By JANE KAY, Chronicle Environmental Writer
Nov 28, 2000 (The San Francisco Chronicle)—Environmental groups are challenging an 18-year-old loophole in state clean water law that they say allows Central Valley farmers to send toxic pulses of pesticides into rivers and eventually the bay.
For decades, regulators have reduced pollution into waterways from factories, sewage treatment plants and city streets under a tough state water-quality law.
Yet a waiver to California farmers has exempted pesticide-laden irrigation water that is contaminating the environment, charge two watchdog groups, San Francisco BayKeeper and DeltaKeeper.
The groups are expected to file a petition today with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in Sacramento, the board that granted the waiver in 1982.
The petition requests a termination of the waiver, which affects millions of gallons of runoff a year from up to 7 million acres of farmland. The petition asks that the growers seek permits for field runoff, and pay for monitoring of waste water.
An end to the waiver is necessary, they argue, because pesticides from farms are harming fish and wildlife, perhaps providing a greater threat than any other pollutant.
"Unfortunately, the California growers have become a leading source of toxic pollution that is now endangering the health of our waters and everything living in them," said Jonathan Kaplan, chief of the San Francisco BayKeeper organization in the Presidio. "What we're up against here is that the biggest source of pesticide contamination is the least regulated. It's long since time that agriculture step up to the plate like any other industry and comply with California's clean water laws."
Last year, the California Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm industry group, fought efforts by environmentalists to pass a law eliminating the waivers.
"Absolutely, we were opposed," said California Farm Bureau spokeswoman Tess Dunham. "We thought it was impractical to take away all waiver provisions entirely."
"There are probably up to 100,000 farms in California," she added. "If you're going to require a waste discharge permit for every one, you're going to have to dramatically increase staff without necessarily providing more protection for water quality."
"Just because a pesticide turns up in a river once doesn't mean there's a negative health impact on humans and the environment," said Dunham.
In addition, many growers are operating at a loss and would have a difficulty paying for testing and complying with provisions placed on other dischargers, Dunham said.
In the last decade, scientists have documented the presence of pesticides in rivers, sometimes at levels that kill invertebrates -- food for the larger animals -- and threaten drinking water supplies, migratory birds and fish.
Environmental groups cite a growing body of research:
-- Studies approved by federal and state environmental agencies in 1998 show that toxic discharges of pesticides impaired 565 miles of rivers and creeks and more than 488,224 acres of San Joaquin- Sacramento Delta waters.
-- A 1998 study by scientists at the University of California at Davis showed that some of the chemicals might be upsetting the reproduction of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds in the Central Valley. The phenomenon has already been observed in the Great Lakes and Florida.
-- A study conducted for the California Urban Water Agencies found that water in the San Joaquin and Sacramento river basins and the delta -- major spawning and rearing habitat for salmon, steelhead trout, striped bass, shad and sturgeon -- was killing algae, invertebrates and fish. Fish from the bay and delta ecosystem had organic chlorine compounds in their tissues.
-- U.S. Geological Survey studies found in 1995 that the popular farm and home chemical Diazinon pulsed into the Sacramento after a rainfall at levels that killed some invertebrates. Other studies confirmed that the pesticides methyl parathion, malathion and chlorpyrifos also were killing invertebrates.
The petition was prepared by Michael Lozeau, formerly of San Francisco BayKeeper and now a staff attorney with Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which manages the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School.
Water pollution is regulated by laws at the national and state level. At the federal level, the Clean Water Act of 1972 offers a specific exemption permitting farm runoff.
Although a tougher state statute -- the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act of 1969 -- applies to all dischargers, the law also gives the regional water boards the authority to grant waivers, if they find they're in the public interest.
Last year, State Sen. DeDe Alpert, D-San Diego, drafted what turned out to be compromise legislation, which limited the waivers to five years, then required review. The original version, sponsored by San Francisco BayKeeper and opposed by the California Farm Bureau, would have eliminated the regional boards' authority to grant waivers.
Because of the waiver, said Rudy Schnagl, chief of the Central Valley regional board's agricultural unit, growers aren't required to seek waste discharge permits with his agency.
Instead, the state Department of Pesticide Regulation and county agricultural commission officers regulate pesticides, including working with growers to keep rice pesticides from running into the Sacramento River. There are programs in the works to reduce both Diazinon and chlorpyrifos in waste waters.
As new state and federal laws get under way, Schnagl said, "Eventually we will be returning to irrigated agriculture and seeking a reduction from those sources. In the Central Valley we've never had the ability to go field by field and analyze the runoff."
(C) 2000 The San Francisco Chronicle. via Bell&Howell Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
