Russian roulette with water

Published online on Monday, Jul. 06, 2009

While cutbacks in Delta irrigation water for 600 growers in the Westlands Water District continue to dominate the California water wars, a bigger problem as old as civilization itself -- salt -- will force the state Water Resources Control Board this week to decide whether to protect the long-term health of critical drinking water aquifers or to permit the continued use of aquifers and rivers as public toilets.

California has long had an anti-degradation policy, which is supposed to preclude the polluting of surface and groundwater supplies from the brine and waste stream of agriculture, industry and municipalities. The policy has been quietly ignored and the state's nine regional boards have routinely granted anti-dumping waivers which have led to the current perilous state of aquifers throughout the state.

On Tuesday, the state board will consider a petition filed by the California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance challenging the validity of the city of Lodi's wastewater disposal practices, especially its disposal of salts of all kinds. The board's staff is recommending the polluting discharge practices be halted.

Why is Lodi so important? It turns out that Lodi has food processing plants, wineries, dry cleaners and several industrial manufacturers that are currently allowed by the Central Valley Regional Water Board to dump their untreated brine and untreated hazardous wastes into unlined ponds or directly on to the ground. The salty groundwater plume migrates and can eventually seep into nearby creeks, rivers, or in Lodi's case, the embattled Delta.

The problem began when the Central Valley Regional Board issued a permit in September of 2007 allowing Lodi to continue dumping untreated waste waters to unlined ponds or on the ground, where it seeps into groundwater. This same regional board, headed by Fresno State University Professor Karl Longley, also granted western San Joaquin Valley growers a controversial waiver in 2006 to continue dumping highly salty drainwater containing selenium into the lower Delta.

If the state board bows to industry pressure and rejects the staff recommendation to halt the polluting practices, industries statewide will be allowed to continue dumping their untreated wastewaters on the ground. Reportedly, the governor's office is leaning on board members to vote against their own staff and allow continued Lodi dumping or face removal from the board.

Water politics can make some really strange bedfellows. The California Farm Bureau Federation and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, who are often at odds, are in agreement that urban salt dumping must end. Farmers don't like crop-damaging salts or other contaminants in their surface or groundwater. The fishing folks want to see a healthy Delta fishery. Salts can destroy a civilization. Ask the Mesopotamians. Ask the Westlands Water District.

This is yet another key test for the state and regional water boards, which were the subject of a critical report by the state watchdog agency, the Little Hoover Commission, issued in January of this year.

The report noted the water boards issue permits, set standards and adopt TMDLs [total maximum daily load of a contaminant] every year that have serious consequences for both business and the environment, and "water board officials acknowledge some of those decisions are essentially made without sufficient information. Lack of monitoring data, the vastness of California's waters and a still-growing understanding of water science contribute to regulatory guesswork. The effect of regulation is often unknown." In other words, we're playing Russian roulette with public health.

As Pamela Creeden, executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Control Board, admitted to a Hoover Commission advisory committee, "We base our decisions on such little data."

It is clear the city of Lodi is polluting local groundwater. Now the State Board must decide whether it will approve the Regional Board's short-sighted waivers or whether it will begin to reverse the slow salting up and polluting of the state's critical groundwater drinking supplies.

Lloyd G. Carter is president of the California Save Our Streams Council. He has a web site: www.LloydGCarter.com.