The UC Davis study found that less than 40 percent of the nitrogen applied to farmlands is used by crops. The rest escapes into the air, waterways and ground water.

Nitrate contamination has been a concern for regulators for decades, said Kenneth Landau, assistant executive officer for the Central Valley water board. Although state law requires “reasonable practices” to prevent pollution of surface and ground water, he said, “it left a whole lot of freedom of choice up to the dairies.”

The regional board has long struggled with scant resources to monitor compliance. “We were down to one half of a person for the whole Central Valley in the early '90s,” Landau said.

The board started regulating agricultural waste discharges into surface water in 2003, but applied those rules to ground water only last year. The program requires growers in areas where nitrates pose a high risk to develop nutrient plans and monitor the underground water.

Still, said UC Davis' Harter, “you can’t regulate the problem away overnight.” Once contaminants get into ground water, it’s extremely difficult to remove them. Levels can increase when chemicals move downstream or if aquifers drop after a drought.

Action on nitrate pollution has taken so long in part because the board had to demonstrate threats to public health or water quality before it could impose regulations, Landau said. “There’s been a lot of resistance to acknowledging that irrigated agriculture and dairies are causing the ground water problem.”

Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation, calls nitrate contamination a legacy issue, stemming from outdated fertilizing practices.

Last spring, after the proposed regulations were announced, Jack Hamm, a vice president of the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation, said that the new rules would be “extremely onerous” for farmers due to requirements for evaluations, record-keeping and water monitoring.

Long-term solutions would cost $36 million a year to bring everyone’s water in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley into compliance with federal safety standards, according to the UC Davis report.

The report identified 85 public water systems, serving about 220,000 people, with high vulnerability to nitrate contamination, and 34,000 people with private wells, which the state doesn’t regulate.

Depending on the severity of contamination, treating nitrates at a single well head can range from $135,000 to $1,090,000 per year.

“The poorest communities in the state are paying the highest price for water and there aren’t any mechanisms to fix that,” said Clean Water Action’s Clary.

Funding is available from California’s Proposition 84, which allocated $60 million in 2006 to fund new wells, treatment systems and other projects. But many communities have yet to receive a penny. Most small systems are run by volunteers and can’t afford to hire experts to help them navigate the funding process, Clary said.

“If, on top of that, the community is very small, very poor and has a large number of non-English-speaking ratepayers, those barriers become astronomical,” she said.

Many people in these farming communities have been living with nitrate contamination for most of their lives, De Anda said.

“They think it’s normal not to drink water from your tap, that it’s normal to have to go buy bottled water. Part of our job is telling people, ‘This is not normal.’ ”

Mixed Messages
By law, water system managers must notify customers when contaminants exceed safety standards. But the notices are confusing, even to proficient English speakers. Complicating matters, Tulare County tests just one contaminant at a time.

9 Comments

1. 1. vapur 03:03 PM 6/12/12

   A couple issues here:
   
   1) The government's own research states that Cannabidiol was able to repair damaged brain cells in foetuses whose oxygen supply was cut off. Basically, "blue baby syndrome" can be treated by using Cannabis tincture.
   
   2) Tap water contains fluoride, as well as other toxic metals introduced to water when a municipality uses cheaper industrial-grade silicofluoride instead of pharmaceutical-grade sodium fluoride. Remember, they're only putting fluoride in water to "help" the poor (by medicating everyone).
   
   
   Sources:
   1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18679164
   2) http://www.fluoride-history.de/chemicals.htm

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2. 2. mggordon 07:50 PM 6/12/12

   "Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Don't Drink the Water"
   
   Well, he's right about it -- drinking water is fatal; everyone who has ever drunk water is either already dead or going to die.
   
   NOT drinking water brings about the same outcome rather more quickly.
   
   So I think I'll drink some water. Right now!
   
   "environmental justice problem"
   
   Say what? There's that phrase again! Probably has meaning only in California.
   
   Anyway, I use a distiller -- I don't know and don't really care what is in my tap water.

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3. 3. mggordon 07:59 PM 6/12/12

   Five pages of hand wringing but no solutions suggested. Science is supposed to be able to solve problems, not merely describe them which is a thing anyone can do.
   
   However, we're talking about California, which is not only out of money, but increasingly in debt. So the usual socialist solutions are not likely going to work and capitalism makes no pretense of even trying to solve social problems; that's not the purpose of its existence.
   
