The Otter Project Challenges Agricultural Permit to Save Sea Otters

The Otter Project, along with rural Latino community and farmworker groups, environmental organizations, and commercial and recreational fishing organizations, filed a lawsuit against the Water Boards’ September decision to strike down measures to control extensive nitrate pollution along the Central Coast of California – critical habitat for the sea otter. The Otter Project has historically been the lead organization calling for the elimination of toxic agricultural discharges to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The Otter Project contends that by refusing to take steps to protect the region’s polluted rivers and streams, the Water Boards have failed to require farmers to take reasonable measures to ensure water quality standards would be achieved and that communities’ use of their local waterways would be safe.

The Salinas Valley, recognized as the "Salad Bowl of America,” produces 80% of all the leafy greens and strawberries found in our supermarkets nation-wide. Unfortunately, this has turned 55% of the region’s waters into highly toxic drains for agricultural pesticides and nutrients that flow into the heart of the critical habitat for the already threatened sea otter. California’s Central Coast supports some of the most significant biodiversity in the world and is home to the last remaining population of the California sea otter, three species of threatened steelhead salmon, and one species of endangered coho salmon.

Farm fertilizers cause ocean “dead zones” and harmful algal blooms that are disastrous for sea otters. In 2010, scientists discovered that otters were dying of microcystis poisoning. Microcystis is a highly toxic freshwater algae that flows into the ocean and is concentrated by the shellfish otters eat. Pesticides and other agricultural chemicals can also build up and impact the otter’s immune system. In the last several years there have been at least three dozen sea otter deaths from microcystis poisoning.

Sadly, the region contains 17 waterways listed as contaminated by agriculture, including the Salinas River that drains into the Monterey Bay, which has been highly toxic for over a decade without any progress towards reducing pollutants. According to the Regional Board’s own findings, “sufficient water quality improvements have not been achieved over the last 15 years of agricultural orders”. And yet the Regional Board removed the ‘lynchpin’ of the Order’s new surface water protections without any justification other than lack of time to consider them.

Specifically, we are calling on the Central Coast Water Board to require mandatory wetland setbacks. Setbacks are critical to protecting surface water – and ultimately the Monterey Sanctuary – because they act as buffers and prevent fertilizers and pesticides from running off into the nearby creek or river.

Unless the Central Coast Water Board acts to require wetland setbacks, the Central Coast’s surface waters are at risk of pesticide toxicity and nutrient-caused harmful algae blooms. Requiring wetland setbacks was originally the Regional Board’s entire plan for address surface water toxicity in the Region. But due to political pressure and the farmers’ desire for more profits, the Regional Water Board completely eliminated the wetland setbacks, and with it, the entire surface water protections. Without the Water Board addressing the need for setbacks, the Central Coast Ag Order will fail to attain livable conditions for the sea otter. That is why we filed our lawsuit.