural producers will go to a Local Work Group, comprised mostly of federal and state agency people. The LWG will, in turn, make recommendations to the National Resources Conservation Service’s Designated Conservationist.
The group’s consensus was that water quantity was the county’s first priority. Drip or center pivot irrigation were chosen as the practices of choice to meet that priority. The group chose a 25 percent cost share and water savings as the criteria for screening and ranking.
Brush control was chosen as the county’s median priority, with prickly pear the specific target. Chemical control was given as the preferred practice, with a 75 percent cost share and pear density as the criteria for screening and ranking.
Cost shares differ for limited resource producers and for beginning producers.
Darren Richardson, a district conservationist from Andrews, said fifty percent of whatever money comes from the federal level to Texas would be divided equally between the state’s 254 counties. Forty-eight percent of the federal funds will go to state-set priority areas, and two percent will be held back as a contingency fund. District conservationist Ron Crumley said he guesses that between $50,000 and $80,000 will come directly to Glasscock County.
Crumley said in Glasscock County last year, there were 101 EQIP applications totaling $4.4 million. He said only eight contracts, totaling $253,000 were written, most of them for drip irrigation. Mark Ramirez said about four percent of the EQIP applications were for rangeland, and that only one of the contracts written was for rangeland work.