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DAN OLSON: The Whitewater appears to be a picture postcard perfect river. The gin clear water and its three branches courses gently through rolling farm fields and pastures, and then tumbles into glades of hardwood trees. The Whitewater's pools are home to trout, making the branches some of the state's most popular trout fishing territory.

But all is not well with the Whitewater. Pollution is taking a toll. The middle branch of the river is one of the state's most closely watched bodies of water. And we're on a trek to view the device that collects the water samples.

In the lead is the man in charge of monitoring the river. Minnesota Department of Agriculture Hydrologist, Paul Wotzka, wearing T-shirt and blue jeans. He threads his tall, lean frame through the brush to the testing station.

PAUL WOTZKA: We can have a storm hydrograph over and done with in a day. And typically, those storms will start about 4 or 5 o'clock, about the time everybody's going home. How do we catch those storms that happen in the middle of the night? With this type of equipment.

DAN OLSON: The monitor isn't much to look at. It's a couple of boxes, some cable, and conduit, topped with a small solar collector attached to a battery inside that powers the gizmo day and night. But high-tech magic pulses through the monitor circuitry. Wotzka no longer has to watch for rain storms and then race to the river when one arrives so he can grab water samples by hand. The automated monitor is always on duty. It's taken the guesswork out of wondering when and how often high water levels are hydrographs occur.

PAUL WOTZKA: In those storm events, what we see is atrazine is about 100-fold higher than during the base flow conditions.

DAN OLSON: Wotzka has collected 12 years worth of Whitewater River samples. He sends them off to test for atrazine and more than two dozen other chemicals. The trend, he says, is clear. Levels of atrazine in the past five years have steadily risen. The river at base flow carries about 0.5 parts of atrazine per billion parts of water.

The level surges to 30 parts per billion during and after storms, well above the legal limit of 3.4 parts per billion. Atrazine levels in the Whitewater peaked sharply at the beginning of the growing season, when farmers spray the herbicide to control weeds in their corn and soybean fields.

A ride with Paul Wotzka shows nearly all of the farm fields along a stretch of the Whitewater's middle branch are planted with row crops. The old days of a four crop rotation, from corn to soybeans, then to small grains and alfalfa, are nearly gone. Some argue the four and even three-year crop rotation cycles would slow rainwater runoff and greatly reduce pollution.

PAUL WOTZKA: You can see the corn. You can see some of the forage crops. You can see a field of soybeans over here.

DAN OLSON: Planting corn or soybeans every year means more money for farmers who are pressed by rising costs and declining prices. There's an added incentive. The federal farm program guarantees a base price for corn and soybeans, but not for other crops. But continuous row cropping every year leaves more of the soil exposed for longer. That increases the rate of rainwater runoff.

Young corn and soybean plants soak up some of the early growing season rains, but a large amount washes off the fields, carrying atrazine residue to streams and rivers. The atrazine levels decline later in the growing season as the larger, thirsty plants soak up much more rainwater and when spraying for weeds has tapered off.

But atrazine doesn't altogether go away. It can take months for the herbicide to decompose. And research shows some of the chemicals left over when atrazine breaks down are an even greater risk to animal and human health.

Atrazine is made by the Swiss-based company, Syngenta. Switzerland and most other European nations have banned the weedkiller because of concerns over its effects on animal and human health. Even so, atrazine remains one of the world's most popular herbicides. It's a very effective and affordable weedkiller.

Every year, tens of millions of pounds of it are applied to crops around the globe. Atrazine doesn't just kill weeds growing among row crops. University of Minnesota Environmental Sciences Professor Deborah Swackhamer says when the herbicide washes off farm fields, it also kills plants in lakes, rivers, and streams.

DEBORAH SWACKHAMER: You might say, well, who cares if you've got more of this algae than that algae? Because that's really the trade-off you get. But that can impact the food web because higher order species depend on certain species of plants for their food. Just like we prefer certain plants to eat, so does the aquatic food web.

DAN OLSON: Atrazine might be less of a concern if it latched onto soil particles and stayed in one place, but it doesn't. The herbicide and its byproducts migrate. They're being found in groundwater and in wells that supply drinking water.

