Water permit a win-win on the ag-environmental front
Maintaining an ample supply of fresh drinking water is rightfully a high priority for all Californians. That’s why the Feb. 7 op-ed about a recent stormwater discharge permit must have raised serious concerns among many readers.
That is unfortunate, because this is a good-news story, a winwin on the ag-environmental front. I speak as a farmer from the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the area spotlighted in the piece. My family has farmed there for nearly 100 years. In those early days and for much of the 20th century, water left over from crop production flowed naturally to the San Joaquin River.
However, in the 1990s, environmental concerns began to limit discharging to the river. We knew that rising groundwater would eventually salt up and drown out our root zones if we lost our outlet. We came together as a region and formed partnerships with the state and federal governments to develop a solution that would sustain agriculture, and the communities that rely on it for their livelihood, while protecting neighboring wetlands and improving water quality.
I serve on two drainage boards that participated in the creation of the venture. Local farmers, engineers and water managers developed a multifaceted approach that centered on three strategies: 1) conservation — using high-tech irrigation technology to minimize applied water; 2) reuse — blending the concentrated subsurface water with fresh water; and 3) production — applying the remaining drain water to salt-tolerant grass, which is then used for livestock feed. The solution that emerged was called the San Joaquin River Water Quality Improvement Project.
Fast-forward to Dec. 31, 2019.
This date marked the expiration of the final permit to discharge both agricultural and storm water. D-Day. When we set out 26 years before to address the challenge, zero discharge seemed an impossible goal. And yet, we actually met the goal four years early. That success was possible through the best kind of publicprivate partnerships between family farmers and the federal and state governments. Scrupulous and continuous monitoring has demonstrated the significant water quality benefits, leading the federal Environmental Protection Agency to declare the results “a success story.”
One significant challenge remains — stormwater. Like the city of San Jose, our management of stormwater to protect health, safety and the environment is regulated by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. On Jan 1, that board imposed even stricter limits on continued stormwater discharge from the region by issuing a new permit, one that will require stringent monitoring and reporting activities. To meet those new standards, we are busily working on a number of projects to expand our ability to manage normal drainage without discharge and to improve water quality in storm-related discharges when they do occur.
I am optimistic that we can succeed. So was the RWQCB, in issuing the permit, as well as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, all of which have oversight of our activities. We shall set to the task with the same determination, imagination and coalition-forming skills we used to achieve zero agricultural discharge on the San Joaquin River. Another good-news story is in the works.