Soapbox: Growers can change our water from polluted to pure
Steve Shimek
The Californian
05/11/2010
My mother always told me: "When you borrow something, return it clean." Local agriculture is borrowing our water (yes, our water) and putting it to good use growing healthy vegetables and berries for America's table. But it is returning the water dirty and sometimes deadly.
Cities can't return water dirty. Industry can't. You and I can't. But growers believe they are special and they do not want to comply with the same requirements the rest of us must live with. Ag argues that water quality regulation will be a financial hardship, is unreasonable and difficult and will cost jobs. Ag prefers self-monitoring with little required reporting, and ag threatens that any regulatory effort is doomed to fail.
Federal law sets standards for water that protect our ability to drink it, swim in it and fish from it. Right now, these standards are not being met. This summer the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the agency responsible for water quality, is poised to protect urban and rural drinking water users by regulating agricultural waste discharge. The board has drafted an order that spells out surface and groundwater standards and gives the growers literally years to comply. The order is tough and science-based but offers flexibility and time.
Central Coast water falls far short of meeting basic drinking water standards and our health and pocketbooks are paying the price. According to the water board, 82 percent of the most degraded sites in the Central Coast region are in the lower Salinas and Santa Maria agricultural areas. In a statewide study, the state Department of Pesticide Regulation found the Salinas study area to have the highest percent of surface water sites with pyrethroid pesticides detected (85 percent) and the highest percent of sites that exceeded levels expected to be toxic (42 percent). Water should not kill who drinks it or lives in it.
According to the board, "In portions of the Salinas Valley, up to approximately 50 percent of the wells surveyed had concentrations above the nitrate drinking water standard." Studies show ag fertilizers are the overwhelming source of nitrates. Municipal users pay the cost of pre-treatment; rural wells are seldom treated. Drinking nitrate polluted water causes a variety of health problems including "blue baby syndrome."
