From Fragmented to Joint Responsibilities: Barriers and Opportunities for Adaptive Water Quality Governance in California’s Urban-Agricultural Interface

Abstract

California is facing a critical water supply and water quality crisis, necessitating a clear shift in the way water resources are managed. This study assesses the effectiveness of water law and policy in the urban-agricultural interface, where the two discharge into common waterways but have different regulatory requirements. A case study from one of California's most productive agricultural regions, the Salinas Valley, explores the complexities and inadequacies of current water law in the interface, as well as promising integrated water management schemes. The article's findings are based on archival research, extensive document review and 15 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders. Findings suggest that local, state and federal water policy is severely fragmented, providing little incentive for the multitude of water entities to collaborate on multi-benefit projects and resulting in unsuccessful water quality improvements. There is a strong need for a more integrated policy approach that bridges different types of dischargers (agricultural and urban), water quality and water quantity issues and also incorporates land uses into policy decision making.

Phase II MS4 challenges: moving toward effective stormwater management for small municipalities

“…Regulatory exemptions can encourage conflict between upstream agricultural landowners who see urban land use as the main problem and downstream urban communities that argue mitigation should be the responsibility of upstream farm communities that introduced the pollution, enhanced by the complicated situation wherein some agricultural operations (e.g., CAFOs) and any suburban or urban community serviced by storm sewers are covered by more stringent regulatory system as "point sources" while the bulk of agricultural land remains only voluntarily addressed (Eisen 1995;Drevno 2018;Schroer 2020).…”

“…As an example of a watershed impacted by multiple urban centers, urban stormwater contributes 16%, 8%, and 15% of the total sediment, N, and P loads to the Chesapeake Bay respectively, which are biologically relevant amounts and much higher than expected given that urban areas (as defined by the census) comprise about 8.8% of the Chesapeake Bay's drainage area (United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) 2010; Loperfido et al 2014;United States Census Bureau 2019). In California, urban land use and construction are responsible for the impairment of more surface area of lakes than agricultural land use and around 60% the mileage of streams and rivers as agricultural land use (Drevno 2018). Furthermore, urban landscapes tend to have more erosive flow regimes than their rural counterparts (e.g., erosion rates ~10 × higher; Hawley et al 2020), and streambank erosion is often a dominant source of sediment pollution in urban streams (Simon and Klimetz 2008).…”

“…Furthermore, urban landscapes tend to have more erosive flow regimes than their rural counterparts (e.g., erosion rates ~10 × higher; Hawley et al 2020), and streambank erosion is often a dominant source of sediment pollution in urban streams (Simon and Klimetz 2008). While the sources and forms of pollutants differ between urban and agricultural land uses (Zhang et al 2021), urban stormwater is a source of pollution in need of attention, potentially through watershed-or region-wide regulations that manage water pollution from all sources holistically to meaningfully abate water pollution (Drevno 2018;McKenzie 2021). In the interim, seeking out BMPs that effectively treat urban stormwater and emphasizing the impact of urban stormwater pollutants and the additional benefits of stormwater BMPs during public education and outreach events is imperative to gaining public trust and cooperation in creating effective stormwater management plans (Coleman et al 2018;Miller and Montalto 2019;Darnthamrongkul and Mozingo 2020).…”