-Don’t let disgust with politics rob you and your children of productive soil, healthy water and outdoor fun
-Support the low cost tax
By Jim Low
With Election Day looming, it’s time to revisit a topic covered on this page in recent months. Don’t panic! This isn’t about Trump or Clinton. It’s about something much closer to home for Missourians – the state’s dedicated sales tax for state parks and for soil and water conservation.
In previous columns, I talked mainly about the tremendous economic, recreational and spiritual value of state parks like Bennett Spring and Johnson’s Shut-Ins. That alone would justify the measly $6 per year that each Missourian pays annually through the one-tenth of 1-percent sales tax. But parks are only one-third of the programs funded through the tax. It also supports Missouri soil and water conservation.
To put this in perspective, consider where Missouri was before voters approved the parks, soil and water tax for the first time in 1984. Fish from the Missouri River and other Show-Me State streams contained enough pesticides and other contaminants that health officials warned against eating them. In a related tragedy, Missouri was hemorrhaging topsoil. We were second in the nation in the amount of soil washing off our agricultural land. Today, you can safely eat Missouri River catfish and Current River smallmouths, and soil loss to erosion is the second-smallest in the nation.
The most remarkable thing about how the sales tax has improved life in Missouri is that it was all done through positive incentives, not regulations. Missourians never wanted to swim, boat and fish in polluted water. They didn’t want to see their agricultural wealth wash into the Gulf of Mexico. They simply needed to understand the seriousness of the problems and be offered practical ways to solve them.
With the $6 per person per year that Missourians gave them to work with, soil and water conservationists at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) instituted market-based incentives for farmers to implement better soil-conservation practices. This consisted mostly of sharing the cost of better agricultural practices enabling farmers to care for the soil and still make a living. Measures included terracing and wiser tillage practices on cropland. The DNR also helped ranchers install watering systems that kept livestock out of streams. This prevented cattle from denuding stream corridors, trampling fragile banks and voiding biological waste into streams. Besides reducing soil erosion, these measures also protected water quality and fish habitat.
To further clean up water, the DNR helped farmers shift to practices that reduced the amount of fertilizer and herbicides needed to grow crops, thereby reducing runoff of these chemicals into ground and surface water. The DNR also helped cities and businesses improve sewer and wastewater treatment systems so less pollution entered lakes and streams.
Six dollars per person per year pays for all this and helps fund dozens of state parks and historic sites that are open to all Missourians and attract visitors from out of state to spend millions of dollars in Missouri. How else could Missourians possibly have gotten so much for so little? There must be a catch, right?
There is. Missouri’s one-tenth of 1-percent sales tax for parks, soil and water conservation disappears unless voters reapprove it every 10 years. It is up for renewal in the general election Nov. 8. If you are so turned off by politics that you are considering not voting, think again. Protecting Missouri’s parks, soil and water have nothing to do with politics. It’s about our quality of life, our economy and our health. Don’t let disgust with politics rob you and your children of the legacy of productive soil, healthy water and outdoor fun. Vote “yes” on Nov. 8 to renew the parks, soil and water tax.