Bettina Boxall <http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-selenium23dec23,0,7836756.story> , writing last week at the Los Angeles Times, reported that, “A dozen wild bird eggs plucked from nests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley show how easily things can go awry when trying to clean up the region's tainted farm drainage.
 
“The eggs, collected last year in fields that are part of a treatment project, contained the same lethal levels of selenium that poisoned migrating waterfowl more than two decades ago at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos.
 
“The 2005 egg contamination was the worst detected in five years of monitoring at the project, which recycles selenium-laced agricultural drain water by using it to irrigate crops.
 
“The results, reported to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation this summer, come at a time when the agency is considering greatly expanding such reuse areas as part of a massive proposed drainage program on the valley's west side.”
 
The article also noted that, “The acreage devoted to such reuse areas could grow significantly under proposals in the final stages of review by the reclamation bureau.
 
“The agency is under court order in a long-standing lawsuit to solve the drainage problem on about 379,000 acres of west-side farmland with a high water table. The bureau, which supplies the area with federal irrigation water, was supposed to have made a final decision this summer on how to proceed. But negotiations to settle the case have left the matter up in the air.
 
“In documents released this year, the reclamation bureau outlined a variety of options, favoring a complex solution that would cost nearly $1 billion. It revolves around taking most of the poorly drained land out of irrigation and converting it to dryland farming or fallowing it, a step that could cost federal taxpayers more than $700 million.
 
“The proposal also calls for treating drainage from land remaining in irrigation through a combination of 7,500 acres of reuse areas, high-tech filtration and nearly 1,300 acres of selenium-spiked evaporation ponds.
 
“But it's likely that either a settlement or the agency's final decision would retire less land than the Los Angeles-size chunk the bureau has proposed. Most of the acreage lies in the huge, politically powerful Westlands Water District, which opposes extensive land retirement.”
 
And Kenneth R. Weiss <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oceans25dec25,0,1392696.story?track=tothtml>  reported in MondayÂ’s Los Angeles Times that, “Urban runoff is the fastest-growing source of ocean pollution. The storm water discharge, combined with partially treated sewage, agricultural waste, and pollution from smokestacks and vehicle tailpipes, is changing the chemistry of the seas.
 
“Industrial civilization is overloading the oceans with nutrients — compounds of nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous. Algae, jellyfish and other primitive life-forms are thriving in this new environment, while corals, marine mammals and many fish species are struggling.
 
“Scientists say society has only recently begun to grasp how what happens on land affects the sea. It has taken decades to get to this point, they say, and it could take just as long to reverse the trend.”
 
With a more specific look at agricultural production and water issues, the L.A. Times stated that, “Dykstra Dairy is in the vanguard of a movement to clean up waste from livestock compounds. The goal is to keep the nitrogen-rich waste out of creeks, rivers and ultimately oceans.
 
“It's an unusual chore on a dairy farm otherwise preoccupied with maximizing milk production, said Lambooy, the co-owner. Nowadays, he said, ‘there is a lot more attention on the rear end of the cow.’
 
“A great deal more attention is being paid to all types of agricultural runoff. That includes the stuff that washes out of feedlots in rainstorms and off farms.
 
“One of the toughest tasks has been to discourage the excessive use of cheap chemical fertilizer, which is manufactured by stripping nitrogen out of the air and altering its chemistry.
 
“Although such fertilizer has brought America an unprecedented bounty of corn and other crops, it has also caused serious damage to the oceans by creating ‘dead zones.’”
 
And with respect to Midwestern grain production, the article indicated that, “Midwestern farmers worry that springtime conditions may be too wet to allow them to apply fertilizer and work the land.
 
“Farmers know that too little fertilizer — just like too little water — can limit the growth of their crops. To reduce their risk of decreased corn yields, they apply more fertilizer than crops need. That increases the amount of nitrogen that comes off their land.
 
“None of this is a surprise to the EPA, which spent four years developing a plan to shrink the ‘dead zone.’ The plan was finished in 2001. But little progress has been made putting it into action.
 
“The EPA has the power under the Clean Water Act to mandate reductions in agricultural and urban waste entering the Mississippi — something it has been reluctant to do.”
 
Near the end of the article, Mr. Weiss linked up the environmental concerns with the debate of U.S. domestic farm policy, explaining that, “One way to ease the effect of agricultural waste on the oceans would be to restore some of the millions of acres of marshes and streamside forests that absorbed and recycled nitrogen before the land was cleared for farms.
 
“Scientists in Ohio and Louisiana estimated that if just 2% of strategically located farmland in the Mississippi drainage basin were returned to wetlands, it would significantly reduce the nitrogen that races into the Gulf of Mexico.
 
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture encourages such restoration, and the idea has proved popular with farmers. Yet thousands of those willing to set aside wetlands or plant buffers of grass and trees are turned away each year because of a shortage of funds.”