Good for crops, bad for crappies

Dennis Andersons recent article in the Star Tribune addresses some of the problems associated with Minnesotas vast network of agricultural drain tile. While drainage helps farmers sustain crops and manage wet weather, the long-term downstream impacts are hitting fish, birds and other wildlife hard.

For taxpayers and the citizenry at large…farm tiling often amounts to a giant rip-off. Water is water, and it's going to go somewhere. Tiling doesn't make it disappear. Rather, tiling facilitates its rather much quicker exit from the land, first, usually, to a ditch, often carrying topsoil or silt, and from there to a creek, stream or river.