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Information Sheet IS-3 Reissued Waste Discharge Requirements General Order R5-2013-0122 Existing Milk Cow Dairies v. Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Bd. (hereafter AGUA) (2012) 210 Cal.AppAth 1255.) Responding to the reversal, the Superior Court issued a Writ of Mandate that compels the Central Valley Water Board to, "[s]et aside the [2007 General Order] and reissue the permit only after application of, and compliance with, the State's anti-degradation policy ... as interpreted by the Court of Appeal in its opinion." The reissued Dairy General Order is intended to set aside and replace the 2007 General Order in compliance with the Superior Court's writ of mandate. When the Board issued the 2007 General Order, it also issued a companion Monitoring and Reporting Program (MRP) pursuant to Water Code section 13267. This MRP included monitoring, record-keeping, and reporting requirements that were applicable to all dairies regulated by the 2007 General Order. However, due to resource constraints, the dairy industry and the Central Valley Water Board acknowledged that it would be infeasible for all the dairies to immediately implement individual monitoring programs: the dairies lacked the financial resources to install multiple monitoring wells at each facility, there were not enough consultants available to develop groundwater monitoring programs and install multiple monitoring wells at each dairy facility, and the Central Valley Water Board lacked the staff to analyze thousands of individual groundwater monitoring reports. In order to efficiently assess the water quality impacts associated with various waste management practices employed at the dairies, the Central Valley Water Board proposed two parallel approaches to monitoring: 1) the dairies that elected to conduct their own monitoring could continue to do so under their individual monitoring programs, and 2) the dairies that would prefer to pool their resources could enroll in a RMP. After soliciting public comments on revisions to the MRP that would add an RMP option, the Board's Executive Officer issued the revised version of the MRP (the "Revised MRP") on 23 February 2011. Under the RMP approach, individual dairies have the option of joining together to collectively monitor different waste management practices in a variety of geologic settings in lieu of developing individual monitoring programs. The collective monitoring effort is being used to develop a suite of effective management practices, and substantially decreases the expense and unnecessary duplication of implementing individual monitoring programs. Dairies utilizing management practices that are found not to be protective of groundwater quality will be required to improve upon those management practices. In accordance with the terms of the Revised MRP, the Board's Executive Officer approved a Monitoring and Reporting Workplan for the Central Valley Dairy Representative Monitoring Program (CVDRMP), which is discussed in greater detail under the section entitled How Will the Board Evaluate the Effectiveness of Management Practices?, which is presented later on in this Information Sheet. DAIRIES REGULATED BY THE DAIRY GENERAL ORDER There were approximately 1,600 dairy operations that received regulatory coverage under the 2007 General Order. Since then, the number of dairy operations within the Central Valley Region has declined significantly, largely due to economic reasons. Since 2007, revenues from