Keeping Farm Chemicals on the Farm

Encouraging good farm practices and enforcing against egregious bad practices are the goals of the Conditional Agricultural Waiver Program, overseen by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. Until recently farm discharges were exempt from water quality standards. Now, California farms must have a permit to discharge wastewater. The “conditional waiver” is a group program designed to allow farms to avoid the cost and paperwork of obtaining an individual permit if they meet a set of prescribed conditions.

The Agricultural Waiver Program aims to educate farmers on good practices, thereby encouraging pollution prevention. The Monterey Coastkeeper has been working to support the Water Board both in the management of the current program, and in the development of a future waiver.

Following good agricultural practices to prevent water pollution and erosion provide an easy solution that is neither onerous nor cost prohibitive! Good practices include minimizing chemical application and limiting irrigation to use only what is absolutely necessary. Both of these actions provide not only environmental benefits, but savings to growers.

The Agricultural Waiver might seem unrelated to sea otters—but in fact the connection epitomizes the kind of multi-faceted management we must engage in if we truly wish to affect sea otter population stagnation. Conservation is increasingly moving towards ecosystem based management, and this includes identifying and controlling outside threats to the ecosystem—such as agricultural runoff. Preventing chemical poisons from weakening an iconic keystone species like sea otters is a pretty good place to start.

For more information or contact Steve Shimek at steve@montereycoastkeeper.org or call 831-646-8839

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 To Report Polluters: 831-646-8840