Community groups protest agricultural contamination of Central Valley water

Dan Bacher
Bay Area Indymedia
09/16/2007

Community residents from throughout the Central Valley gathered today to protest the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board’s continued failure to regulate agricultural pollution. Representatives of a broad coalition, including the Californians for Pesticide Reform, Center for Clean Water Action, Community Water Center, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water and Latino Issues Forum, demanded an end to the board's Irrigated Lands Program that allows toxic discharges into the Central Valley streams, the Delta and drinking water supplies in complete violation of Clean Water Act standards.

Bill Jennings of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) also made blistering comments at the board's workshop, challenging the very validity of the workshop. The CSPA and Baykeeper filed a lawsuit in June against the Regional Board for renewing waivers that excuse polluted discharges from 25,000 farms from meeting statewide water quality objectives. The lawsuit alleges that the Regional Board’s adoption of the waivers violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), state and federal endangered species acts and Porter-Cologne, California’s water quality law.

"CSPA/Baykeeper is puzzled as to the purpose of the 13 September joint workshop," said Jennings. "The Regional and State Boards already have in their possession an administrative record that answers most of the questions posed by the State Board in its Notice of Public Workshop. The State Board also has draft technical reports prepared by its regulatory compliance, nonpoint source and groundwater units that evaluated the record and the merits of CSPA/Baykeeper’s petition. The denial of the CSPA/Baykeeper petition and the rejection of staff’s assessment and recommendations clearly indicate that the State Board has predetermined its course of action. The joint public workshop seems to be little more than a smokescreen to mask the massive, illegal procedural irregularities surrounding this debacle.

Jennings concluded by saying, "The bottom line is that the State and Regional Boards have exempted irrigated agriculture from routine regulations applicable to virtually every other segment of society: from municipalities, industry, construction to mom-and-pop businesses. In doing so, the Boards have condemned our waterways to increasing degradation. We can only wish that Board Members would somehow find as much sympathy for the victims of agricultural pollution as they do for the polluters."

The deplorable decision of the Board to continue allowing agriculture to pollute Central Valley waters and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta occurs in the context of a dramatic collapse of delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile smelt and threadfin shad. Toxic pollution is one of the three factors that state and federal scientists have poinpointed as the chief causes of the California Delta ecoystem crash. The other two factors are the dramatic increase in Delta exports in recent years and the spread of invasive species.