North Coast winegrape growers raised alarms last year over a water quality regulation that threatened to override nation-leading sustainability efforts. Their message was heard.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board shelved the ag order and embarked on a listening tour to refine their proposal. While the resulting revisions have lowered anxiety levels, farmers remain apprehensive over the costs and complexity.
The regional board is playing catchup to its sister agencies in the Central Valley, Central Coast, San Diego and San Francisco, which, over the past decade, have enacted orders to regulate agricultural discharges. Another major driver for establishing the new regulation is the East San Joaquin Order.
The 2018 order requires Central Valley farmers to monitor, report on and establish plans for nitrogen fertilizer use and entails groundwater monitoring and drinking water testing. The State Water Resources Control Board approved the regulation and raised it as a statewide standard bearer, triggering all other regional boards to incorporate the requirements into their regulations.
The North Coast board drafted the initial order a year ago, sparking a public comment period that drew more than 250 letters. Under the rules, growers would have tracked any traces of nitrates and pesticides in water discharged into creeks, streams and drinking water wells. They would have monitored turbidity in creeks for sediment runoff and reported on the amount of nitrogen they applied, while calculating how much the vines absorb. The board also considered 50-feet setbacks along creeks and other riparian zones.
The board’s staff sought to understand the comments, contextualize them and incorporate the feedback into the draft, according to Brenna Sullivan, an engineering geologist at the board who once served at the Lake County Farm Bureau. She presented an overview of the new order at a recent board workshop. Staff toured more than 40 vineyards, held one-on-one meetings with growers and hosted discussions with industry and environmental groups. They took a helicopter tour of the region to zoom out from individual operations for landscape-scale observations. Throughout the spring, they put their notes to work in revising the order.
Noelle Cremers, Wine InstituteMost of the comments they had received portrayed a broad lack of flexibility in the order. The first draft would have prohibited workers from entering fields when soils were saturated and easily contaminated. It required a minimum of 75% ground cover during winter months to prevent erosion.
Growers also pressed the board to recognize voluntary steps already taken to protect water quality, such as adopting regenerative practices, enrolling in a sustainability certification program or attaining close to 100% ground cover in winter.
Staff decided to drop the prohibition on entering vineyards as well as the turbidity monitoring provisions, except for replanting activities and new vineyard development.
They broke the ground cover requirement down to three compliance options. Vineyards on slope angles of less than 10% could adopt a minimum of 50% cover, though all other hillside operations would need 75%. Managers could establish a sediment erosion control plan through a voluntary program, and the board is currently vetting the existing ones. Or they could develop their own sediment control plan that accounts for nuances in their vineyard, such as drainage structures. And if early storms materialize in November, before ground cover takes shape, they could deploy hay bales or other buffers to temporarily prevent runoff and erosion.
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Staff also hope to bring regulatory relief to small farmers by exempting vineyards of five acres or less. Those properties account for just 2% of the land in the region but make up more than 30% of the total number of parcels.
While growers would still have to report their nitrogen use, the revised order would delay the requirements for certifying those reports through a third party until the board has designated the basin as high vulnerability. The board also pulled back on its pursuit of riparian buffers.
Presenting the revisions to stakeholders this month, staff received a less volatile response than a year ago. Advocates for the environmental group Russian Riverkeeper praised the board for crafting a regulation that has been more than a decade in the making, though they pressed for continuous monitoring and retaining the vegetation buffers.
Growers and trade groups appreciated the changes and the additional staff time invested in the order. But they remained skeptical of how the rules could flex to the many factors inherent to farming in the comparatively cool, moist climate.
Noelle Cremers, who directs regulatory affairs at the Wine Institute, wondered how the ground cover rules would account for year-to-year variations. Early rains and a warm fall could bump rates to 90%, but a colder year could delay germination. Sullivan described the issue as a work in progress, likely involving an average over a certain number of years.
Sonoma County farmer Mel Sanchietti rose to the podium in reaction to Sullivan’s helicopter photo looking down on a flooded vineyard near Laguna. He put the blame on the city of Santa Rosa, because “on a rainy day I watched this stuff happen.” He described a chocolate-colored slurry carrying antifreeze, tire tread, fuel and oil washing down from the streets.
He took pride in his sustainability practices and said he was insulted by the photo and the assumption that growers are not doing enough.
“We've been regenerative farming before that term was invented,” said the gray-haired Sanchietti. “I've been doing that all my life.”
Sullivan stressed to Sanchietti the revisions she presented were neither comprehensive nor complete, since the agency is still struggling with how to account for floodwater. Mike Martini, a Santa Rosa winemaker, noted that while the changes allow vineyards to deduct the run-on, the financial burden still falls on the grower.
He and several others warned that margins are tight and the compliance costs could be high.
“The wine industry and grape growers and farmers are going through a very tough time,” said Kim Wallace, who runs a winery in Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley. “We've been in business 52 years and it is the hardest I've seen ever.”
Along with the costs, she wrestled with the complexity of the draft order and the cumulative impact of multiple new regulations across agencies all hitting the industry at once.
“What's going to happen if farmers just say, ‘To heck with it’?” said Wallace. “All those beautiful vineyards are going to be torn out or sold and more and more people will be moving to the area. It's going to be paving over paradise.”
Staff are taking comments and plan to finalize the order over the summer, submitting it to board members for adoption in December.
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