Despite their loss of federal funds, some RC&Ds are still in business

Closed:

Chariton Valley RC&D, Centerville.

Geode RC&D, Burlington.

Sioux Rivers RC&D, Sergeant Bluff.

Prairie Partners RC&D, Humboldt.

When the Limestone Bluffs Resource Conservation and Development Area closed its Maquoketa office this spring, it put its property in storage and moved its records to the home of its part-time program director.

Iowa's 16 Resource Conservation and Development Areas (RC&Ds) lost their federal funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture about a year ago. The not-for-profit organization that could take much of the credit for a long list of rural conservation and economic development projects, including Iowa's first wine trail, went “into survival mode,” longtime board president Jon Bell of Cedar County recalled.

The RC&Ds' mission, according to its website, is to work “to create jobs, protect the environment and improve the quality of life in rural communities.”

Since the funding cut, four have closed, according to Warren Johnson, executive director of the Iowa League of RC&Ds. But six, he added, are on a solid footing.

Six other RC&Ds are, like Limestone Bluffs, scrambling for a funding foundation that will enable them to continue.

Congress cut $51 million in RC&D program funding in fiscal year 2011 from the budget of the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service. Bell described the experience of losing funding this way:

“You're like the kid who got dropped off at the street corner because your parents didn't want you anymore,” said Bell, the unsalaried volunteer board president for the group for the past 10 years.

The staff coordinators the USDA had provided to help run the areas were reassigned to other duties on April 15, 2011, Bell said.

Limestone Bluffs found it difficult both to function without its coordinator and to train a new executive director to take over the duties.

The USDA reassigned RC&D coordinators to field offices near their former RC&D stations, including some vacant positions in the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Iowa. About 20 positions nationwide were eliminated outright through retirements or buyouts, agency spokeswoman Sylvia Rainford said.

In August, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service took back office furniture and equipment from RC&D offices and redistributed it to other USDA or federal agencies. Some agencies that shared space with the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service offices had to find new homes.

The RC&D is a concept that never quite made its way into the popular consciousness of Americans, in part because they were neither government nor traditional not-for-profit agencies.

Even the politicians sometimes got the name wrong, as when Sen. Chuck Grassley issued a news release a few years ago calling them “Research, Conservation & Development Areas.”

Bell said one of the appealing aspects of the concept was its ability to look for unique economic and conservation opportunities that met the needs of its local area.

When the Limestone Bluffs board meets, Bell said, “It's sort of a brain trust. We discuss all kinds of opportunities. No idea is a stupid idea.”

Bell remembered one notion that had a hard time getting traction until the RC&D embraced it: A Peosta farmer came to Limestone Bluffs with an idea for turning trees he was thinning from his forest into wooden caskets.

The RC&D helped the farmer, Sam Mulgrew, obtain a state grant and introduced him to other people who helped him put the company together.

“They're very good at cultivating an entrepreneurial, value-added approach to creating new land-based startup industries,” Mulgrew said.

He said Warren Johnson, the Iowa League executive director, “really rolled up his sleeves and looked for ways to help.

“They didn't themselves have any money, but they really beat the bushes to find funding that was appropriate,” Mulgrew said.

Within a few years, Mulgrew was approached by the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, who wanted a new industry to provide income. They ended up buying the business, hiring Mulgrew as general manager and expanding it so much that they've even added outside lay people to work with the monks.

Not all of the RC&Ds took the changes hard.

Prairie Hills RC&D in Ames did not use office space rented from the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) as some others did, and didn't rely on it for office equipment.

With funding from groups such as the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Prairie Hills added a full-time executive director and moved its office manager to full time. It also has a part-time scenic byways coordinator, log products coordinator and watersheds coordinator.

“We dug in, got a strategic plan put together, approved it in December, and put some projects together,” said Penney Brown Huber, Prairie Hills executive director.

One major project is the pendumolder, which is a system for processing tree trunks into structural logs for log cabins that can be built by Iowa's county conservation boards in their parks.

At Iowa Valley RC&D in Williamsburg, which serves a region that includes Linn, Johnson and Iowa counties, the recent success of a new locally grown food co-ops project bolstered local support, according to Peter Hoehnle, project manager.

Hoehnle said funding assistance from the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation also helped Iowa Valley transition away from federal support.

“It allows us some opportunities,” Hoehnle said of the government funding loss. “It allows us to go out of the paradigm of the government employee on staff and pursue new projects.”

The fate of federal RC&D funding may not be permanently sealed, although Johnson said resurrecting it appears dubious in today's political climate. Rainford said many RC&D councils still work with the USDA's NRCS as partners in natural resource conservation.

She said the agency expects most of the councils to continue.