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Welcome to the Water Quality Regulation section of the Southern California Agriculture Water Team's website.

The Southern California Agricultural Water Team was formed to respond to a rapidly changing regulatory environment regarding water quality. The purpose of this webpage is to provide you with updated information regarding the regulation of agricultural activities among the various Regional Boards.

Return flows from irrigation or storm water runoff from agricultural lands sometimes inadvertently carry pollutants to receiving waters. For example, receiving waters may be affected by nutrients or pesticides that are carried by runoff into nearby streams or to groundwater by infiltration. Regional Water Quality Control Boards are no longer passive observers regarding agriculture. Today, due to new legislation mandating that Regional Water Boards update permit waivers and the recent use of a new regulatory tool known as Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), the rules are dramatically changing. The result is that the Regional Water Boards are now taking a very close look at how agriculture affects water quality and imposing tough and costly new requirements.

Agriculture and Water Quality: The Next Challenge

Water issues have always been of paramount concern to California avocado growers. This is because water can represent as much as two-thirds of growers' production costs. In the early 1990s, as water wholesalers and local water districts embarked on major capital improvement projects, agricultural water rates began to escalate.

The California Avocado Commission's issues management radar identified this trend early, and the Southern California Agricultural Water Team (SCAWT) was put in place to address growers' concerns. By engaging in resource and rate discussions with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and its member agencies, and communicating the benefits provided to the region by agriculture, SCAWT was effective in securing rate relief for growers in the form of the Interim Agricultural Water Program (IAWP).

In recognition of the fact that, by law, water provided to agriculture was interruptible, Metropolitan adopted a favorable rate differential between full priced, municipal and industrial water and agricultural water which reflects this reduced level of service. Growers have realized savings in excess of $200 million since the program was first put in place in 1994.

Since then, the SCAWT has addressed various other issues affecting California avocado growers, including the Cachuma Project Contract Renewal, the San Diego County Water Authority Agricultural Water Program, and the favorable positioning of agriculture during Metropolitan's rate restructuring process and in the District's Water Supply and Drought Management Plan.

In 2001, SCAWT began to turn its attention to water quality issues. The information below is provided to help growers understand this increasingly complex subject and the likely impact of new regulatory actions by state and federal agencies tasked with protecting local water supplies.

Introduction:

Growers across California are beginning to understand that there is a new reality setting in when it comes to their relationship with the State's nine Regional Water Quality Control Boards (Regional Boards). It is a relationship borne of changes in state law and the pressures of litigation that together, will now impose significant new costs on the agricultural community.

Two separate events have joined to create this new reality. First, long-standing exemptions provided to the agricultural community from the requirements of the State's water quality laws were challenged. Second, litigation from the environmental community has forced the state to enforce a provision of the federal Clean Water Act that requires the adopting of stringent plans to require water cleanup by specified dates. Together, these events are dramatically altering the status of the agricultural community in the eyes of water regulators.

The SCAWT has been carefully following these developments, and is presently working with State water resource agencies to help regulators understand the challenges faced by avocado growers. Every effort has been made to work cooperatively with such agencies to minimize any unreasonable, adverse impact new regulations may have on avocado operations.

Irrigation and Water Quality:

Irrigation bestows many benefits, but also some unintended impacts on the state's many waterways. Until recently, those impacts were largely accepted by the Regional Boards as the natural state of affairs. Previously, most Regional Boards treated agricultural discharges as a low priority. They preferred, instead, to reduce contamination by targeting sewage treatment plants discharges and storm water runoff from urban areas. To provide agriculture with legal protection, most regional water boards covered discharges from irrigated agricultural lands under a waiver which provided an exemption from active regulation. In most cases, these waivers were issued years ago.

Over time, as high priority water quality problems were addressed, the focus turned to other potential sources of pollution, including discharges of irrigation return flows. New legislation backed by environmentalists and enacted in 1999 called for a closer look at agricultural discharges and their contribution as a potential source of pollutants. The new law required Regional Boards to renew old waivers and, when doing so, to determine that water quality was being adequately protected.

Regional Boards have Begun Implementation of Existing Law:

Growers in the Central Valley were the first to experience this new, get-tough policy adopted by local regional water quality control boards. Following a contentious process that continues today with ongoing litigation, a new conditional waiver was put in place, affecting most Central Valley growers. The new waiver requires growers to monitor water quality, either as part of a group or as individuals. Already, legal costs and expenses associated with laboratories and consultants to conduct monitoring are mounting, while uncertainty remains over what will happen next.

The key concept of the conditional waiver issued by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board is simple - get more information on water quality and why established tolerances are being exceeded; identify exactly where the pollutants are coming from; and require potential contributors of the pollutants (which could be growers) to adopt in-field measures, known as Best Management Practices or BMPs, to prevent pollutants from finding their way into streams, rivers and groundwater.

The basic concept behind conditional waivers may be straightforward, but it will take considerable monitoring before a single farm or a large area can be isolated as a polluter. Once isolated, the obligation to control pollutants will be clear and potentially costly.

Conditional waivers are now in place for the Central Coast counties of Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara, and a draft conditional waiver is under development by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, which has jurisdiction over growers situated in Ventura County. It is only a matter of time before all growers are affected.

The Commission's Water Team is Working Hard to Help Shape Regulation and Minimize Grower Impacts

The Commission's Water Team played an important role in submitting comments to the Central Coast Regional Board as the conditional waiver was under development; and is now providing assistance with both grower communications and education during implementation of waiver requirements in the region. Our Team has also had recent meetings with the Los Angeles Regional Board and has provided written comments to the Board on their proposed waiver.

We have also recently submitted a research proposal seeking more than $1 million in Prop 50 funds (Proposition 50 was on the 2002 ballot and is a $3.46 billion bond issue to improve water quality, and to purchase, restore, and protect coastal wetlands). If successful we will use these monies in San Diego County to help understand the impact of orchard practices on water quality. This grant would also be used to formulate practical, sensible Best Management Practices for avocado growers. We hope that in doing this work we may avoid having other interested parties determine the future on our behalf.

The Long-Term Challenge:

While conditional waivers for irrigated agriculture are a significant emerging concern in their own right, it is the application of stringent Clean Water Act requirements that pose the greater long-term challenge. As water quality data are developed through the monitoring programs required by the conditional waivers, the Regional Boards will be able to refine their understanding of water quality conditions. If the data confirm water quality problems linked to agriculture, growers could be facing dramatic new regulatory requirements.

The vehicle for such new regulation would be tolerances established for Total Maximum Daily Loads or TMDLs for specific compounds. TMDL's can be thought of as an official water quality improvement roadmap which allocates responsibility to specific sources of pollutants and sets deadlines for water quality improvements. Once adopted by the Regional Boards, TMDL plans form the basis for more stringent permits to individual growers or groups of growers who have been designated responsible for the water quality problem. Currently pending before the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board is a TMDL for Rainbow Creek which expressly identifies avocado growing operations as a source of water quality pollutants covered by the TMDL and demands reductions of nutrients by 70-90% over a period of sixteen years.

More TMDLs and increasingly stringent conditional waivers can be expected as the Regional Boards continue their efforts to regulate the agricultural community. The long period where agriculture was viewed as a low priority and of little consequence is clearly over. The next twenty years will see an unprecedented level of scrutiny over the contribution of agriculture to water quality problems and escalating costs as growers comply with requirements to monitor water quality and to conform their practices to meet regulatory expectations.

The California Avocado Commission's Water Team will maintain a vigilant watch over political, legal and regulatory developments, and make every effort to help State agencies find reasonable ways to implement any new rules affecting avocado growers.

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