Stafford Lake, which provides one fifth of North Marin Water District’s drinking water, sits downslope and across Novato Boulevard from a family dairy owned by District 4 supervisor candidate Dominic Grossi and his father, George. The proximity between the reservoir and the ranch has caused some problems over the years.
The water district—for which the other District 4 candidate, Dennis Rodoni, has served as a board director for over two decades—and the dairy have been at odds over nutrients from cow manure making their way to the lake. The dairy and the district have collaborated in the past to address the problem, but the district fretted this summer over the dairy’s use of manure as fertilizer, and Mr. Rodoni says the problem continues to harm the water and cost the district money.
Mr. Grossi, whose dairy abides by widely recognized best management practices, believes the issue is now surfacing in the news because of politics. Just a week after he announced his candidacy, the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board received an anonymous complaint about the dairy, the only complaint he has ever known about. And last week, the Marin Independent Journal published an article about issues between the dairy and the district after one of Mr. Rodoni’s supporters, Inverness resident Jerry Meral, brought the issue to the newspaper.
The Grossi family emigrated to the United States in the late 19th century, and bought land and a dairy in Novato in 1940. Stafford Lake dates back to 1950s.The district built a dam in 1951 to create the reservoir, and Mary and George Grossi sold the district 66 acres and moved the dairy to its current location, enabling the district to expand the reservoir.
About a decade ago, the district upgraded the lake’s water treatment facility, a project that cost over $20 million. The upgrade “has done a good job” of addressing taste and odor issues with the water, said the district’s general manager, Chris DeGabriele.
Those issues come from algae that grow in the lake. During winter rains, nutrients from cow manure can make their way to the water; come summer and fall, algae grows and feeds on the nutrients, occasionally creating noticeable odors and tastes.
Based on water quality tests of drainages that feed the lake, Mr. DeGabriele said the dairy is the largest source of nutrients to the reservoir. He emphasized that it is not the manure itself entering the lake, but the nutrients that come from it.
“The treatment plant does a really good job of removing taste and odor-causing compounds, but we can’t get them all,” he said.
In response to a voicemail seeking comment on the lake issue, Mr. Rodoni sent an email echoing that sentiment. “We undertook a 20 million dollar plus upgrade of our treatment plant to enable the district to treat our water for taste and odor and produce high quality water, but issues of nutrients from the water shed continue to harm our water,” he wrote.
Mr. Rodoni added in a subsequent email that he believed it would be best to have no manure spread in the watershed. “Removing the manure from the water shed (sic) would be the best solution. The Grossi dairy is finally moving to a[n] organic dairy, and this will mean less cows, less manure and more potential for keeping nutrients out of [the] lake. Not spreading any manure on the watershed would be the best management practice, from my perspective.”
But Mr. Grossi questioned whether the dairy is definitively the source of the problem. “Without doing DNA testing of all the nutrients in the lake, there is no way to tell,” he wrote in a followup email.
The taste and odor issues do not mean that the water is unsafe to drink, and the water leaving the plant has not failed drinking water standards, Mr. DeGabriele said. But the dairy and the manure have continued to be a point of discussion.
In 2010, for instance, the board discussed a new project to help prevent nutrients from getting to the lake. At a meeting that year, Mr. Rodoni appeared to suggest trying to buy the dairy if the family was interested, according to meeting minutes. Mr. Rodoni “suggested that the district begin a conversation with the Grossi family regarding the future in the watershed. He said that dairy prices are extremely low now and many dairies are going out of business. He asked if there is an opportunity that these issues can be addressed if the Grossis are interested. He said he would not want to see our water supply be compromised at any time and this may be an opportune time to open the conversation,” the minutes state.
In 2012 and 2013, the district reimbursed the dairy a total of $28,000 for the cost of moving manure—which the dairy spreads on land for fertilizer, a standard practice—further from the lake. A 2013 memo from the district’s water quality supervisor noted that nutrients, such as nitrogen, in tributaries were “down considerably” based on water samples. But a memo from the next year said that nutrient levels had gone up, potentially because of rainfall.
The district discontinued the payments, Mr. DeGabriele told the Light. “The money that was spent didn’t really result in any demonstrable benefit.”
And the district says it faces other costs associated with the dairy. According to Mr. DeGabriele, the carbon filter at the lake’s treatment facility costs $177,000 a year to replace. In his email, Mr. Rodoni said the costs of removing taste and odor related to nutrients have “skyrocketed in spite of our best efforts.”
New costs are on the horizon. In 2015, the district contracted with SRT Consultants to a write a report on Stafford Lake, to help figure out how to further mitigate odor and taste issues. Mr. DeGabriele said the report recommended studying the algae in more detail, including which ones produce a byproduct called giosmin, which is connected to odor and taste. The district now has plans for a project to more thoroughly aerate the lake, which he said entailed $200,000 in capital costs and about $8,000 a year to run.
But Mr. Grossi criticized the report, which he said he only learned about in a recent conversation with an I.J. reporter. In particular, the report recommended that he implement four best management practices that he in fact already implements.
“We follow best management practices and we always have,” Mr. Grossi said. “The water district never even talked to anyone at the dairy [for the report].”
Mr. DeGabriele confirmed that the dairy does follow the four practices recommended in the report.
The dairy regularly submits reports to the water quality control board about its practices, as do all dairies under the board’s dairy waiver program. Those reports include photographs of operations to prove compliance. And because of new rules the board will phase in over the coming years, the dairy will also start testing water quality and soil. Mr. Grossi rattled off the various plans the dairy must now create and submit to the water board, including a ranch management plan, a pasture plan and a nutrient management plan.
He also said that 60 percent of the manure produced on the dairy is sent to two other ranchers for use as fertilizer for silage.
And his dairy is in the process of going organic, which will halve the size of its herd, now at 240 milking cows.
Mr. Grossi said it was clear to him that issues coming up around his dairy were spurred by the supervisor race. The anonymous complaint sent a week after he announced his candidacy prompted a visit from water quality board staff. A subsequent letter from the board said they had “observed sound management practices,” but it made three recommendations for improvements to be implemented by the middle of this month, which he said he has done.
Mr. Meral, once the deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources, said he drives by the lake often to go over the hill. He believes the manure is spread too close to the lake, though he added that he is “not an expert.” He refuted that he was politically motivated in contacting the I.J., telling the Light that the issue has been on the district’s radar for many years. According to the district’s meeting minutes, it sprung up as recently as this summer. “The meeting minutes this year indicated that it wasn’t getting resolved,” he said, and that seemed like news.
During a July meeting, the district discussed concerns about the dairy spreading manure close to the lake. At the time, Mr. DeGabriele said that he would pursue a complaint to the regional water board. But he told the Light this week that the district never contacted the agency.
“We’re trying to work cooperatively, and hope the cooperative efforts continue and that we find solutions that work with both parties to improve the situation. It’s complex,” he said.
Mr. Grossi echoed that sentiment. “We work with North Marin Water District to make improvements and to make things better,” he said.