State water quality regulators cited the Center for Watershed Sciences’ research on nitrate-contaminated drinking water as a "foundation" for remedies they proposed in a Feb. 20 report to the Legislature.

The State Water Board’s recommendations incorporate several “promising actions” that Center researchers identified last year in a board-commissioned investigation of the contamination in California’s most productive agricultural regions.

The water officials recommended that state lawmakers create a funding source such as a fee on nitrogen fertilizers so communities with high levels of nitrate in their drinking water can build and operate safe water systems. Officials also suggested improved groundwater monitoring and notification for residents in high-nitrate affected areas.

“In developing this report, the State Water Board relied on the UC Davis report as a foundation,” the board officials noted in their executive summary to legislators. Findings by a governor’s safe drinking water task force and discussions with state regulators of public health, agriculture and pesticides also informed the recommendations, the officials said.

“We’re delighted that the water board found UC Davis’ work to be helpful,” said Jay Lund, the Center’s director who co-authored the nitrate study with Thomas Harter of the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources.

The Center's study, released in March 2012, estimated that 254,000 people in the agricultural Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley were at risk for nitrate contamination of their drinking water, the result of livestock wastes and chemical fertilizers infiltrating aquifers that are tapped for faucets.