A new challenge to the state water board rules alleges civil rights violations.

In 2012, California became the first state in the country to pass legislation declaring clean water is a human right. “Every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking and sanitary purposes,” according to Assembly Bill 685.

That should seem self-evident. And yet, here in Monterey County, some people cannot drink their water.

How to regulate the agriculture industry’s runoff is a complicated and politically charged matter. Will overregulation kill the industry? How much regulation is enough to protect the integrity of drinking water?

These questions, along with many far more technical questions have been the subject of 20 years’ worth of evolving regulations from California’s nine regional water boards, including the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Those technical questions are now in litigation; both farming interests and environmental interests have sued. A central issue is whether water boards can set specific, numerical caps on nitrate fertilizer that can be applied to fields. Environmental and community drinking water advocates argue such caps are the only option, while the ag industry disagrees.

Some community groups are now asking a broader question of who has a right to clean water, and in an administrative complaint filed on March 18 with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, they say the ongoing problem of nitrate-contaminated water is a civil rights violation.

“Groundwater pollution in the form of excessive nitrates has an especially disproportionate impact on Latinx populations,” the complaint reads.

The very people who work in the agriculture industry and live in agricultural communities are the people who suffer the consequences. Those people are disproportionately Latino.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Complainants allege the farm irrigation regulations violate Title VI, on the basis that Latino people are disproportionately harmed by nitrate contamination.

The complainants are Comité De Salinas; Misión San Lucas; nonprofit Monterey Waterkeeper; and The Environmental Justice And The Common Good, an initiative of Santa Clara University. Comité and Misión are groups of regular people experiencing real harm from nitrates.

One member of Misión San Lucas is Maria Velasquez. I first met Velasquez in 2013 when I was first reporting on nitrate contamination in the small South County community. At that time, Velasquez was frustrated after years of advocacy. That was before the grower believed to be responsible for nitrate contamination drilled a new well – then, after that well fouled, another one that also failed.

That was 11 years ago, and the people in the community of San Lucas still can’t safely drink the tap water. “I have been working for 10 years to control the problem of nitrates in our water,” Velasquez said in a statement. “And, today, I am still fighting for this same cause.”

It’s a cause that matters to people beyond San Lucas. In their complaint, the groups analyze state groundwater monitoring data in the context of census data. They found that majority-Latino communities were 4.36 times more likely to have wells that tested high for nitrates over (10 milligrams per liter).

The complainants are asking EPA to see their disproportionate impact as a matter of civil rights. They hope the federal agency pushes state water regulators to implement specific, numeric, measurable caps on the amount of nitrates growers can use.

Some of that is technical, but it’s also common sense. Valentin Resendiz-Luna is one of Velasquez’s fellow members of Misión San Lucas. In a declaration in support of the Title VI complaint, he wrote: “Although the future of our town’s access to drinking water is unclear, it is inarguable that limiting the amount of nitrogen used on our local farmland will reduce the amount of nitrates entering our water supply.”

Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com