Richard S. Quandt/Guest Commentary | Posted: Saturday, July 4, 2009 12:00 am
There is concern among Santa Maria?s farmers about efforts by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to begin regulating tail water that drains into agricultural ditches. This includes not only irrigation water used for crops, but also storm water flows during winter rains.
Upper management of the board is developing a number of sweeping new regulations that will curtail established irrigation practices. These new regulations would be inserted into a new agricultural waste-discharge permit, or included as conditions in the new waiver that is expected next summer.
The new water-quality regulations being supported by board management include numeric objectives for nutrients protective of aquatic habitat that are 20 times lower that the current drinking-water standards; using an unproven bio-stimulatory model to assess nitrate levels; requiring farmers to set aside a 30-foot vegetative buffer strip between crops and riparian areas; requiring farmers with tail water to monitor that water as it flows off their farms, and report those results to the board.
Much of the regulatory pressure being exerted comes from U.S. Fish & Wildlife. This is the same federal agency responsible for shutting down water deliveries in the San Joaquin Valley, resulting in the fallowing of farm land and loss of 30,000 jobs.
This agency is unfairly pressuring the RWQCB to use the waiver as a regulatory trigger to limit farming practices near resources of concern by that agency.
The most disappointing aspect is that staff?s new enforcement posture is undermining grower interest to continue making improvements.
According to a review of management practices reported to the RWQCB, approximately 80 percent of local growers have switched from furrow to micro-sprinkler irrigation to reduce runoff. Evapo-transpiration data and mobile irrigation labs are used to measure soil moisture and improve irrigation efficiency.
More than 75 percent of the total farmed acres have adopted fertility-management practices designed to lower nitrate levels. Soil, crop and wells are regularly tested for nitrogen content, and nutrient budgets are established and recorded.
Finally, integrated pesticide management practices are being used on 88 percent of farmed acres, reducing the amount of chemicals being used for crop protection.
The heavy-handed, top-down regulatory approach being dictated by staff promises to undermine those positive efforts. They are placing farmers and the board in an adversarial role.
The trust and cooperation that many nourished is being tossed out the window. Staff and the board need to understand the current waiver has been generally successful, and future efforts need to build upon those successes.
Staff needs to understand that urban water policies, adopted at great cost by public agencies, are often not technically or economically feasible for each and every farmer.
Most importantly, the board needs to understand that water-quality improvement will take time, and will require a sustained cooperative effort working with, not against, the agricultural community.
Richard S. Quandt is head of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
July 4, 2009