Rural Central Valley Community Members Demand Clean Drinking Water

MEDIA ADVISORY AUGUST 4th 2006                                                    

Susana De Anda 661-586-2611
Laurel Firestone 661-586-2622
 
Rural Communities Demand Clean Drinking Water
Grassroots coalition exposes failures of Regional Water Board to fulfill legal obligations
 
WHAT: Press conference to announce petition that demands the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board fulfill its legal mandate to protect California groundwater.
 
WHO: Central Valley-wide grassroots coalition Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua (AGUA) and Assemblymember Juan Arambula.
 
WHEN: Saturday, August 5th, 2006 10:00 am
 
WHERE: 2550 Mariposa Mall, Fresno, in front of the Hugh Burns State Building
 
Members of the AGUA coalition and Assemblymember Juan Arambula Saturday will address the Central Valley’s need for a practical, effective, comprehensive groundwater protection program.
 
AGUA is a coalition of communities impacted by contaminated drinking water that has come together to hold the Regional Board accountable for widespread fertilizer and pesticide pollution in groundwater. Years of unregulated pollution has led to toxic groundwater, which over ninety percent of communities in the Central Valley drink. AGUA is submitting a legal petition that demands the Regional Board start regulating the 1600 dairies in the Central Valley, one of the sources of pollution contaminating drinking water source.
 
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
654 13th Street
Oakland CA 94612
(510) 286-8400
http://www.ejcw.org

PRESS RELEASE

For More Information: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts: Susana De Anda 661-586-2611, Laurel Firestone 661-586-2622
 
Rural Community Members Demand Clean Drinking Water
Grassroots Coalition exposes failures of Regional Water Board to fulfill legal obligations
 
Fresno, CA – A new coalition of communities who suffer from contaminated drinking water are outraged at the failure of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Board) to protect groundwater. The Association of People United for Safe Water, or, La Asociacion de la Gente Unida por el Agua (AGUA) submitted a legal petition to the Board demanding the agency live up to its mandate under California law to protect groundwater throughout the Central Valley.
 
Representing 10 rural San Joaquin Valley communities and 5 State-wide advocacy organizations, the AGUA coalition has a disarmingly simple request: clean, safe, affordable drinking water. But their success is hindered by what AGUA calls the “cycle of poison:” as the Board fails to properly regulate industry, groundwater is polluted, and communities are forced to pay for and drink contaminated water.
 
In an effort to break this cycle, AGUA filed a legal petition on Friday, demanding the Board stop granting special breaks to the dairy industry, a leading groundwater polluter. The Board has been allowing dairies to discharge for years without permits, and their own studies show that the old regulations on the books are inadequate to protect groundwater.  Since waivers for dairies expired in 2003, the Board has failed to comply with California law by not setting permit requirements (called WDRs) to any of the over 1600 dairies it oversees.  The board seems to have spent three years working on a general Permit behind closed doors with the dairy industry. But despite its numerous meeting with industry, the board has yet to release a draft to the public.
 
The legal petition submitted on behalf of AGUA demands that the Board begin issuing waste discharge requirements and make any draft general permits open for public review.  “Without any permit in place, the board cannot protect the groundwater that communities rely on for drinking water from further degradation,” says Laurel Firestone, an attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment who filed the petition with the Board.
 
While the Board continues to waive pollution restrictions and deliberates over their general permitting process, hundreds of rural communities throughout the Central Valley can’t even fill a glass of tap water without fear of health problems. Over ninety percent of communities in the Central Valley receive poisoned groundwater through their taps. The Central Valley now boasts the state’s most toxic groundwater.
 
“People living in communities like mine are paying with their health because this agency has failed, and we will no longer stand for it ,” said AGUA member Jesus Quevedo from Cutler. “We are simply asking the Regional Board to do its job.”
 
Assemblymember Juan Arambula has stated, “We need a comprehensive regional groundwater monitoring and regulation program that is practical and effective.  The Central Valley has gone too long without properly protecting precious water resources for its rural communities.  It is the Regional Board’s legal responsibility to protect the quality of Central Valley’s groundwater.”
 
In June, the Board renewed the controversial agricultural waiver program, despite protests from AGUA and other members of the public. This program waives monitoring and protection requirements for all water flowing off fields and into groundwater. Irrigated run-off contains high concentrations of pesticides and fertilizers, which lead to nitrate and pesticide contamination of sources many communities rely on for drinking water. As a result, rural counties such as Tulare have the highest number of well closures due to nitrate and pesticide contamination.
 
