Time for Ag to Step Up and Reduce Nitrate Contamination

I find it incredibly disturbing that in California, a State with the 7^th largest economy of any country in the world, we have drinking water issues that we share with countries that are at the bottom of the economic ladder, the so called Third World Countries.  The United Nations even sent a Special Rapporteur, Catarina de Albuquerque, to the United States to report on safe drinking water and sanitation.  The report, available here - http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/18session/A-HRC-18-33-Add4_en.pdf - was widely reported on in the press (http://newamericamedia.org/2011/09/un-report-california-county-lacks-clean-water.php ; http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/25/local/la-me-seville-water-20110425 ; http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/comment/reply/9877 ), and documents how terrible water quality conditions are in parts of California’s Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world.  The ground water aquifers in the area, from where most drinking water is drawn, are contaminated with nitrates, arsenic, and pesticides.  While the arsenic is most likely naturally occurring in many if not all of these areas, the nitrates and pesticides are definitely the result of intensive agricultural practices, which include both applications of nitrate fertilizers and the disposal of waste from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFO’s.  Currently, several of the Regional Water Quality Control Boards around California, because this is an issue not exclusive to the Central Valley,  are working on adopting new rules that will require agricultural entities to reduce groundwater and surface water pollution from nitrate fertilizers, pesticides and sediment carried from irrigated farm fields.  Needless to say, these regulations are hotly contested by the agricultural lobby as being too expensive and otherwise burdensome for farmers to deal with.  As a regulatory and water quality professional working in the highly regulated field of drinking water, I agree that regulations are burdensome, as well as irksome, but they are also highly necessary to protect public health, and it is more than past time for agriculture to step up and bear the responsibility for the havoc they are reeking on the ground water resources of this State.  Agriculture needs to stop foisting the problem off on to the residents of poverty stricken, politically orphaned, primarily Latino communities who suffer the economic damage and degraded health that is the result of this agricultural pollution.  Instead, they need to do the right thing by working hard and long, something farmers are very good at, to do the monitoring, reporting, and implementation of best management practices that will begin to turn this problem around and clean up California’s precious ground water resources.