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The Natural Resources Conservation Service provides leadership in a partnership effort to help peopleconserve, maintain, and improve our natural resources and environment.An Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer
Questions and Answers
Watershed Approach 
 
for the Conservation Security Program 
May 2004
Q. Why is NRCS implementing CSP on awatershed basis verses a nationwide basis?A.
A staged, watershed-based implementationof CSP makes sense – economically,practically and administratively. Here’s why:Focusing on high priority watersheds willreduce the administrative burden onapplicants, and will reduce the costs of processing a large number of applications thatcannot be funded.NRCS expects that a significant number of producers will seek participation in CSP andask for assistance to determine their potentialeligibility for the program. By law, NRCScannot incur technical assistance costs inexcess of 15 percent of the funds expended inthat fiscal year for CSP. That constraint,coupled with a constricted Congressionalappropriation, meant that only an estimated300 CSP contracts could have been signednationwide with producers in fiscal year 2004.But thanks to a resourceful programmaticapproach, 3,000 – 5,000 contracts, it isestimated, will now be signed.
Q. Will producers in every watershed havean opportunity to participate?A.
Yes. Because everyone lives in awatershed, and because each year producers inapproximately one-eighth of the nation’s 2119watersheds will be eligible for the signup,everyone will have the opportunity toparticipate over the eight-year period.
Q. Why not use county or state lines as thedelineation for the signup area?A.
Watersheds are nature’s boundaries. Theyare also a common sense way to grouptogether producers working on similarenvironmental issues. They offer a chance tomeasure our environmental success in a waythat state or county lines couldn’t be expectedto do. Using a watershed approach will alsohelp ensure that CSP’s finite resources arefocused first on the most achievableenvironmental performance areas.And since everyone lives in a watershed, as werotate through the nation’s watersheds everyfarmer and rancher will get a chance toparticipate within the next eight years.
Q. What if my watershed is not selected thisyear?A.
Signups for participation in the programwill be rotated between watersheds on anannual basis. Each year (after the initialsignup) producers in approximately one-eighthof the nation’s watersheds will be eligible forthe signup. Producers who are not in a selectedwatershed can use that time to assess theresources on their farms and ranches and beginpreparing for participation in the program
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