Small, rural communities like those represented in AGUA pay as much as 2 to 6 percent of their income for undrinkable water. Many residents drive 30 to 50 miles each week just to buy bottled water, effectively paying twice for a vital resource. When wells fail, most small communities must shoulder the costs all by themselves, paying for expensive treatment and well operations from a base of only a couple hundred, often low-income, people.  In both 2003 and 2004, almost 40,000 people were impacted by tap water that regularly exceeded state health limits.
 
“It is tragic and unacceptable that the communities that can least afford it are paying some of the highest water rates in California,” said Laurel Firestone, attorney with Delano-based Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. “Mendota, Parlier, East Orosi, Cutler, Alpaugh, Tooleville – these are some of California’s poorest communities, and they all have severe water contamination. While industry gets a green light to pollute, rural communities pay.”
 
“The current Board doesn’t seem to listen to voices from people like myself – they certainly didn’t listen when we traveled over 600 miles to testify at the agricultural waiver hearing,” says Ruth Martinez, resident of Ducor, CA, and a member of AGUA. “AGUA has united to demand the Board actually serve the public like it’s supposed to. And as the public, we are saying we need our groundwater cleaned up.” 
 
Firestone adds, “The dairy permitting process is a chance for the Board to show it is proactively addressing groundwater contamination.”
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August 3, 2006
 
 
Senator Pro Temp Don Perata
Chair
Senate Rules Committee
State Capitol
Room 400
Sacramento, CA 95814
 
RE: Appointments to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board
 
Dear Senator Perata,
 
We are writing on behalf of low-income rural communities and communities of color in the Central Valley in strong opposition to the continued lack of compliance with state law regarding the required appointments for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (CVRWQCB). 

Water Code Section 13201(a)(7) requires not only that every regional board have three appointees 'not specifically associated with any of the foregoing categories,' which include water supply, irrigated agriculture, county government, municipal government, fish and wildlife, or industrial water use; but also that two of these three appointees "shall have special competence in areas related to water quality problems."  Hence, not only should three board appointments be unrelated to irrigated agriculture or water supply, but at least two of them are supposed to be particularly knowledgeable on water quality problems.
As currently appointed by the Governor, only one appointment has specific knowledge of water quality problems and is not associated with one of the other discharger categories, Mr. Robert Schneider.  Instead of following the requirements of the California Water Code, the Governor has appointed two seats to represent water supply and has appointed a person associated with irrigated agriculture to fill one of the Public Seats. [Please see attached for more detail.]

Although as a ranch owner, Ms. Sopac Mulholland may have knowledge regarding the water supply and agricultural needs of the Central Valley, those perspectives are already over represented on the board with the Irrigated Agriculture Seat [Paul Betancourt[1]] and the Water Supply Seat [Alson Brizard, farmer]; and further indirectly represented by the other Water Supply Seat [Karl Longley] and the existing vacant seat for Industrial Water Use, which has traditionally also gone to agricultural interests.
 
In fact, Ms. Sopac Mulholland is herself a discharger that had to be excused from voting on the agricultural conditional waiver decision because of conflicts.  This vote and others like it require a public voice!  The water code has provisions to ensure that this seat is for a public member who will not have this conflict and will in fact have knowledge of the water quality problems in our Valley.
 
Like many of the Regional Water Quality Control Boards, the Central Valley Board is not representative of the communities it serves.  Given that the Board is responsible for establishing, issuing and enforcing requirements on dischargers in order to protect the beneficial uses of the Central Valley’s surface and groundwater, it is imperative that communities that are dependent on their enforcement have a seat on the Board as is required by existing law, most notably communities with water quality problems.
 
Moreover, according to the California Code of Regulations Section 98101(f), “it is a discriminatory practice for a recipient [of state funds] to fail to make reasonable efforts to achieve a representative board.”  While this does not impose a quota, it does mandate that the Governor, in order to comply with the civil rights requirements of Government Code Section 11135, take steps to ensure that appointed boards are representative of the demographic of its jurisdiction. Thus far, the Governor has failed to do so based on race and income.  Thirty-two percent of the Central Valley Region is Latino, yet the Governor has failed to appoint a single Latino member.  Nor are there any low-income persons appointed to this board to represent the Central Valley where close to a quarter of the population lives in poverty.
 
Confirming this Public Seat appointee would be unlawful and affirming the Governor’s appointees that are not in accordance with existing law that governs the make of the CVRWQCB.   On behalf of low income and people of color in the Central Valley, we urge the Governor to appoint individuals who are truly representative of the communities’ interests and demographics.
 
Sincerely,
 
Deborah Davis
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
 
Laurel Firestone
Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment
 
Martha Guzman
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
 
Stephanie Camoroda
Latino Issues Forum
 
Cc:       Senator Gilbert Cedillo
            Senator Deborah Bowen
            Assembly Member Juan Arambula
            Dennis Albiani, Governor’s Office