“If a fee is allocated to a specific


purpose it’s a majority vote, and so these things are always tough to do,” Klehs said. “Ag is very powerful and they may oppose this stuff and these are best to do early in the session so you have two years to work on it. You have to put together a broad-based coalition to have support for it and even more important you have to have a demon- strated need for this.”


Then there is the scope of nitrate contamination within the context of all drinking water issues, such as hexava- lent chromium and arsenic. “There’s the view of water meeting standards and who gets it and who doesn’t and how can we try and have a level play- ing field when some communities just don’t have the resources,” EPA’s Macler said. “That’s a head-scratcher. Congress never really dealt with that. We try. The state tries.” Treatment of nitrate is expensive, including disposal of the waste stream,


Macler said. Then there is the cost of maintaining a treatment system while providing affordable water rates. “I can see where folks are com- ing from with this business of finding a funding source,” he said. “In fact, it wouldn’t honestly cost so much to deal with just the nitrate-contaminated sys- tems, because there are a finite number of them.”


Finding the long-term revenue source called for by the State Water Board will require negotiation and compromise. “We would likely oppose a water fee to solve the nitrate drinking water problem,” Quinn wrote. “There is no beneficiaries pay logic to a tax on water for this purpose. How do you explain to public water agencies that serve safe water hundreds of miles from a drink- ing water problem and have in no way contributed to the problem that they should pay to clean it up? It should be funded by the general fund.”


Firestone said that many public water systems that are hampered by nitrate and that a fee on nitrogen can produce the best results.


“There are a lot of different sources


out there – it’s not a point source where it’s very easy to pinpoint one polluter,” she said. “It isn’t something where there was bad faith by people. It makes it challenging to deal with from a traditional liability and cleanup and abatement standpoint. That’s why a fee is effective. It’s not a penalty but an incentive to increase efficiencies while generating a source of funding that can help to address the impacts.” Despite the challenges that lie ahead, Orth believes stakeholders can craft a mutually beneficial solution. “I think it can move forward,” he said. “I have seen a tremendous amount of resources and understandings [and] we have a lot of extremely qualified people talking about this at a level I’ve never observed before.” ❖


March/April 2013


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