Battle growing over water rules
Sam Womack
Santa Maria Times
04/15/2010
A local water-quality board is looking to clean up the Central Coast’s drinking water and save aquatic species, but the agricultural industry is claiming that the proposed regulations would be impossible to follow.
The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board blames agricultural water runoff for major water issues such as “unsafe levels of nitrates,” toxicity, pesticides and sediment, according to a board staff report.
“These impairments are well documented, severe and widespread,” water board staff concluded.
The Santa Maria River is one of the two main watersheds in the Central Coast region that the water board staff considers “seriously polluted” due to agricultural practices.
“The thing that’s irritating is the report paints a picture of some guy at the end of the road pouring pesticides directly into the drinking water,” said Kevin Merrill, president of the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau and a board member for the Central Coast Wine Growers’ Association.
“The feeling is that (we’re) being attacked ... by regulations that are unfounded. (Farmers) are asked to do things that could very well jeopardize keeping them in business,” Merrill added.
In a statement released jointly by local environmental groups, Steve Shimek, executive director of Monterey Coastkeeper said, “It’s about time. Our water is poisonous, and agriculture needs to clean up its mess.”
The solution, according to the water board staff report, is to have each individual farm operation identify if it has non-storm water runoff to either surface waterways or the ground water basin.
That runoff must be sampled and analyzed, and if it contains an unhealthy level of pollutants, then it must be eliminated, treated or controlled to meet water-quality standards, the report states.
Farm operators also must monitor nearby watersheds, surface water and groundwater for high levels of nitrates and other pollutants and submit all data to the water board.
“This staff report, a lot of people are characterizing it as one of the most hostile public documents ever published,” said Richard Quandt, president and general counsel of the Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The water board can also name a third party to follow-up in problem areas, in order to “identify the source of pollution and monitor any identified discharges associated with agriculture operations to surface or ground water, including discharges to streams ... tail ponds and stormwater runoff.”
According to the proposed agricultural order, irrigation runoff or the listed pollutants will need to be eliminated within two to six years of the ordinance’s adoption.
“This was drafted by some staff members, who don’t understand much about irrigation or farming in general, and come up with this list of standards that can’t be met and aren’t feasible and would create a severe economic burden on farmers,” Quandt said.
He called the proposed regulations “unachievable” and said they set farmers up to fail.
The fear is if the farmers are found to be in noncompliance, the water board could enforce a discharge ban, which would ultimately halt irrigation and farming.
“The board could shut down all the farmers with arbitrary and oppressive standards,” Quandt said.
The Central Coast water board staff concluded that adoption of and compliance with the preliminary Draft Irrigated Agricultural Order will not have a significant negative impact on the environment.
The Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau claims the proposed order is redundant because the Department of Pesticide and the state Department of Food and Agriculture already have strict controls for pesticide use.
Also, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state Department of Fish and Game, the Army Corps of Engineers and local land-use regulations already preserve and protect riparian and wetland area habitat.
“The industry has been changing irrigation methods without the threat of regulation. Agriculture is working on it, they’re aware of the problem,” Merrill said. “At the end of the day, who needs cleaner water than a farmer?”
An alternative plan has been drafted and submitted by the agricultural industry, and growers hope for a collaborative process.
However, Quandt said, “So much ill will and broken trust. Nobody wants to cooperate with them now, and everybody’s paying for legal expenses and not doing water monitoring because they don’t want to be forced to give up their records.”
