Hello again, everybody. Welcome to our third and last lecture for week 2 in our course. We've so far, visited about 2 large watersheds and water bodies in, the United States. And we also focused a little bit more down on the state of Florida. And our natural resources, and our agricultural industry. Today I want to step back and take a look at water quality and regulations pertaining to water quality in this country. Because I think the history will be useful to us as we move forward and talk about the different approaches that we, we work with agriculture to help improve water quality. I want to cover several areas most notably why do we regulate pollution problems. I want to talk a little bit about the history, because I think America has a very interesting history in terms of developing regulation. About water quality and I want to talk a little bit about the various approaches to water quality regulations and, and how that relates to what we're eventually going to be focusing on and that's agriculture. So why do we care? Well quite frankly and simply, no one likes dirty water. Water bodies have many functions that we really care about, for example, drinking water is very important to us. Water bodies are also used for other purposes. For example, irrigation, fishing, swimming, and also their important to maintain wildlife habitat. And society has determined that we want to protect our water bodies from pollution that would reduce their usefulness. And we'll talk about designated uses so we have an idea of what we want that water body to do for us, and the kind of state that we want it in, and we make those decisions. And so we determine what we want for that water body, and then a process for how we are going to keep it clean. It's interesting to point out that some recent research has shown that 80% of our water bodies or 80% of the worlds population depends on rivers that are affected with pollutants. And biological diversity is threatened in 65% of the rivers around the world. So clearly we have some challenges in front of us. Some of the common water pollutants that we read about and, and will be dealing with through this course sediment. We've already talked a little bit about that when we touched on the Mississippi River watershed and the sediment that could possibly come off of farms in that area. Nutrients are also a challenge for our water bodies. There are other pollutants such as bacteria, sewage, various toxic chemicals, and petroleum, things like mercury contaminants. Because we're interested mostly in agriculture in this course, we're going to focus on nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorou and their role on water quality degradation. The environmental problems that go along with some of this extra nutrients do lead to problems in our water quality. And just as an example nitrate nitrogen would be one to look at the US Environmental Protection Agency has set a drinking standard, a safe drinking water standard of ten milligrams per liter of nitrate nitrogen as nitrogen, equivalent to 45 milligrams per liter of nitrates. The reason this was done, it's been years was because of the socalled blue baby syndrome or methemoglobinemia, which is where the hemoglobin, because of the presence of nitrate. Is changed to a form that has a decreased affinity for carrying oxygen, and this is mostly a problem in infants that are less than three months of age. But nitrate problems in water are more than health issues for humans. For example, high nitrate leads to ecosystem threats and ecological impairments. The ones that we'll talk mostly about have to do with blooms, excess aquatic plant growth, and dead zones that can happen at concentrations of nitrate nitrogen even lower than 10 milligrams per liter. And so, it becomes, we become very interested in how can we manage those Nitrogen levels in our water bodies at levels that would, are even lower would impact human health. This whole process is called eutrophication, and in, ecosystems, the aquatic the response to the addition of these extra nutrients comes in many forms. And I've listed a few of them here increased plant growth, algal blooms nuisance aquatic weeds there, the pollution can also, because of the changes in, in the water quality can lead to changes in the balance of the, the biodiversity. So we can have changes in the relative proportions of certain animals for example. Because plants grow in the water to a greater level they also die and decompose. And this leads to hypoxia or a low oxygen level content in the water due to the decomposition process of that organic matter. And also certain, certain algal blooms can be toxic, in other words. Certain toxic chemicals can be produced, and I've given you on your reading, on your reference list a paper that was a review of some of the toxic algal research. So these problems, this eutrophication, leads to an impairment of the designated use of that water body and that's when we become concerned, because what we want that water body to function as has now been changed because of the addition of the pollutants. So what happens when these things go wrong? What can we do. I mean we've looked at a few of the pressures that people place on resources on our water body that lead to impairment. So what happens when it's determines that the water body is not meeting it's designated use. What do we do? And in sometimes there's a lot of differences in the way the water bodies and their designation, designated use are viewed. Because the natural ecosystem can process nutrients and reach a steady state. But when man comes along and makes a decision about a water body sometimes our ideas about how that water body should, should be would be different than in the natural state. So what do we do with these? Well I think we have to step back and look at the regulation in, regulation in the United States, it goes all the way back to the late 1800's with a piece of federal legislation that addressed dumping of materials into rivers. And this particular rivers and harbor act is one of the oldest pieces of legislation in the United States. