Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Taxpayer funded pond, Thank you everyone

The Wetlands Restoration Program.

Be patient with me here and don't take offense. Some of the facts are unsettling to some people but here they are.

Wetlands waters were diverted to form farmlands in Michigan over the years. There was a legal semi-scam that allowed any Michigan farmer to retire VERY wealthy (like pocket half a million) at the taxpayer expense. That neat trick has been stopped and now the program works as intended.

If you have land of just about any size you can apply for the program. There are 3 choices that are basically short term, mid term and permanent.

We applied for the permanent transformation. We were offering up any part of our 90 acres that would qualify. We have 50 acres that qualify. We're paid $50k cash AND given $44,000 to hire an excavator to do the work. The government does ALL the engineering, surveying, etc. We can hunt, fish, do anything we want including sell it with our house when the time comes. The only restriction is we can never build on the acreage we put into the program. So instead of 90 acres of fallow farmland we'll have 50 acre pond and 40 acres of deer / sharptail grouse habitat (another program paying for most of that).

The contractors in this area are HUNGRY so the guys i've talked to about the federal program agreed to do another fish pond for me near the house if they can take a crack at bidding the job so that's what i'm researching here. 2 pond for the price of one and i get paid to do it.

There was a team of 6 or 8 specialists that analyzed the land, soil and plants to determine if this was originally wetlands and how much of it was wetlands.

It takes a few years to complete but it's definitely worth the wait.

So here I am buying the book & magazine and reading for hours on end. The second pond for fish nearer the house right now is a Timothy field, clay based soil so near original wetlands that i'm sure the hydrology will be fine. I just need to do all of the planning myself for this one. Every year the feds score every property submitted and hand out the money from the highest score on down. We got in on the first pass but you can wait 1 or 2 or more years if better property comes up available from year to year.

tom

That's the way to work the system. Are the funds taxable?

The way that I look at it is:

If someone else makes the rules, and you play by the rules, then everything that those rules cover is fair game. Congrats!! I'd rather see my tax dollars going to somewhere out in the country vs. the inner city. There needs to be something that offsets (even a little bit) the urban sprawl.

What kind of future control will the government have? If any, for how long?

Nothing wrong with taking advantage of programs of that type.

Would I do it? Probably not, but I'm not sure.

The most worrisome thing to me is, the government has restrictions on your land. When the camel is already inside the tent, it's very easy for them to add new restrictions or tighten existing ones. You don't ever hear about them easing up on restrictions, do you?

+1
Same goes with the tax code IMHO.

Ed Eitel was very helpful to us as we got into using the Govmt WHIP program. For those who aren't aware, Ed is/was our resident NRCS forum guru. Jeez, I miss his posts and wisdom.
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Ed noted:

I say WHIP it, WHIP it good.

It's not too late.

Does anyone know if there is a similar program in Texas? I am all for the government helping do something useful. I would like to know how things continue to go in the future with the project.

I miss Ed.

James, a couple of years ago, Otto said that ponds/tanks were being downgraded for funding.

The funds have been UPgraded again. I was contacted last year and told that I would double my take if I would reapply for the program. The downfall to that was I had to go back in the pile and re-scored. I'm sure the score wouldn't change but with double the funds there'll be more property put in and less chance of being included in the 09 list. We decided to stay on our current plan and complete the project. Since I posted this the NRCS guy was here and said we're on track to be completed spring '10.

James Holt:
NRCS is national so i'd guess the qualifier is not what state you're in but what the hydrology of your land is/was.

Yes james national program an their is an NRCS in yoru county I;m sure. BTW where is Ed? he is still with us isn't he?

Ed hasn't been around for a couple of years. Wish he was.

IIRC he stopped stopping by about the time he retired. I hope he's been busy with fun stuff.

I tried to get public funding for a couple wetlands on my place a few years ago. I started with the DNR who brought in a specialist from the FWS who poked some holes in the ground with a long probe around one of the sites and said it would not retain water. He worked out the funding amounts for another site that would not have even covered the berm. We now have two wetlands on the site that he said would not hold water that we funded ourselves. They stayed very full even through a major drought due to strong springs or old tiles draining in (the excavator broke 5 or 6 tiles while cinstructing the wetland - kinda od to find them through what the FWS guy said was porus soil. Unfortunately it ended up deeper than ideal for a wetland because I considered the advice of the FWS specialist. I am on a list as a potential wetland mitigation site if some private person needs to build on a wetland. The public programs have not worked for me. I am not a socialist, and might consider not taking public charity if I ever get back anything close to what I pay in taxes. I look at it as getting back some of the money extracted from me. Glad the programs are working for someone!

It may be a great opportunity; but that saying about "things that sound too good to be true" sometimes applies to government programs too so tread cautiously.

"50 acre pond" This sounds crazy to ask; but is a pond considered a wetland? I was under the impression it isn't unless you define a pond as a boggy, marshlike area unsuitable for fish. You might want to double check. I hope I'm wrong.

Permanent offers the best returns perhaps; but forever sure seems like a pretty long time. I tend to think of impacting things for only the next century or so... ;-)

It's definitely a wetland in this forum's sense of ponds. My wife and my family all call it a pond because it's not a lake so it must be a pond :). We live at the junction of 3 of the great lakes so everything else is a pond to us. We'll be building a proper pond between the wetland and the house though, that's why I'm reading so much here, I want to do it right the first time. the feds have all the control over the 50 acre job and in this climate it'll almost definitely freeze solid in the winter so no fish there.

tomfor,

Thank you for the post. I am in the process of checking out the CP9 program with the local NRCS rep who visited our farm today. This new program may actually allow us to get some public funding from all the programs that our taxes support!

Rod

Question on taxes: I know that I must claim government aid paid for constructing habitat on my farm, but can I then deduct my expenses for the project from farm income? Specifically, I am hoping to get funding under the CP9(shallow water habitat) program. Does anyone have a link to guidance on this? My searches have come up empty.

Howdy Y'all.
This is a collection of Federal programs. Another interesting one is the conservation easement which appears to have come with this wetlands restoration project. You can execute a 20 year or a perpetual conservation easement. It also comes with property tax breaks as well because you have lost part of your property in the process (development rights to property). The last I heard, the Federal Government is simply a neglectful landlord when it comes to making sure you are doing what you are supposed to with these. While you're not supposed to build anything (fences and small livestock facilities are OK), people do it all the time and the government never really checks on it in most cases. I've considered some of these programs before and studied them in college. I just don't want to forfeit my property rights or share them just yet...

A wise choice IMO. Govs often don't make good partners.