Education For Environmental Responsibility

Farming Near Rivers Under Scrutiny New Regulations Could Target Farming Practices

This article appeared in CAPCA Adviser magazine in December, 1998

By Parry Klassen

Ever heard of the water flea (Ceriodaphnia dubia)? It’s barely visible to the naked eye, doesn’t call California home, nor live on the back of your bird dog.

The water flea is sensitive to insecticides at levels down to parts per billion, even parts per trillion. As such, the water flea serves as the indicator species that regulators use to check if insecticides in water are at high enough levels to cause a concern.

The bad news is that occasionally, the water flea dies when dropped into a petri dish filled with water from the Sacramento or San Joaquin Rivers. Not every water sample pulled from these rivers or their many tributaries contains enough insecticide to kill the water flea. But occasionally, some do.

Those detections should be a yellow flag waving in the face of every PCA and grower who operates within the drainage of these two river systems. The reason: regulators already know pesticides are showing up in water, although not at health advisory levels or enough to harm fish. But they are watching the situation closely and talking about different options to fix the problem.

Insecticides can inadvertently get into the rivers of Central California in a number of ways: spray drift from nearby fields, irrigation tailwater runoff, improper mixing and loading near water bodies, or field runoff after heavy rains. Runoff from urban streams, wastewater treatment facilities and storm water can also contribute to the problem.

The challenge facing Central Valley agriculture and the cities built on the shores of this river system: insecticides are vital for controlling insects that destroy crops and landscapes, but they can also kill the water flea. How do we continue controlling pests on land while sparing the organisms that may serve as a food source for fish and other wildlife in the rivers of California?

Agriculture doesn’t have much time to figure out how it will answer that question. A growing list of new and existing regulations are being readied for enforcement, from the Clean Water Act to state laws implemented by State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards. In addition, literally millions of dollars in funding have been allocated to set-up sensitive water monitoring sites along rivers and streams. Samples are being analyzed with equipment that can detect pesticides at 0.07 parts per trillion.

Several efforts are under way to get the word out about the potential regulatory onslaught and figure out ways to adjust insecticide applications and farming practices used within the Sacramento/San Joaquin River drainage system. One of these efforts, sponsored by CURES (Coalition For Urban/Rural Environmental Stewardship) will begin outreach activities this fall and winter in meetings coordinated by CAPCA and grower organizations. CURES is a non-profit education organization established in 1997 as the stewardship arm of the Western Crop Protection Association (WCPA).

At the same time, federal and state regulators are sharpening their rule-making pencils. The Department of Pesticide Regulation has been working with the State Water Board to develop Pesticide Management Plans (PMP) to handle nonpoint source water pollution in the rivers of California. These plans have an incentive-based approach that allows problems to be resolved through voluntary remedies – unless the problem needs an immediate fix.

• Stage 1: Outreach and education or preventative;
• Stage 2: Self regulating by sponsors;
• Stage 3: Regulation by DPR and the ag commissioners;
• Stage 4: Regulation by State or Regional Water Boards.

If agriculture and the crop protection industry can show progress and success by implementing stage 1 activities, more draconian surface water regulations hopefully can be avoided. Unfortunately, a "fix" to any surface water problem assumes there is a fixed target to aim at. This is not always the case in the evolving world of surface water regulations.

Take for example the water flea. Scientists, water experts and regulators have yet to agree that the water flea is an appropriate indicator specie to estimate risk to the aquatic ecosystem. Also disputed is the impact of occasional insecticide "spikes" at parts per trillion levels found in some samples: do those minor events mean that the entire river food chain is damaged or only experiencing a localized and insignificant "ding" followed by a quick recovery?

On a much larger scale is the issue of regulatory standards and authority over pesticides detected in surface water. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) dictates how crop protection products are registered and used in the U.S., making decisions on a "risk-based standard." The Clean Water Act, on the other hand, regulates water pollutants on a "hazard-based standard." Somehow these two standards must be harmonized so that a very important question can be answered: is there ecological relevance to finding an insecticide in the river at parts per trillion levels? To date, no harm has been documented when fish and other higher life forms are exposed to insecticides at parts per trillion levels. What is uncertain is the impact on the lowest level of the food chain such as invertebrate organisms. This question is being hotly debated in scientific and regulatory circles and will continue in coming months and years. Complicating the issue even more is the public perception of these very low level pesticide detections, which may not seem so low when described out of context.