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act was another act in the middle part of the last century that again focused on these so called point sources or this particularly sewage waste from municipal treatment. The problem continued and in the late 60's led to amendments in this Federal Water, Water Pollution Control Act and was exacerbated, or things came to a head With such things as the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969. Actually this river caught on fire several times over the last several decades. But things like this, incidences like this led people to just decide that we needed to finally to do something conclusively about water quality. Okay, and this was particularly acute during the 60's and early 70's. In 1970 the National Environmental Protection Act was formed, was signed by President Nixon, and this actually lead to the development of the, the, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Along with, at this same time amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act were made and in 1972 those amendments were called and we refer to this act now as the Clean Water Act, it's our, it's our term, or short term as it were. As for the federal water patrol, Water Pollution Control Act. The Clean Water Act, or CWA, sets the basis for much of what we do today to address water quality issues, and there have been several amendments to it over the years. If you want to read more about the details on the Clean Water Act, there is considerable amount of information on the internet. If you want to read more about the details on the Clean Water Act, there is considerable amount of information on the internet. I've given you a few websites here that you can, can peruse at your, at your leisure. The Clean Water Act, if we go back and look at the middle of part of the last century. Of course, this was the time post World War II when people were coming home, getting to work as it were manufacturing was increasing. Industrialization was increasing and this was a considerable time of more activity and more impacts on our water bodies. At this particular time, most of these, easily identified, sources of pollution, were called point sources, and a point source is essentially a source of pollutant that is you can envision, say, a pipe that you can easily see, you can easily get your arms around and understand. Exactly, where it comes from, you can measure it and you can control it more effectively. That's opposed to non-point source pollution which consists of many diffuse sources points of pollution scattered around the landscape. The concern early on with the development of these control procedures, this legislation, was over pollution that was easy to see and deal with. And those were the points. The Clean Water Act then set about to set up a structure for laws regulating discharges, these point source pollution. Non point was not on the radar scope, as it were, at that particular time. The focus was on point sources. The Clean Water Act sets technology-based water quality standards for the point sources. For example, the pollution or the influent coming from a waste water treatment plant needs to be treated to a certain level before discharging. And also the process to achieve standards and since then focusing on point sources. And it's been a lot of success in getting these under control. These are essentially permitted and managed and, and controlled in that, in that regard. And there's been a lot of success at removing point sources as a major contributor to, to water quality problems in this country. In 1987, the Clean Water Act Amendments now addressed the non points with the so called, 319 Amendment. The Clean Water Act mainly addresses surface waters such as rivers, lakes, streams, estuaries, and there are essentially two components. Funds to help municipalities and places around the country that are having problems funds to help them construct treatment facilities and rules and regulations on water quality. This is a federal state partnership. The Clean Water Act essentially sets the guidelines, and requires the states to assess their water bodies and set water quality standards and to implement restoration processes. The Clean Water Act most point sources have come under regulation. A few of these examples might be waste water treatment facilities, solid waste facilities and concentrated animal feeding operations. These are animal operations that are treated a little bit differently than farming practices, that we'll discuss a little bit later on. Most of the pollution problems now left out to deal with fall under the non-point source. And examples of these would be nutrients and sediment from farms, from farming activities, and urban storm water run off. The key tools that the Clean Water Act has, are regulatory and these are the permits that are required for the, the point source pollution and non-regulatory. And an example of this would be