San Joaquin Farm Drainage Plan Assailed

The estate water board set new standards Thursday for drainage of used irrigation water into the San Joaquin River, but environmentalists charged the program is too easy on farmers.

The board also adopted a scaled-down plan for cleanup of the polluted Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in Merced County, and handed the job of enforcing it back to the regional water board in the Central Valley.

The board made the decision on the Kesterson cleanup after an angry lecture from James Claus, the Merced County landowner who goaded the board into action against the selenium-tainted federal bird refuge in 1984.

Claus said the scandal over Kesterson was only one facet of an emerging environmental disaster resulting from state and federal programs of providing irrigation water for 2 million acres of alkaline soil on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

Claus argued that irrigation waste water used in the region “is toxic as soon as it flows through the soil,” where it picks up selenium and other chemicals.

“It would be cheaper to buy out the whole 2 million acres that you eventually are going to have to clean up,” he said.

The latest Kesterson cleanup plan orders a close watch on the site of the former bird refuge by the Bureau of Reclamation, and continued research into ridding the soil of selenium.

The original cleanup order called for removal of selenium-tainted soil from the bird refuge by the Bureau of Reclamation, but was modified after key congressional committees refused to put up the money.

Amendment to Earlier Program

The new goals for drainage of lower Central Valley irrigation waste water into the San Joaquin were an amendment of a program previously adopted by the Central Valley regional water board.

The new rules set an average monthly standard of 5 parts per billion for selenium in the water of the San Joaquin River between the point where the Merced River flows into the San Joaquin and the town of Vernalis in northern Stanislaus County.

That conforms to the safety standard for selenium in water set by the Environmental Protection Agency, although levels of up to 8 parts per billion would be allowed in critically dry years.

However, an average monthly standard of 10 parts per billion--twice the federal safety level--was approved for the San Joaquin above the point of the Merced’s inflow. The 10 parts per billion standard also would apply for Mud Slough and Salt Slough, two other tributaries of the San Joaquin.

The EPA has already protested against these levels of selenium in the San Joaquin watershed. It also has shown a strong inclination recently to take over decision-making on water issues in states that fail to meet its water safety goals.

Karen Garrison, a staff scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, protested Thursday against the selenium standards, and also against the fact that the San Joaquin drainage standard relies heavily on voluntary grower compliance.

The new program authorizes the board to impose individual waste discharge requirements on growers who move too slowly, but Garrison said the board should specify when this would happen.

“Whatever (cleanup) plans are adopted should contain goals and timetables,” she said. “There is a lack of incentive to growers to conserve low-priced water.”

Garrison also called for a ban on irrigation of any new farmland.