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Information Sheet IS-11 Reissued Waste Discharge Requirements General Order R5-2013-0122 Existing Milk Cow Dairies As recounted in the AGUA litigation, the Board erred when it issued the 2007 General Order because it failed to comply with the State Anti-Degradation Policy. The reissued Dairy General Order contains revisions designed to comply with the AGUA decision, which interpreted the requirements of the State Anti-Degradation Policy. The flow chart on this page describes the process that the Board generally uses to apply the State Anti-Degradation Policy, and the following discussion elaborates on how these requirements are applied in the context of the Dairy General Order. The following sections describe the step-by-step approach for applying the Anti-Degradation Policy, followed by the direct application of this policy to the Dairy Genearl Order. The Initial Water Quality Assessment Step 1: Due to the constituent-by-constituent nature of an anti-degradation analysis, the Board must first compile a list the waste constituents present in the discharge that could degrade groundwater. These constituents are referred to as "constituents of concern," or COCs. The Board uses its best professional judgment to determine this suite of COCs, which is usually extrapolated from the ROWD that was submitted by the discharger. Step 2: Once the Board has compiled the list of CDCs, it then references numeric limits or other restrictions that would protect the beneficial uses associated with the receiving water. Some constituents, such as those constituents that have Maximum Contaminant Levels established in Title 22 of the California Code of Regulations, have numeric water quality objectives associated with them, while others have only narrative water quality objectives associated with them. For constituents that have only narrative water quality objectives associated with them, the Board derives numeric limits by considering relevant numerical criteria and guidelines developed and/or published by other agencies and organizations. (e.g., State Water Board, California Department of Health Services, California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Department of Toxic Substances Control, University of California Cooperative Extension, California Department of Fish and Game, U. S. EPA, U. S. Food and Drug Administration, National Academy of Sciences, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations). Step 3: The Board then makes a good-faith effort to determine best water quality that has existed since 1968, the year in which the anti-degradation policy was promulgated (often data from 1968 or earlier are unavailable). The Board then determines whether any subsequent lowering of water quality was due to a regulatory action taken by the Board. The best quality that has existed since 1968, minus any authorized degradation, becomes the "baseline" water quality2. Determininq Whether the Anti-Degradation Policy is Triggered Step 4: The Board compares the numeric limits derived in Step 2 with the baseline water quality derived in Step 3. For each constituent, if the baseline water quality is better than the derived 2 Water quality control policies adopted subsequent to 1968 may alter the calculation of this baseline.