Professor Swackhamer wishes there were more studies of atrazine impact on animal and human health. But she says, there's little money to fund that kind of research. For example, there's no clear evidence of atrazine effect, if any, on fish in the Whitewater River because it hasn't been studied.

Laboratory tests link atrazine to irregularities in the reproductive cycle of female rats. As for human health, two small studies, one in Iowa and another in Missouri, found low sperm counts in farmers who spray their fields with atrazine and in men who work as farm chemical applicators.

A good share of the attention atrazine gets in the media is the herbicides effect on frogs. University of California Berkeley Biology Professor Tyrone Hayes says his tests show very low levels of atrazine, as low as 0.1 part per billion, cause changes in male frogs.

TYRONE HAYES: These males might grow ovaries, these males might actually start to produce eggs. And we also show that these males don't develop their voicebox properly, so they can't properly attract females.

DAN OLSON: Hayes says his new research, unpublished, shows an even stronger link between atrazine and effects on amphibian health. Atrazine's manufacturer, Syngenta, disputes the findings and says other researchers have not been able to duplicate Hayes' results.

Besides atrazine, southeastern Minnesota's Whitewater River has another pollution problem. Thousands of springs burble throughout the region, and many feed the river. Before they reach the Whitewater, they slide through the region's unusual geology of fractured limestone.

The springs pass through and under pastures and homes with failed septic systems. Rainwater making its way to the springs carries animal and human waste, containing fecal coliform bacteria that can cause illness in humans. Samples taken by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency from the Whitewater River show levels of fecal coliform are routinely many times beyond the level allowed by state law. The levels prompted the state to declare portions of the river's branches impaired or polluted.

JANETTE BRIMMER: You shouldn't be swimming there. You shouldn't be waiting there. You shouldn't fall out of your canoe. Direct primary contact is not recommended, not safe.

DAN OLSON: Kris Sigford is director of water programs for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, the MCEA. A check with State and Local Health Department officials turned up no confirmed reports of human illness because of contact with the Whitewater. State officials say they're taking steps to reduce the fecal coliform pollution.

However, environmentalists also want the river listed as polluted for atrazine. That would be a first. No other body of water in Minnesota is listed as officially polluted because of a farm herbicide.

Environmentalists lobbied the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency two years ago for the designation, but state officials say the atrazine pollution isn't high enough and doesn't last long enough. Current state standards require atrazine levels of more than 3.4 parts per billion be measured for 30 days during two different periods over three years.

State officials do say levels much higher than that legal limit were recorded for 130-day period last year, but the rules require another episode. Environmentalists argue the levels have been high enough, long enough. The MCEA's legal director attorney, Janette Brimmer, says her group will consider legal action if the state doesn't cite atrazine as another reason for listing the Whitewater as impaired.

JANETTE BRIMMER: Maybe PCA will agree. They may very well say yes, we agree that it's finally tipped the scale. But if not, we'll be taking a very hard look at it.

DAN OLSON: The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency isn't revealing ahead of time its revised list of impaired waters. Environmentalists are pressing the issue, in part, because of the timing. The state is in the middle of revising its atrazine rules. The new rules will apply not just to the Whitewater, but to all of Minnesota's lakes, rivers, and streams.

Some groups want the state to lower allowable atrazine limits. Others want them raised. If the MCEA takes the state to court over the Whitewater health, it wouldn't be for the first time. This summer, a federal judge in St. Paul handed the group a major victory. The MCEA challenged how the state measures fecal coliform pollution. The judge agreed federal and state agencies were using a flawed formula, and told them to revise it.

Dealing with pollution in the Whitewater River is one chapter in a long-simmering legal and political tug of war over what to do about the declining health of Minnesota's lakes, rivers, and streams.

Experts believe a very high number, perhaps as many as 40%, of Minnesota's waters are polluted. However, there's not enough money to monitor the waters. And lawmakers have so far been unsuccessful in agreeing on a way to pay for the testing.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Impaired Water supervisor, Faye Sleeper, says only 8% of the state's rivers, only 14% of the lakes have been tested to see if they qualify for being on the impaired waters list.

FAYE SLEEPER: We have fallen behind. Currently, we don't-- we do not have the resources we need. The estimate is that we need an additional $81 million a year to both do a more complete assessment, to do the studies. And then most of that funding would go into the actual cleanup activities.

