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State and regional boards present nitrogen-reporting data; staff say more standardization and time needed
Summary
State Water Resources Control Board staff and regional boards briefed an expert panel on irrigated-lands nitrogen reporting, saying available data show patterns but require standardization, QA/QC and more years of reporting before the panel can draw firm causal conclusions about groundwater trends.
Kelsey Moore, an environmental scientist with the State Water Resources Control Board, told the agricultural expert panel that the board’s 2024 staff report reviewed INMP (Irrigation and Nitrogen Management Plan) summary reports and found the statewide dataset uneven and in need of standardization.
The nut graf: state staff said the Central Valley had the most INMP data available at the time of the 2024 review, and that staff concluded there were “no conclusive trends” in outlier status across coalitions because reporting frameworks, crop naming and enrollment changed year to year.
Moore said the East San Joaquin (ESJ) order prompted the first statewide nitrogen-reporting requirements and that third-party coalitions submit data three different ways: anonymous member ID, anonymous parcel (APN) and township aggregation. She said required fields include nitrogen applied (A) and nitrogen removed (R), and that coalitions calculate A/R, A–R and 3‑year averages. “This analysis was not originally intended to help the panel answer the charge questions, but has been made available and provided here for background,” Moore said, summarizing the staff report’s intent.
Laleh Rastigarzadeh, a water resources control engineer with the State Water Board, described follow-up work since the 2024 staff report. She said staff have been cleaning and harmonizing crop names, normalizing units and developing a Power BI analysis tool to let the panel explore the consolidated dataset. Rastigarzadeh said the state will coordinate with regional boards to preserve data integrity and make the visualization tool publicly available when ready.
Regional board staff and coalition managers who presented afterward echoed the call for data quality work. Central Valley and Central Coast presenters described differences in how INMPs are collected, anonymized and uploaded, and emphasized that many coalitions already perform QA/QC before submission. Moore and Rastigarzadeh said the state-level team is available to run additional analyses for the panel and noted that more years of standardized reporting will increase the ability to draw programmatic conclusions.
Ending: Staff recommended moving forward with the expert panel while continuing to improve data standardization, crosswalks between naming conventions and QA/QC checks so the panel can evaluate trends and craft recommendations at the October meeting and beyond.
