WAITE PARK -- Stearns County's Soil and Water Conservation District Administrator says 95% of farmers in the county are already in compliance with the state's buffer law. It's the law where farmers are required to have a vegetative barrier between their fields and the shores of public waters.

Dennis Fuchs says they surveyed nearly 13,000 impacted parcels and were pleasantly surprised farmers were already practicing water conservation. He says part of the reason could be that the DNR already had a shoreline statute on the books regulating runoff.

Governor Mark Dayton recently signed a bill giving farmers in the state an extension to comply. The 2015 law was to go into effect November 1st, but the extension pushes the deadline back to July, 2018.

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