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The Minnesota buffer strip land grab

To the editor:

If you have farmland along a county ditch, judicial ditch, or township road, you will be affected. As the Department of Natural Resources adds ditches to their buffer maps, additional land will be taken.

Pasture, alfalfa and hayfields are not exempt due to conflicts within the law. It does not matter if your field slopes away from the ditch. Additional easements can be taken along your internal field ditches at the drainage authorities’ discretion.

This law makes no accommodation for reality, it is more about control than it is about soil erosion. What farmer wants to lose topsoil due to runoff?

This is a big change in the way the Minnesota Legislature views landowners. In the past, if private property was needed by a government agency, a public good was defined and the landowner was given an offer for purchase of the property.

If the landowner disputed the sale, he had the opportunity of a court hearing to explain his issue.

This is known as eminent domain and is defined by a Minnesota statute.

The buffer strip law (statutes 103f.48 and 103e.021) takes an easement from the landowner. Not only does it unconstitutionally take property, it forces farmers and landowners to maintain this easement per a state agency specification.

It must be planted with perennials defined by a state agency and weed-controlled, or pay a fine up to $10,000.

If machinery is driven over this easement and damages it, the perennials must be replanted. Imagine the cost of leveling and replanting when ditches are cleaned by a backhoe, or replanting the entire strip due to accidentally digging into it for the length of a field.

Accessing a field at a road ditch crossing will require crossing a buffer strip.

The landowner becomes an unpaid employee of the state and continues to pay tax on this easement as if he controls it. Have you ever paid an employer for the pleasure of working for him?

Legislators who are working to protect farmers and landowners from this law need your support. Please contact your legislator to protect property rights in Minnesota and eliminate an unconstitutional land grab. Without the calls, this land grab is taking place.

Mike Van Horn

Wendell

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