California's Rangeland Water Quality Management Plan: An Update

Abstract

In late 1989, California’s Range Management Advisory Committee, made up of livestock industry and public members, identifi ed water quality as a priority issue. In 1990, California’s range livestock industry began to develop a program of voluntary compliance with the Federal Clean Water Act, federal and state coastal zone regulations, and California’s Porter-Cologne Act, which provides for regulation of water quality by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) and nine Regional Water Quality Control Boards.1 This livestock industry initiative led to development of the California Rangeland Water Quality Management Plan (CRWQMP) for nonfederal rangelands, which was approved by the SWRCB in 1995.2 The objectives of the CRWQMP were to conduct management activities that would prevent sediment, nutrients, pathogens, and water temperature from exceeding prescribed standards established by California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards (RWQCB). The CRWQMP proposed that nonfederal rangeland owners and managers voluntarily develop a management strategy at the ranch and watershed level that would 1) determine impairment to benefi cial uses of water bodies in the ranch’s watershed and 2) assess the causes of impairments. The CRWQMP, developed in collaboration with regulatory agencies, state advisory committees, private consultants, the US Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE), provided for development and implementation of ranch water quality plans that address these two objectives on a voluntary basis.