The demand?
Provide clean drinking water to local residents with nitrate contaminated private wells or face punitive legal action.
The logic?
Years of fertilizer application by farmers led to excess nitrates in the drinking water supply for some residents in California’s agricultural regions, including our Tulare Lake Basin.
Farming requires the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, whether synthetic or organic, to replenish soil nutrients to ensure healthy crops.
Today, as farmers and researchers better understand the impact of fertilizers on groundwater quality, agricultural methods have evolved – including precision fertilizer application – significantly reducing the potential for nitrate contamination.
The agriculture industry has been engaged with environmental justice organizations and other stakeholders in a multi-year process to help solve the state’s drinking water crisis, including addressing nitrate contamination of groundwater supplies.
The Budget Trailer Bill works to equitably assign the financial burden of addressing California’s drinking water crisis and shield our farmers from unfair enforcement actions by the State Water Resources Control Board.
Addressing the state’s drinking water crisis while protecting farming is critically important to the well-being of our local economy.
The Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce, Kern County Farm Bureau and other local leaders, businesses and organizations have all signed letters of support for the Budget Trailer Bill.