Pesticides and Groundwater Quality Issues and Problems in Four States (1986) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-13
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The report reviews diverse activities in four states related to the detection in groundwater of residues from field-applied pesticides. These activities include hydrogeologic investigations; regulatory actions, including monitoring and cleanup; recommended changes in agricultural management practices, including irrigation and pest management; and various research initiatives, including development of new analytic chemistry techniques.
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The cases reviewed are not detailed enough to characterize completely the current status of groundwater in the four states reviewed, nor are they necessarily representative of other states with significantly different agricultural activities. Nevertheless, the experiences in these four states suggest a number of generalizations concerning groundwater quality research needs, federal and state regulatory actions, and agricultural management practices associated with pesticide use.
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Where wells supplying drinking water contain residues in excess of applicable standards, remedial actions have included supplying bottled water, installing granulated activated carbon filters, extending community water supplies to households with contaminated wells, capping contaminated wells, and drilling new wells. Some remedial actions have been funded by pesticide manufacturers (for example, Union Carbide and FMC Corporation on Long Island)
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In Suffolk County, New York, a 1-year experimental program that restricted the conditions of aidicarb use indicated that even these steps were insufficient to keep groundwater contamination levels below health guidelines Accordingly, the use of aldicarb is no longer permitted in Suffolk and Nassau counties.
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, existing analytic techniques capable of detecting more than one compound tend to be expensive, time-consuming, limited to certain pesticide classes, and/or lacking in sensitivity. The development of improved multiresidue analytic screens for pesticides in water would enhance monitoring efficiency.
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These requests for data on the environmental fate of pesticides in relation to groundwater involve essentially all currently registered pesticides believed to pose a threat to groundwater. In addition, some states, including Florida, Wisconsin, and California, specifically authorize state-level pesticide regulatory bodies to require any additional data needed to assess particular local problems.
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Work to characterize susceptible areas is ongoing in all four states, both to specify particular problems (for example, aldicarb migration studies in New York, Wisconsin, and Florida) and to identify geographic areas where groundwater would be at high risk of pesticide contamination (for example, in heavily farmed regions of California with a rising water table)
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From page 8... ...
Furthermore, increased effort should be applied to the development and validation of models predicting the environmental fate and transport of pesticides in the vadose zone before the use of these models in regulatory program-= is accepted or rejected. Point Source Contamination With some local exceptions, residues in groundwater from field application of pesticides tend to be restricted to perched groundwater and the upper levels of unconfined aquifers.
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or health advisories. often states have set their own MCLs, health advisory levels, action levels, and guidelines; and even though they may rely on data generated by the federal government, the lack of formally set levels can lead to inconsistent state standards.
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· The lack of federally set MCLs or other health advisories for pesticides in water is widely perceived as a critical impediment to local and state health protection programs. Overcoming constraints to the issuance of health advisories and other quantitative standards and focusing federal scientific resources more effectively on developing such standards are hignpriority needs.
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There is also considerable concern that public apprehensions about groundwater contamination will grow to the point where statewide or national bans will become politically expedient, even in cases where pesticide contamination is a controllable, localized phenomenon. These concerns have Implications for agricultural management practices as well as for pesticide availability and use.
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and need to be assessed. Groundwater Protection needs associated with the complete process of manufacturing, formulating, ~ transporting, delivering, and applying agricultural pesticides should be assessed, and~appropriate management standards developed where necessary.
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From page 13... ...
13 special local conditions, different interests involved, and lack of federal leadership in key areas. The most urgent actions needed to address groundwater problems arising from field-applied pesticides appear to be · Federal determination of health-based standards for pesticides in water; · The development of improved, multiresidue analytic tools for screening groundwater for pesticides at the parts-per-billion to parts-per-trillion range; · The development of a systematic monitoring program; · The development of improved models of pesticide behavior and fate in soils, the vadose zone, and aquifers, and assessment of their validity under field conditions; · The development of data on environmental fate and pesticide use patterns, in conjunction with local hydrogeologic conditions, at a level of specificity adequate to identify areas especially vulnerable to groundwater contamination and to develop site-specific restrictions on pesticide use; and o The integration of groundwater resource considerations into an array of agricultural management practices and choices, including cropping, tillage, irrigation, and pest management.
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