   In the end, people make choices and experience the consequences. Illegal immigrants, for instance, face terrible consequences to remain in Mexico or merely bad consequences in the San Juaquin valley of California. If that was your choice, what would I do? I'd take "bad" over "terrible" and I might not complain too much about "bad" unless I thought I could persuade you to give me what you have -- then *I* would have good and *you* would have bad.

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4. 4. mggordon 08:05 PM 6/12/12

   I should point out the obvious -- socialism presumes that *everyone* can have good water, no matter how many people are using it and how few people are working to make it happen.
   
   Let me assure readers that such a thing cannot be; it is actually possible to divvy up the water uniformly, but such a thing will never happen simply because it's stupid and anti-Darwinian. Human ingenuity, intelligence, and industry evolved *because* it gave advantage over those almost-humans that did not evolve. It may well be that 12,000 years ago Neanderthals were leftwing socialists and equalized among themselves, thereby making every last one of them uncompetitive with Cromagnon.
   
   Suppose California promised every citizen 50 gallons of pure water, as good as distilled, every day, for free. What would happen? You'd have quite an inmigration from Arizona and a stampede, bigger than already is, from Mexico. Sooner or later that house of cards must collapse.
   
   That's why the writer complains for 5 pages without a solution. He hasn't got one.
   
   But I *do*: SOLAR STILLS. More in my next message so it stands out a bit.

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5. 5. mggordon 08:10 PM 6/12/12

   SOLAR STILLS. The idea is simple and even Boy Scouts make them. Many possible designs exist. California's central valleys are desert and get plenty of sunshine. Groundwater is somewhat abundant but as has been reported, is also loaded with fertilizer and some other things.
   
   Example:
   
   http://sdoople.info/12818-how-does-a-solar-still-work.html

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6. 6. mggordon 08:16 PM 6/12/12

   Oops, good idea, bad source!
   
   http://sdoople.info/12818-how-does-a-solar-still-work.html
   
   "As the water is boiled, the PH level drops dramatically, causing flat-tasting water. With a solar still, the water is purified naturally, allowing the PH levels to stay balanced."
   
   Water is pH7, by definition, neutral. It makes no difference how you purify the water. Pure distilled water always tastes exactly the same, which is to say no taste at all, because it is H20 and absolutely nothing else.
   
   Valley water tends to be alkaline and tastes terrible at least to me.
   
   Mountain water tends to be slightly acidic, well oxygenated and tastes great. But that acid leaches out the limestone, a carbonate rock, and that buffers it and turns it basic (alkaline) by the time it reaches the valley floor.
   
   "Balanced" has no meaning in pH. It's a stupid thing to say that immediately reveals an unscientific approach.
   

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7. 7. SasaMarinic 03:09 AM 6/13/12

   The water is a bigger issue than the energy and global warming. We need to address this matter urgently.

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8. 8. anumakonda 01:46 PM 6/14/12

   Impure water is the cause for many diseases.
   
   Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms that most commonly are transmitted in contaminated fresh water. Infection commonly results during bathing, washing, drinking, in the preparation of food, or the consumption of food thus infected. Various forms of waterborne diarrheal disease probably are the most prominent examples, and affect mainly children in developing countries; according to the World Health Organization, such disease account for an estimated 4.1% of the total DALY global burden of disease, and cause about 1.8 million human deaths annually. The World Health Organization estimates that 88% of that burden is attributable to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
   Microorganisms causing diseases that characteristically are waterborne, prominently include protozoa and bacteria, many of which are intestinal parasites, or invade the tissues or circulatory system through walls of the digestive tract. Various other waterborne diseases are caused by viruses. Yet other important classes of water-borne diseases are caused by metazoan parasites. Typical examples include certain Nematoda, that is to say "roundworms". As an example of water-borne Nematode infections, one important waterborne nematodal disease is Dracunculiasis. It is acquired by swallowing water in which certain copepoda occur that act as vectors for the Nematoda. Anyone swallowing a copepod that happens to be infected with Nematode larvae in the genus Dracunculus, becomes liable to infection. The larvae cause guinea worm disease.
   Water is the Elixer of life – Leonardo Da Vinci.
   Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
   E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
   

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9. 9. mggordon 12:53 AM 6/15/12

   Eventually the global average death rate will match the average birth rate. It cannot be avoided.

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