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Three Firsts for Selenium Control
Late this July the Central Valley Regional Board voted to adopt what may be the first waste discharge permit in the nation that actually requires farmers to meet an effluent limit, say environmentalists.
This waste discharge requirement applies to farmers and drainage districts in the 97,000-acre Grassland basin, who have been plagued with no outlet for their selenium-laden agricultural drainage water since the mid 1990's, when U.S. Fish & Wildlife began to enforce a 2 ppb selenium standard for area sloughs serving both drainers and wetland refuges.
The new requirement is the outcome of a two-year-old pilot project in which the federal government, with environmental support, allowed farmers to reopen a 28-mile section of the San Luis Drain (closed since 1983 due to its role in selenium-linked duck deformities at Kesterson) known as the Grasslands Bypass Channel if they met certain conditions, including limits on their selenium loads. The bypass project also helped reroute drainage water away from area wetlands. Basin drainers and farmers generally succeeded in meeting the load limits, using a variety of on-farm best management practices (BMPs) and economic incentives. Another condition of the pilot project was that the Board formalize the process by adopting waste discharge requirements within two years, which it has just done.
"It's good news for the environment because we know the amount of selenium flowing into the San Joaquin river will continue to be cut, and good news for farmers because they're being allowed to control the way they meet the limits," says the Environmental Defense Fund's Terry Young. "Nobody's giving them instructions and telling them how to farm."
How farmers are achieving reductions may also involve several firsts. One first is the recent formalization, with the help of a U.S. EPA grant, of a selenium load trading program among the seven water and drainage districts in Grasslands Basin, in which one district having a problem meeting its regionally allotted load in one month can trade with another that doesn't have a problem. Each district plants crops which mature in different seasons and thus need to discharge their irrigation water at different times of year. So this April, for example, the Charleston Drainage District used some of the Panoche District's allotted load and plans to pay the latter back this September. "The trading program provides us with the flexibility to maximize each other's resources and operate the basin as a whole," says Panoche's Dennis Falaschi.
"This may be the first time a trading program has been attempted among nonpoint sources of pollution," adds Susan Austin, a lawyer recently hired to direct the basin's economic incentives programs. "It clearly gets good results with less hardship on those being regulated."
Another first may be Panoche's new $5.6 million, high-tech, computer-monitored recircultation system. The system plumbs the area with the worst selenium and salt problems and reroutes the most concentrated drainage water back through the system. About 24 acre feet of the really salty stuff is then blended with freshwater every day during peak irrigation periods and reused on crops. "It keeps 80% of Panoche's 50% share of the basin's total selenium load out of the river," says Falaschi.
Other salt and selenium-reducing tools used by basin drainers include leasing land to grow salt-tolerant crops, investing in more efficient irrigation systems and placing permanent sprinklers along dirt roadways to apply drainage water for dust control. "We wouldn't have made these investments if the bypass project hadn't forced us into a regulatory process, and given us the certainty of a drainage outlet," says Falaschi. "It's been very costly, but we haven't reached a point yet where we can't continue to farm."
The newly adopted waste discharge requirements come up for renewal in three years, at which time Terry Young would like the Central Valley Board to take the next logical regulatory step and amend its Basin Plan to include a selenium TMDL (total maximum daily allowable load, as defined in the Clean Water Act) for the San Joaquin River. Young says despite demonstrated reductions in selenium loads during wet years (when flood conditions make limiting discharges much harder), water quality standards are still being violated. "A TMDL is designed to match up allowable discharge with the standards to gradually bring the river into compliance," she says. "The exciting part is that we already have proven techniques in place that work."
Contact: Rudy Schnagl (916)255-3000
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