environmental Strategist, between the lines: Not through any nefarious act but simply to put food on our tables, the agricultural industry has created a profusion of environmental liabilities.
If you have and / or had agricultural operations in your community, chances a very good you have third party new and legacy environmental exposures impacting you.
Liabilities created by third parties is a huge environmental exposure. What is your strategy to address the third party environmental liabilities impacting you? Pollution insurance is one consideration as part of your financial assurance strategy versus self-insurance. Pollution insurance can protect you from the costs of legal fees, investigation, clean up, business interruption, disposal… created by third party liabilities.
Here is another third party environmental liability example. In the United States we have in excess of 300,000 known leaking underground storage tanks that we have no money to pay for cleanup, third party bodily injury…. My question is, how many leaking underground storage tanks don’t we know about that are impacting third parties?
California farm communities pay price for decades of fertilizer use
A pollutant that has leached into California aquifers since farmers first began using synthetic fertilizer continues to accumulate and would not be removed from groundwater even if the state’s agriculture businesses abruptly quit using nitrogen-based materials to boost the productivity of their crops.
That’s one of the themes of a new study from the UC Davis Agriculture Sustainability Institute that assesses the scale and sources of a kind of pollution that can harm infants if it seeps into groundwater and contributes to respiratory problems if it drifts into the air as a gas.
The report is the widest look yet at pollution from nitrogen, a common contaminant that the State Water Quality Control Board has tried in fits and starts to remove from Central Valley agricultural communities over the past decade.
The report’s authors offer a range of solutions – from creating a cap-and-trade-style market for nitrogen emissions to encouraging better waste-management practices on farms – but they concede that it could take decades to clean up groundwater that has collected fertilizer runoff since the 1940s.
“We don’t have enough technology on the shelf to be able to address the issue now,” said sustainability institute director Tom Tomich, who led the study. “There’s a need for collaboration with farmers and ranchers to develop solutions to these challenges.”
His team took seven years to weave together a broad picture of nitrogen pollution up and down the state. Past efforts have focused on specific regions, such as a 2012 study that showed up to 250,000 people are highly vulnerable to nitrogen contamination in the Salinas and southern San Joaquin valleys.
Tomich’s study found that California generates about 1.8 million tons of nitrogen every year. More than half of it comes from agricultural sources, which rely on nitrogen as a key component in fertilizers.
Of that, about 419,000 tons leach into groundwater, where it becomes a salt known as nitrate. Overexposure to nitrates in drinking water can hurt an infant’s ability to move oxygen in the bloodstream. It’s a condition known as “blue baby syndrome.”
1.8 million tonsAmount of nitrogen released in California every year
In western Stanislaus County, the city of Modesto in 2005 built a special treatment plant to supply water to the small community of Grayson because of nitrate pollution in its wells. Delano in Kern County and Ripon in San Joaquin County also are testing new nitrate-removal processes. McFarland, also in Kern County, has had a nitrate-removal system in its water treatment plant since the 1980s.
“Communities right now are living with nitrogen water. Kids go to school and they’re told not to drink from the taps, and they’re told to buy bottled water,” said Debi Ores, an attorney for the advocacy group Community Water Center. “The problem is the communities are the ones paying the price, not the dischargers.”
Farmers and dairymen had been anticipating the release of the nitrogen assessment for some time. Many are reducing nitrogen pollution by taking steps to prevent fertilizer from going to waste or reforming their manure-management practices. Some effectively reuse nitrogen-polluted groundwater on their crops.
“This is legacy stuff,” said Danny Merkley, director of water resources at the California Farm Bureau. “It’s an issue that is really by no means a product of any nefarious act. It’s literally people doing what they were told and thought was the best practice at the time.”
The report was commissioned in part to determine whether the state should regulate nitrogen emissions as a greenhouse gas. Tomich’s team found that those emissions from agriculture are so small that they likely do not warrant new regulations.
Instead, the team determined that groundwater pollution presented the greatest potential harm to communities. Solving that problem seemed especially difficult because low-income farm communities that are under the most risk also depend on agriculture to support their economies.
“How do we provide safe groundwater for everybody?” Tomich asked. “This is an environmental justice issue. We’re talking about little kids in the Central Valley.”
He’s scheduled to brief legislative staffers on the assessment this fall.
HOW DO WE PROVIDE SAFE GROUNDWATER FOR EVERYBODY? THIS IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUE. WE’RE TALKING ABOUT LITTLE KIDS IN THE CENTRAL VALLEY.
Tom Tomich, director, UC Davis Agriculture Sustainability Institute
The State Water Resources Control Board, meanwhile, is considering new rules for agricultural discharges in the San Joaquin River watershed. A proposal to update the state’s irrigated lands regulatory program is moving forward with provisions for stepped-up monitoring and reporting requirements for farmers.
One controversial item would enable the state to more easily identify which farms are responsible for nitrate pollution.
An early draft of the rules elicited dozens of letters from environmental groups, farmers and farm lobbyists earlier this summer.
Some environmental groups demanded a more rigorous rule, with more penalties for farms with discharge violations. Others asked the board to refine recommendations for fertilizer management, giving farmers goals to hit in reducing nitrate pollution.
“Best practices right now might not help someone this second, but five, 10, 20 years down the road, hopefully we’ll be seeing some benefit,” said Ores, from the Community Water Center.
The majority of the letters came from farmers, who called the proposal a “duplicative” order that would ruin the agency’s hard-earned goodwill with agricultural producers. They asked for more time and more flexibility in managing vital resources for their businesses.
