Leonard Jordan New Washington State Conservationist Has Strong Ties To The Land

Leonard Jordan was the king of crook-necked squash.

Back in 1971 in Fayette County, Tenn., at a time when Elvis still lived on his Memphis estate, Jordan grew more of the varietal squash than any one else around.

Ironically, the man who would become Washington’s state conservationist was sick of agriculture.

He grew up on a farm where his family raised cotton, corn, soybeans, watermelon, wheat and squash. After a childhood working in the heat and dust of “one of the poorest and most erosive counties in Tennessee,” Jordan was ready to move to the big city, where he could live the high life with a job and a car.

“My parents saw it differently,” he said.

They talked him into attending Tennessee State University in Nashville where he majored in agronomy.

Today, though he’s no longer on the farm, Jordan has made agriculture and land use his career.

The new state conservationist for Washington wears loafers and fine suits, but doesn’t forget his roots in Fayette County, Tenn.

As head of the state office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Jordan, 44, oversees a staff of 208 full-time employees. The agency’s goal is to provide the best technical assistance to help people address local resource issues.

That could mean improving water quality, helping save endangered species, fighting soil erosion and farming in ways that cause the least damage to the environment.

Jordan comes from the NRCS Oregon bureau where he served as assistant state conservationist.

One of his bigger tasks there was working with salmon issues. When torrential rains in 1996 brought floods to the state, Jordan’s office developed “The Fish Friendly Guide to Restoration,” which gave guidelines on repairing the flood damage while causing the least harm to the fish.

“I feel fortunate we got somebody from the Pacific Northwest,” said Larry Albin, Washington state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “He understands our agriculture and some of the unique challenges we have in Washington and Oregon.”

He also understands the differences between the two sides of the states, another attribute from his time in Oregon.

“Before I got too involved in Portland, I heard there was an east- and west-side mentality,” he said. “The east siders felt like they were step-kids.”

To dissolve that, he spent one of his first months on the job just meeting employees who worked on the east side of the state.

“Yes, the issues are different, but conservation is still the most important thing in their minds,” he said.

In Washington he also plans to spend time on both sides of the Cascades. “We don’t want anybody to be underserved,” he said.

One Eastern Washington issue about which Jordan is already keenly aware is the Conservation Reserve Program. The federal program pays farmers for returning a portion of their farmland to a natural state to prevent soil erosion and encourage wildlife habitat. In 1997, Washington’s landowners had one of the lowest acceptance rates into the program of the states that applied.

But that changed with the most recent sign-up. “We learned from the 15th (sign up) and now we need to focus on the 16th and beyond,” he said. “We need to make sure the landowners get what they need in the application process.”

Jordan also faces the challenge of a diminishing budget.

The NRCS’s financial resources are going down, he said. “In the agency, we need to lose 570 employees,” Jordan said. “That constitutes 70 employees in the Northwest region. We’re struggling to keep what we have.”

One solution he sees is cooperating with farming, community and environmental groups to eliminate duplication in the tasks they perform. “We need to partner up,” he said. Already the NRCS works closely with groups such as the Washington Association of Conservation Districts and the Washington Association of Wheat Growers.

“If we can establish a common vision where there are overlaps we can eliminate, it means we can stretch ourselves out more,” he said.

Jordan has a wife and two school-aged children who are leaving their lives in Portland to follow him to Spokane.

“Portland, I loved,” he said. “It was one of the biggest decisions of my life to apply for this job.”

But he wanted to advance and he wanted to stay in the Northwest. “I’m very very attracted to the region for some reason,” he said.