the Section 319 that provides grants to states to help these states addresses non-points. So for example funds can come to the state of Florida and would be used by the Department of Environmental Protection in this state to help farmers adopt best management practices for keeping nutrients and sediment on their farm. And we'll talk about some of those details. If you were to look at a general flow diagram of how the system is set up and works. The states would set water quality standards. They would assess their, their water bodies as to whether they're meeting these standards. So for example, is a water body meeting its designated use as a recreational water body? And the states are required to monitor and to ask that question. If that water body is not useful for recreation when it is deemed that it should be then it goes on a list the so called, 3d, 303d list, or the impaired water bodies list. This is a list of water bodies that now. The state must develop some strategies for restoring these water bodies. And part of the process that we'll describe a little bit more in a second, involves developing total maximum daily loads for those water bodies. And a total maximum daily load is essentially the amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive and assimilate and still maintain it's designated use. For example, as a recreational water body. Once those TMDLs are determined and calculated, then the state must develop a plan, to, deal with those sources, to try to get them to be, to be lowered, so that, that water body can then meet its water quality standard. If the water body is at a level where it is meeting its designated use, Then the answer would be yes and it wouldn't be ignored. But the state would be required to maintain whatever management strategies are in place to maintain that water quality. So in essence, this is the process that states must go through. These water quality standards consist of 3 major areas. The designated use area, which is where the state determines what a water body should be used for. The water quality criteria that go along with that designated use. So for example, the concentration of nitrate nitrogen in a water body that you need for that water body to meet it's designated use. And then finally an anti-degradation policy to keep that water body at the quality level that is required so that it can continue to meet it's designated use. Designated uses are determined by the state as those appropriate or maybe could call them desired uses for a water body, a water body may have more than one designated use. So it may be designated to function for recreation, for swimming for aquatic habitat economic factors can be used to set the designated use. So is it important to the economy of the region to have that water body set for recreation, recreational uses? This might be an example of the springs in Northern Florida. But economic factors cannot be used to set a water quality standard, so if the water body is determined that its, its use should be for recreation, then there is a level of pollutants that go along with that. And that, that level cannot be, for example, a concentration of nitrogen cannot be increased just because it might be might involve more cost to achieve a lower level. Now we'll talk about a little bit of things that are done in that regard to help particularly agriculture, do what it needs to do to maintain water quality standards that may be costly to, to maintain. Here are a few designated use categories that we see most commonly in the State of Florida aquatic habitat, recreation, agricultural use, and we'll focus a little bit on those water bodies that are for agriculture use. This picture simply depicts a water that may have several standards set for it because it has several uses that have been deemed appropriate. The water quality criteria can be either narrative, such as excessive algal growth. We want to prevent, excessive algal growth. Or numerical, more quantitative description of the standards such as no more than 0.35 parts per million of nitrate nitrogen. These, these criteria are determined based on a couple of approaches. One is biological studies where scientists may actually study a range of nutrient concentrations, and look at the resulting impacts on algal growth and also if those kinds of studies are not available or easy to do then sometimes a reference water body is used. So for example, a water body that is very similar to the one under consideration that is free of algal blooms for example. What is, what is, what are the characteristics of that water body that allow it to be free that we need to transfer over to our water body of concern. Some of the top reasons for getting listed on the 303d list are shown here. I put these up just mainly to show you that some of the things that we're going to be focusing on in regards to agriculture B and P like nutrients and sediment are mentioned very often for many of our water bodies. They appear very often as pollutants in our water bodies. So this whole idea of designated use impairment is a challenging process. It's very, it's not a one size fits all the reason I say this is because some natural water bodies are, are naturally eutropic and some of these are actually very good for fishing. You can see one of the readings on this particular topic. So this whole process is challenging to go through, because not only do different people have different ideas about a designated use, but also there is differing, differing scientific results about what