“Water is the lifeblood of all life. Why would we in agriculture not be responsible stewards for water and land in our care?” wrote Stockton rancher Marie Rossi.
Farms to subsidize cost of safe drinking water for those with tainted wells
A group of dairy producers in Kewaunee County announced Wednesday that it will pay more than half the cost of drinking water purification systems for residents whose wells have been polluted by animal waste.
The farmers and feedlot owners who belong to the private nonprofit Peninsula Pride Farms also said they would pay for bottled water for up to three months for the owner of any well in the county testing positive for E. coli bacteria.
If an inspection by a private consultant hired by Peninsula Pride finds that the well’s protective casing isn’t cracked, and the state Department of Natural Resources determines manure is probably the contamination source, the farmer group will help pay for a water treatment system.
The program is a step toward settling a long-simmering dispute over responsibility for bacterial pollution that can cause serious illness or death.
Advocates who’ve pushed for tougher regulation of the agricultural industry’s manure handling practices said the drinking water program was overdue.
Well tests conducted for about 10 years have found health hazards, including E. coli, in about 30 percent of wells tested in the county. Agricultural interests have questioned whether spreading of millions of gallons of manure annually on farm fields was the cause. But residents said a systematic county inspection and repair program has all but eliminated the possibility that faulty septic tanks were the culprit.
If the problem is a septic system or a defective well, Peninsula Pride Farms won’t pay for repairs or help cover the costs of a water treatment system.
However, if someone repairs a faulty well and a new test still finds E. coli, then assistance would be offered, said Don Niles, the owner of a 2,850-cow farm near Casco and president of the farm group.
Niles said that if the source of the E. coli isn’t entirely clear, the well owner will still be eligible for a water treatment system.
“What we are doing is owning our share,” Niles said. “We don’t want people getting sick here on our watch.”
Forty farmers formed Peninsula Pride in January to seek voluntary ways to improve environmental practices. They’ve hired a consultant to review manure handling and staged educational events. The state provided a $20,000 start-up grant, members pay dues and several businesses have contributed money for the safe drinking water effort, Niles said.
Niles estimated that as many as 40 wells — or 1 percent of the 4,000 in the county — would end up with the treatment systems, but he said there’s no way of knowing, and he’s prepared to raise more money if needed. He said he hopes that the program will mark a turning point.
“We are all scarred by the arguments and the acrimony, so it may take a while to see there’s now a way to do things other than shouting at each other,” Niles said.
DNR, county, farmer group agreement
The program will operate on terms spelled out in a memorandum of understanding between the county, the DNR and the farmer group.
DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp said in a letter dated Friday to the farm group that an alternative solution to a water treatment system in some cases could be improved “best management practices.” The state details best management practices for storage and spreading of manure, but in most cases they are mandatory only for large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, known as CAFOs.
“We fully support the concept that this offer does not involve any sort of admission of culpability on the part of Peninsula Pride farmers; but that it is offered to help prevent health impacts,” Stepp said in the letter, which was released by the state Dairy Business Association.
Peninsula Pride Farms said under its “Water Well” program it would cover about $1,500 of the estimated $2,250 initial cost for purchase and installation of a system that uses ultraviolet light to kill bacteria.
Well owners must obtain water tests from certified laboratories in order to qualify, and they would be required to install water softeners, which are necessary for the treatment systems to function, if they don’t already have them. The dairy group said it would pay the the estimated first-year maintenance cost of $200, but the well owner would cover the cost after that.
The Madison-based public interest law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates said the program falls short.
“We’ve asked DNR for years to use existing authority and funding in its spills program to provide clean drinking water on an emergency basis, but DNR refuses to do so,” said Sarah Geers, an MEA attorney. “Since the ‘Water Well’ program may not fully cover the cost of emergency drinking water, treatment or well replacement, it is time for DNR to step up.”
The Peninsula Pride announcement comes about two years after residents petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force the state into actions that would remedy the problem in Kewaunee County, where there is a high concentration of CAFOs and porous bedrock that leaves groundwater vulnerable.
The EPA in March urged state regulators to make it a priority to deliver clean water to those without it. A DNR-funded study aimed at determining the source of the contamination is ongoing.
The EPA’s regional administrator said on Aug. 17 that an announcement about provision of drinking water was coming soon.
Kewaunee County at center of conflict
Kewaunee County has become one of several centers of heated conflict between farming interests and residents upset about the poor quality of groundwater, lakes and streams.
Residents have filed a series of lawsuits aimed at compelling the DNR to enforce laws and set stricter standards.
Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature have curtailed DNR budgets and its authority to set and enforce standards for polluters.
Residents and conservation groups in 2014 petitioned the EPA to use emergency powers to protect public health in Kewaunee County. Federal officials worked with the DNR to form “workgroups” that studied potential solutions and issued a report in June.
Midwest Environmental Advocates has asked the DNR several times since October to review its legal analysis indicating the department could supply drinking water when wells are poisoned by animal waste, according to email exchanges the group released.
And in a March 28 letter, acting regional EPA administrator Robert Kaplan told Stepp that while the state agency was making a comprehensive plan to prevent further contamination, it was important to make sure residents had safe water.
In November, tests funded by the DNR of 320 randomly selected wells found 110 exceeded standards for total coliform or nitrate, both of which can come from manure or other sources, such as faulty septic systems.