Adding another level of complexity to the regulatory side is state authority over insecticides in surface water. Currently, the DPR enforces FIFRA and related pesticide laws. The Clean Water Act, on the other hand, is enforced by the State Water Quality Control Board. An operating agreement between DPR and the water boards called a "Management Agency Agreement" (MAA) was developed to reduce duplication of effort and confusion within the regulated community.

Another approaching storm for agriculture and state regulators is a product of the Clean Water Act, a concept called "Total Maximum Daily Load," better known as TMDL. A TMDL is a numeric target for pollutants or "stressors" that a water body is allowed to have. A TMDL is required when a body of water is determined to be "impaired." This impairment can be caused by silt, nutrients, temperature, or pesticides – among other things -- at levels out of compliance with the Clean Water Act. A TMDL, as its name indicates, is the total load from pollutants brought into a river each day by urban storm water discharges, water treatment plants, or non-point sources from agriculture. If a river or stream is deemed to be "impaired," a TMDL must be developed. Next, the plan to bring that water body back into compliance must be implemented. There is no small controversy over which agency is in charge of making sure that plan gets completed.

California has the distinction of being one of the few regions where a Water Board has named pesticide active ingredients as high priority for TMDL development. This because a number of water bodies – the San Joaquin River being one – are listed as impaired in-part by pesticides. Subsequently, California will once again be a "leader" in establishing precedence for how pesticide TMDLs are set throughout the nation.

Most unsettling is that in other regions of the U.S., EPA is being forced to act on errant TMDLs by lawsuits filed by activist groups. To date, 42 lawsuits have been filed and of those resolved, all settled in favor of the complainant. Many fear that using litigation to form policy will force EPA to act too quickly on developing TMDLs, foregoing adequate and thorough scientific study in favor of expediency. To prevent such a reaction, farm and industry groups in recent months have begun formulating plans to get ahead of the issue before regulations are finalized.

One of the most extensive water monitoring programs of Central Valley rivers is by the United States Geological Service (USGS) under the National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) program. As part of a nationwide effort, NAWQA is working on two key agricultural "study units" in California: the Sacramento River Basin and the San Joaquin/Tulare Basin. In the first three years of the study, NAWQA detected more than a dozen pesticides in the rivers, with 37% of the samples exceeding the aquatic life criteria (i.e. flunked the water flea test). More disconcerting is that results from the San Joaquin/Tulare Basin study showed pesticide levels that are higher than many study unit in the U.S.

A separate water quality study funded by Dow AgroSciences gives a number of clues as to how, when and how much pesticide residues make it into the rivers when common farming practices are used. A study site along Orestimba Creek in Merced County, near the confluence of the San Joaquin River, was selected in part because of previous data gathering efforts and for its variety of crops, including walnuts, almonds, and alfalfa. Detailed information on irrigation practices and timing, schedules of spray applications and other information was overlaid with frequent water sampling data along Orestimba Creek. While the study is still in progress, preliminary results indicate that "peaks" in detections corresponded to irrigation events and subsequent tailwater runoff, inadvertent spray drift, and storm runoff during the dormant season.

While scientists and regulators debate the issues surrounding surface water quality, growers and their PCAs must work with commodity groups, farm advisors, regulators and others to devise management practices that minimize off site movement of insecticides. And each farm and field poses its own unique challenge.

Already, some growers and PCAs are way ahead of the curve by developing their own tailwater management systems, planting buffer or filter strips for runoff, and following spray drift management practices to a tee. These and other proven best management practices hold the most promise for heading off what might be some fairly onerous regulations to farm under. But time is short for bringing those lagging behind the curve up to speed. It’s a situation that PCAs in California can and must play a leading part.