Press Release: Allied Groups Demand End to Unregulated Agricultural Pollution

For Immediate Release
June 21, 2006
 
Contacts
Carrie McNeil, Deltakeeper Ch. Of Baykeeper, 916-952-2185
Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, 209-938-9053
Susana de Anda, Asociacíon de Gente Unida por el Agua, 661-586-2611 
Laurel Firestone, Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment, 661-586-2622
David Nesmith, California Environmental Water Caucus, 510-693-4979
Mindy McIntire, Planning and Conservation League, 916-541-8825
 
Allied Groups Demand End to Unregulated Agricultural Pollution
 
Rancho Cordova, CA. On Thursday, June 22, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board will consider renewing the waiver of pollution control requirements for discharges from the largest source of pollution to Central Valley waterways, irrigated farms.  More than 100 organizations representing fishermen, labor, public health, recreational boaters, environmental justice and local communities have demanded a stop to the agricultural industry’s unregulated pollution of California’s waterways and groundwater. 
 
The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Deltakeeper Chapter of Baykeeper, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, the Environmental Water Caucus, Allied Fishing Groups and many others will attend and speak at the Regional Board meeting to insist the agency reject a proposal that will continue to exempt farmers from reasonable requirements long applicable to virtually every other public and private entity in the state.
 
“The Board’s proposal to give this industry a special break on water quality laws is a slap in the face to the families who drink, swim in, fish in and boat in these pesticide-laden waters,” says Carrie McNeil, Deltakeeper Chapter Director. “Today, we join our neighbors from Visalia to Redding to make sure this Board no longer forgets whom they were actually appointed to protect.”
 
While agriculture has been exempt from pollution control requirements, the environment and people of the Central Valley have suffered the impacts of degraded waterways and threats to their health. Rivers, streams and groundwater throughout the Central Valley are highly contaminated with pesticides, metals and fertilizers. Toxic discharges have impacted water quality, fish populations, and damaged the drinking water supply for thousands of communities who rely on groundwater.
 
“The proposed waiver continues the transfer of the costs of pollution from polluter to the general public,” said Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. “It essentially cedes the Board’s statutory responsibility to protect waterways to industry advocacy groups. After 3 years of the present waiver, the Board doesn’t know who is discharging pollutants, what pollutants are being discharged, who is participating in the waiver program, or who has or has not implemented measures to reduce or eliminate pollution.”
 
Agricultural runoff has had severe health impacts for thousands of rural Californians. Fertilizers have leached into groundwater, causing high levels of nitrate contamination in the drinking water supply for much of the Central Valley.
 
“Our communities are the ones who are paying the costs of this waiver. We pay for drinking water that has been poisoned by these agricultural companies. Then, we pay even more money for bottled water because we can't drink our tap water. And then we have to live with the rashes, the hair loss, the threat to our health,” says Ruth Martinez, Ducor Water Board representative and member of Asociacíon de Gente Unida por el Agua (AGUA), a grassroots coalition of communities who traveled over 600 miles to protest the agricultural waiver. “We pay while they poison us."
 
“Californians and the Delta ecosystems cannot keep paying the price for corporate farm pollution,” said David Nesmith, coordinator for the Environmental Water Caucus. “It is both an irony and a tragedy that regulators seem to have no problem telling subsistence fishing families to stop eating locally-caught fish but struggle to tell these corporate farms to stop polluting.”
 
California clean water laws mandate all businesses discharging wastewater meet certain permitting and management requirements. The exception to the law allows regulatory boards to administer “waivers” from those usual requirements in cases where a waiver is in the public interest.  Both the Legislative Analyst Office and the State Senate Natural Resources Committee have critiqued the irrigated lands waiver. 
 
“I am appalled that the public and the Delta continue to be exposed to devastating pollution from some of California's largest agricultural operations," said California State Senator Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, the chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee. "The Legislature has focused a great deal of attention and resources to reverse, or at least improve, the near collapse of the Delta ecosystem. Every other industry in California is required to follow state water laws.  The same should surely be true for agriculture." 
 
                    --End--
 
Bill Jennings, Chairman
Executive Director
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
Watershed Enforcers
3536 Rainier Avenue    
Stockton, CA 95204
t: 209-464-5067
c: 209-938-9053
f: 209-464-1028
e: deltakeep [at] aol.com
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