Republish from PennState 9/29/2025
Andy Yencha, PennState Extension - Extension Educator, Renewable Natural Resources
 
Stormwater can cause water pollution because it often contains harmful materials picked up when it washed across the land.
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What are Stormwater Pollutants?
Stormwater harms local creeks, rivers, and lakes in two major ways. It causes physical damage like flooding, streambank erosion, and loss of fish habitat when too much water drains into a creek or river too quickly, and it causes water pollution because stormwater often contains harmful materials picked up when it washed across the land. These pollutants can be grouped into five broad categories.

Kevin Brown, Ag Resource Specialist, BCCD
This is one of the hot topics right now- inflation is going wild.  Well, it seems like it is for some things, but not for farmers.  Prices for their products have NOT kept up with the times.  We, in the agricultural world, know that; but I am assuming that most people outside of that field probably don’t.  Prices fluctuate wildly in the ag world.  When I was working my last job, there were times that the price of milk, paid to farmer, was the same price they were getting back in the 80’s.  On average, over a couple years, it may not look quite that bad but imagine if your income for the next 4 months was going to be the same as the average wage for your position in, say, 1985.  Can you imagine?  How do you possibly make that work?  Even if it averaged in the next 2 years what you make now, or a little lower, can you imagine making 2025 wages one month, and then 1975 wages the next?  

Miranda Neville, Agricultural Resource Specialist, BCCD 
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a station at Green Career Day, sponsored by the Bradford County Conservation District, as a BCCD Agriculture Team member but also as a dairy farmer. I remember career days in elementary school (in my very small hometown). We usually had veterinarians, postal workers, bankers, police officers, but even as a “farm-oriented kid” I don’t ever remember seeing a farmer. The number of farms has declined drastically even in the last decade. That means that the number of ‘farm kids’ who are already built with the dream to take over the family farm has also decreased. Reaching more youth to teach them about farming and agriculture is key in creating the next wave of farm kids. So, how do we ensure the future of agriculture, if the younger generations don’t realize the potential it has?

Kevin Brown, Ag Resource Specialist, BCCD
As you get older, and as things continue to change now more than ever, it strikes me every day about how much one person’s passion (and maybe even agenda) goes so much against another tried and true way of doing things.  As we push more and more to do “x”, we could be going completely against something very important on the other end of the spectrum.  I often think about, “when do those worlds collide?” and “what does it look like when they do?”  Maybe giving some examples will make this easier to understand.  I will try to tread lightly.  Every new “thing” could be guilty.  I once heard a person on TV say that, on electric cars, the pollution potential remains the same in a lot of these cases (fossil fuels vs. rare earth metals and batteries to dispose of), we are just trading one kind of pollution for another.  Is that accurate?  I don’t know.  I do know that the new ways of doing things are usually not quite as rosy as what they want you to believe.  I can use this with most anything.  Solar, wind, organic, even complete protectionism (like in a forest or something that DOES need to be managed, not just protected forever).  Again, will these two worlds collide?  And if so, when?