San Joaquin Valley-Air Quality

Title: Nation’s Richest Farming Counties Brace for New Air-quality Rules 

A story passed along to me by my mom, thought it was interesting because one 
doesn't usually think of industrial farms as being major contributors to air 
pollution.

Category: Environment 

Status: Dormant 

Source: Associated Press 

Author: Jim Wasserman 

Run Date: 7/2/2004 

Summary: Farmers and dairy operators in San Joaquin Valley, CA have become the 
first in the nation required to comply with the Federal Clean Air Act.  Air 
pollution officials consider farms and dairies responsible for 26 percent of 
the region's smog-producing emissions and 51 percent of the dust and particles 
that have given the San Joaquin Valley the nation's highest asthma rate. 


State's farmers face tough air pollution laws

By Carol Pogash

NEW YORK TIMES


SAN FRANCISCO - All but the smallest of farmers in California's fertile San 
Joaquin Valley are now being forced to comply with the most stringent 
agricultural pollution standards in the nation in an effort to improve air 
quality.

Under the regulations, which are the result of a new state law that took 
effect Thursday, the farmers will become the first in the nation required to 
seek permits to operate.

California produces more than half of the nation's fruits and vegetables and 
more of its milk, butter and ice cream than any other state, and a third of 
the state's farms are situated in the yardstick-flat alluvial land of the San 
Joaquin Valley, whose air is among the nation's most polluted. The valley has 
more days when ozone levels exceed federal standards than anywhere else in the 
country. More than 16 percent of children in Fresno County, one of eight 
counties in the valley, suffer from asthma, caused in part by the pollution, 
according to a study conducted by UCLA.

Schoolchildren have grown accustomed to indoor recess and the postponement of 
Friday night football on days when pollution levels are high.

The valley is ringed by the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the east and by 
the Diablo and Coast Range mountains to the west. With searing summer heat, 
rain only in the winter and an unrelenting stillness in the air, dust and smog-
forming emissions from farms and ranches float in a yellowy soup of pollutants 
that spill over the 25,000 square miles of the valley.

"We're the perfect petri dish for creating and retaining air pollution," said 
Kelly Hogan Malay, spokesperson for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution 
Control District, which developed the new regulations.

About 26 percent of air pollution in the valley comes from agriculture, much 
of it from tractors and other equipment that use diesel fuel. The rest spews 
out of rumbling trucks and cars that race up and down the freeways that 
connect the southern part of the state with the north.

"We're easy targets," said Russel Efird, who grows grapes, almonds, plums and 
walnuts at his Double E Farms just south of Fresno. While he found complying 
with the new standards quite simple, some of his neighbors, he said, will 
refuse to cooperate.

"We're very distressed with the regulations," said Michael Marsh chief 
executive of for Western United Dairymen, who said that new regulations could 
cost large dairy farmers as much as $5 million.

His organization filed suit against the air pollution control district arguing 
that the new requirements were based on faulty, "antique science." The study 
on which the standards were established was conducted in 1938. This week a 
judge failed to grant a preliminary injunction, which would have given dairy 
farmers more time for scientific research and compliance.

"Producers want to do the right thing," said Ray Souza, a dairyman from 
Turlock, "We want good clean environment for our children, but things have to 
make sense to us."

The applications for permits requires farmers to document the equipment they 
have, including the make, model, horsepower and hours of operation of an 
irrigation pump. That equipment will be grandfathered in, but any changes will 
require farmers to select the best air pollution control equipment available.

Farmers have been given a choice of about 100 conservation practices to use to 
comply with the new conservation management plan. They may decide to mulch 
rather than burn clippings and prunings, to cover soil with vegetation or to 
till at night when there is a little moisture in the air.

The new regulations came about after state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Fresno, 
developed a package of clean air bills, which was signed into law last year by 
former Gov. Gray Davis. Praised by environmentalists and vilified by some 
farmers, Florez said, "It was the hardest thing I had to do in my career."

For decades, Florez said, the state "turned a blind eye" to the 
problem. "Health was not as important as industry and jobs," he said.

With passage of the legislation, farmers of the Central Valley had to comply 
with the Federal Clean Air Act, which requires states to develop their own 
clean air plans.

"They're being asked to do what any other industry was asked to do 20 or 30 
years ago," Florez said.

The problem, said Cynthia Cory, director of environmental affairs for the 
California Farm Bureau Federation, is that the state's farmers have to compete 
against farmers in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Arizona, Florida and Iowa, who do 
not face the same requirements.

"We can't tell a big distributor to pay $25 for a box of oranges from Ventura 
County rather than $5 for a box of oranges from Chile. We want a nice clean 
environment," she said, "but it may run our farmers out of business."

"We're probably more regulated than any other farmers in the nation," she 
said. "Now, we're going to be more regulated. It's going to be a whole new day 
in California."



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