DAN OLSON: Republican State Representative, Dennis Ozment, from Rosemont, the chair of the House Environmental and Natural Resources Finance Committee, says there will be another attempt next session to fund a water testing and cleanup program. A bill he and others authored last session failed. Besides money, Ozment says, there's disagreement over what level of pollution is a risk.

DENNIS OZMENT: People take information, and they can extrapolate out whatever logic or reason that they want from that data. And so it becomes extremely difficult to really know what is truth.

DAN OLSON: The debate boils over when lawmakers propose ideas that threaten to take a bite out of farmers and agricultural interests' pocketbooks. State Senator John Marty, a Roseville Democrat, failed in his attempt last legislative session to ban the use of atrazine. He says he'd be satisfied with a partial ban, similar to what Wisconsin has done.

JOHN MARTY: We certainly like to, at first, restrict it, ban it from the vulnerable areas where it's easiest to get into the surface water and the groundwater, based on the type of soil and everything else. But in the long run, the fact that it slightly increases the amount of corn production in Minnesota is not worth the environmental harm that's caused by it, and the health risk to the public.

DAN OLSON: There is agreement on other ways to help prevent further pollution of the Whitewater and other Minnesota waters. One is grass buffer strips. Research shows grass strips greatly reduce runoff. There's a federal program to help landowners pay for the idea.

The federal government this year is spending $3 billion on all of the country's soil and water conservation programs. About 150,000 of it has trickled down to Linda Dahl's Agency, the Whitewater River Watershed Project. Farmers and landowners in three counties served by the project can come to Dahl's Office in Lewiston and apply for matching funds for conservation measures to slow runoff from their property.

LINDA DAHL: Could be a combination of grassed waterways, contour buffer strips. You could be looking at $10,000 to $20,000 in cost. And we offer 65% cost share.

DAN OLSON: Dahl says there are 650 farmers in her three county area. She says about 90 have signed on for various programs. Dahl believes many more would participate if there were more money or incentives.

A visit to Bill Reisdorf's dairy farm shows how the incentives work. Restores fields and pastures run along a stretch of the Whitewater. He's using runoff control measures on his farm. Reisdorf says the tight farm economy means most farmers will use conservation ideas only if there's money to help pay the cost.

BILL REISDORF: Farmers do respond to incentives. If the public would like to have this cleaner water, then maybe they would be willing to subsidize and give us incentives.

DAN OLSON: More than 300,000 people visit Whitewater State Park every year. The river's middle branch slices through the center of it. The water rushes over a low dam built to create a pond for swimmers. The park's recovery from an environmental disaster decades ago may contain lessons for how to solve the Whitewater's modern-day pollution problems.

In the mid-1800s, white settlers denuded southeastern Minnesota's densely forested hillsides and created farm fields. In the 1930s, the rain stopped. A massive drought created the Dust Bowl across vast areas of the central portion of the United States.

The organisms that acted like a glue to bind together the light soil particles in southeastern Minnesota dried out. Winds blew the soil off the fields. The silt literally buried homes. Families abandoned their farms. When the rains came back, water rushed across the barren fields into the river, choking it with sediment. The area became a dead zone.

Recovery was painfully slow. Some of the abandoned farms became the basis for Whitewater State Park. Conservationists made a living laboratory out of the environmental disaster. Their restoration experiments inspired creation of the Federal Soil and Water Conservation Service.

Decades later, there's little evidence of the calamity. Hillsides are once again shrouded with thick stands of hardwoods. A huge wildlife management area next to the State Park is thick with trees, springs, and marshlands. Farming has returned, along with some of the old erosion problems, and with the new pollution problems created, in part, by agriculture reliant on fertilizers and farm chemicals. Minnesota Department of Agriculture Hydrologist Paul Wotzka says the park visitors and anglers who love the Whitewater often stop him.

PAUL WOTZKA: They come up to me and say, what is happening to our streams? Why is there so much silt in my favorite fishing hole? Why does this stream smell when it has a storm hydrograph in it?

DAN OLSON: More people are asking those questions, wondering when solutions will be offered. They may get some answers when the state releases its revised list of impaired waters later this month. Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio News.