Expert panel leans on regional boards for initial nitrogen targets and backstops, urges technical assistance

Panel chair Daniel Geisler and members of the State Water Resources Control Board’s agricultural expert panel spent the bulk of the working-group meeting debating whether the panel should recommend statewide enforceable fertilizer limits or defer to regional boards to set "targets/limits." Panelists repeatedly emphasized regional variability and called for technical assistance alongside any numeric benchmarks.

The discussion opened when Thomas Harder, a cooperative extension professor, suggested using the wording "targets/limits" across the draft so the panel would not be taken as choosing one regulatory regime over another. Harder said the panel "agrees that there's a point at which end discharges to groundwater are excessive, and regional boards should be able to set initial targets limits that all growers should be able to meet within a reasonable time frame, 3 to 5 years." The panel debated whether to identify a specific percentile and Harder and others proposed setting an initial backstop at a high percentile of regional a-minus-r data (an example…