Farmers brace for water-monitoring requirement
NORTH COUNTY TIMES - Morgan Cook | October 4, 2009

Growers join group to cut costs

Escondido farmer Mike Hillebrecht looks over his avocado grove last December. He and other area farmers soon will be required to pay for efforts to monitor pesticides and other pollutants in lakes and streams.

Farmers with more than $1,000 in gross crop sales eventually will be required to finance all or part of the costs to monitor agricultural pollutants in nearby surface water, according to a recent letter from regional water monitors.

As early as Jan. 1, 2011, agricultural and nursery growers must declare their intention to participate in the Agricultural Waiver Program, or Conditional Waiver No. 4, a water monitoring requirement adopted by The California Regional Water Quality Control Board, San Diego region, in 2007.

Under the program, growers must pay to sample and test water quality in nearby lakes and streams, either independently or as part of a group. The testing will determine how well farmers are doing at keeping pesticides and other pollutants out of water systems.

Farmers who do not comply with the requirement will be fined or otherwise sanctioned.

About 100 impaired water bodies are in the San Diego region, which includes parts of Orange and Riverside counties, said water quality board environmental scientist Pete Peuron. Of those, "a significant number" are impaired with what are potentially agricultural pollutants, he said.

"Nitrates, phosphate, bacteria ---- we don't know what for sure," Peuron said. "That's why the emphasis is on monitoring."

Independently monitoring water could cost a grower about $15,000 a year, according to a water board letter to interested parties dated May 13. Farmers can cut that cost significantly by joining a group. The San Diego Irrigated Lands Group, organized and operated by the San Diego Farm Bureau, is the only group the water board was aware of on Tuesday, Peuron said.

Enrollment in the bureau's group is a one-time cost of $200 per acre, but it's capped at $1,000, said San Diego Farm Bureau Executive Director Eric Larson. To enroll in the group, farmers must also become a member of the bureau, which costs an additional $190 each year.

The cost of joining the group isn't impossibly high by itself, but it comes when many small citrus and avocado farmers are already staggering under rising water costs and sinking commodity prices. "The conversations I've had with people is that it's not just this, it's this on top of everything else," Larson said.

"It's not going to break us, but it's another little thing you have to pay and another little thing you have to deal with," said Escondido avocado and citrus farmer Mike Hillebrecht.

Hillebrecht, who farms about 90 acres with his father, said he is a member of the farm bureau and has joined its monitoring group.
He said joining the group makes economic sense, but being part of the bureau has other advantages. For example, he learned about the program almost a year before he got the water quality control board's first letter about the waiver in May.

"It takes you time and a little bit of your money each year, but you get a lot of good information back to help you make decisions," Hillebrecht said.
Peuron said the water board had considered exempting small farmers from the program, but they make up too much of San Diego County's farming population. The county has more small farmers than any other county in the country.

"What comes back to get us is that we have so many small farms," he said. "You'd take out a huge amount of acreage and ultimately defeat the purpose of the waiver."

Peuron said several small farmers have called him to say they just can't afford to participate. Some have told him they're going to have to quit farming altogether.

"I think one of the elements to consider ---- and this is what I tell growers when they call me, if they say something to the effect of 'I'm thinking of shutting down my operation; this really isn't worth it to me,'---- I point out the fact that this isn't until 2012 and there's nothing wrong with holding out until the last minute," Peuron said. "Things might be different then."