should be the, the criteria to maintain those uses. So if a water body is not meeting its standards, then what do we do? It's the state's job, then to evaluate and list that body, and then work to restore it. So as we said before, the first step is that, that water body goes on a special list and a TMDL is set for that water body. And again, the TMDL is simply the amount of pollutant that a water body can receive and still meet it's designated use because it can assimilate that much of that pollutant and still meet it's designated use. So the states set the TMDLs and of course the EPA approves them. And if the state's TMDLs are not acceptable or not approved, then the EPA can come in and set a TMDL for that state. And the goal of this whole process is to determine that amount of that nutrient that load, that can be applied to that water body such that, that water body can still meet it's designated use. And this means that coming up with a total amount of pollutant and then figuring out what land uses, agriculture, urban, municipal, industrial. Are out there that contribute to that total load and try to allocate that load to those various land uses. The TMDL process can sort of be shown schematically here if you start at the top. The state assesses the water body to see if it's meeting the designated use. It verifies that, and makes a decision as to whether to list it or not list it on the, the 303d list. If it goes on the list, then a TMDL is set, and the whole process for allocating that TMDL load to the users and this is done through what's called a Basin Management Action Plan, and so this is a stakeholder involved process. And it eventually leads to, for example for farmers, it might lead to the encouragement of them to adopt best management practices so that they can account for their part of the load, the TMDL. And so then you implement best management practices for the agriculture part in that particular watershed and then you monitor it and then you come back to square one all over again. So if the monitoring and the assessment indicate that a water body is impaired by one or more pollutants and it goes on this list, then the state is required to develop the strategy that will lead to the repairment or the restorement of that water quality. The elements of a TMDL, allowable pollutant load or cap and that's the amount that the ecosystem can assimilate. And then there's typically a margin of safety added to that, and then that, that load is allocated amongst the sources up in the water shed. When it comes to the implementation strategies as I said before, this is very, very difficult because It involves people spending money. And so for some of the point sources, for example, these permits. So if there was a concentrated animal feeding operation in this particular watershed, they would probably be required if they are of sufficient size, to have a permit for that operation. For agriculture, for farming the section 319 in the Clean Water Act then comes into play, and deals with non-point sources and would probably provide money to the state to help those farmers adopt best management practices. And the funding then comes through the section 319. We'll also talk a little bit later when we talk more specifically about agriculture some other sources of assistance, technical assistance and also funding assistance that farmers have access to. So the non-points, which is where most of our farms are going to fall in this process, Congress chose not to address non-points through a regulatory approach and this probably had a lot to do with the fact that these are non-points and they're scattered and diffuse, and it's very difficult to regulate those kinds of sources. So rather when it added section 319 to the Clean Water Act in, as recent as 1987, it created a federal grant program that provides money to the states. And the state of Florida receives 319 dollars and applies them to best management practice. Demonstrations, for example the Univeristy of Florida may work with agricutlture producers using 319 funds to help famers learn about and adopt best management practices as their part of meeting a TMDL. So what about agriculture? How does agriculture fit into this whole TMDL picture? What I would like to do next would be to talk a little bit more specifically about agriculture pollution, now that we understand where it falls in the federal scheme of things. And talk a little bit more specifically about agriculture and the programs that are available to farmers for helping them adopt BMPs. Okay, so we've come to the end of this particular part of this lecture, and I just want to, sort of tie things together with a few take-homes for you. Number one, the United States and Florida have a strong history of water quality protection, and we've already alluded to the fact that Florida has to do it. We have a lot of natural resources and we have a huge agriculture enterprise in this state. So we have to figure this out. We have to be leaders. The 1970s were very important in this country for water quality legislation, that's the Clean Water Act. Agriculture fits under the Clean Water Act through the non-point source category. Water bodies have designated uses and water quality standards that are intended, or criteria that are intended to meet those designated uses. And when water bodies fail to keep the water quality standards then there is a process for everyone. To join together to, to understand, to measure, and to come together as far as how to solve that water quality problem.
