Agricultural water discharge approval is challenged
Central Valley Business Times
07/12/2011
Approval of an extension of the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program waiver and its environmental impact report by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board is being challenged by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the California Water Impact Network.
The waiver exempts irrigated agriculture from having to obtain waste discharge requirements for pollutant discharges to surface and ground waters. The Regional Board extended the waiver for two years at its June meeting.
The appeal alleges that the board violated numerous laws and regulations, including the California Environmental Quality Act, the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act and California’s Non-point Source Control and Antidegradation policies.
The groups have also notified the State Water Resources Control Board that if it fails to take immediate action to consider their appeal by July 22, the groups will go to court to seek a writ of mandate to compel compliance with the California Administrative Code.
“Pollutant discharges from irrigated agriculture are the largest identified source of pollution to Central Valley waterways. It has turned our rivers into sewers, is a threat to public health and has been identified as a principle cause of the collapse of Central Valley fisheries,” says CSPA Executive Director Bill Jennings.
“The waiver extension continues to shield irrigated agriculture from reasonable rules applicable to everyone else and essentially protects polluters from the law rather than protecting our waterways from polluters," Mr. Jennings says.
The waivers require farmers to join third-party coalitions that conduct regional water quality monitoring. Where water quality standards exceeded multiple times, management plans are required that describe the voluntary efforts coalitions will undertake to address problems, the environmental groups say.
However, they contend, the coalitions shield the identities of actual dischargers from the Regional Board and, consequently, the board doesn’t know who is actually discharging, what pollutants are being discharged, the localized impacts, whether management measures are being implemented or if implemented measures are effective in reducing pollution.
“After almost a decade, the board cannot quantify or document a single pound of pollution prevented from entering surface or groundwater,” the two groups say.
“Every Californian has a right to clean water and its unacceptable to allow agribusiness to continue to use our rivers to dispose of toxic wastes,” says Carolee Krieger, president of the California Water Impact Network.
