For the first time in history, Del Norte County Easter lily growers will be monitored and regulated by the state in response to the farmers’ ongoing pesticide contamination of the Smith River estuary. Yet the legal mechanism adopted by the state is unlikely to result in real protections for the estuary anytime soon.
On August 6 , 2026, the California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board voted 5-1 to adopt an Easter lily Agricultural Order that sets “thresholds” of allowable pesticide contamination in the Smith River estuary. Pesticide detections above the thresholds will trigger action to by the state to require lily growers to reduce contamination levels. The Order also lists “Best Management Practices” that lily growers may adopt in order to keep pesticides from fouling protected waters—contamination that has been occurring for nearly eighty years read more
Transcript of the Address by SLC Executive Director Greg King to the State Water Board.
Summer 2026
In the summer of 2025, after Siskiyou Land Conservancy secured ownership of two adjacent riverfront properties along Baduwa’t (the Mad River), we knew we had our work cut out for us. The Mad River Reserve spans 353 acres…Read more
In Del Norte County on October 8, 2025, more than 70 people attended a meeting of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to tell the state: Enough is enough, stop allowing Smith River easter lily farmers to poison the habitat and the people of the lower Smith River.
The epic meeting began at 6 p.m. and lasted five hours, yet few in the standing-room-only crowd left early. Water Board staff took nearly three hours to report to the four-member Water Board on state efforts to create an agricultural permit that would allow Smith River Easter lily farmers to continue polluting the river’s estuary and impacting local residents. read full article
State Water Board to take public testimony on widespread contamination of the nationally important Smith River.
On October 8, 2025, the full North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will hold a public meeting in Crescent City to take testimony on widespread pesticide contamination of the Smith River estuary.
Please make your voice heard! We need the public to tell the Water Board: End toxic pesticide contamination of the Smith River estuary.
The meeting:
Wednesday, Sep. 8, 2025
Del Norte County Board of Supervisors Chambers, 981 H Street, Crescent City Room 100
To attend remotely click here.
read full article
Will the State of California Finally Protect the Smith River Estuary from Dangerous Pesticides?
The California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board has resurrected a long moribund agricultural permit process to allow Easter lily farmers, in Del Norte County, to continue polluting the vital estuary of the Wild and Scenic Smith River and nearby human populations with high concentrations of deadly pesticides. Siskiyou Land Conservancy views this process as largely illusory, and more of a lengthy distraction, given the state’s decades-long refusal to protect the Smith River estuary and prohibit illegal discharges of pollutants into protected waters. Read more.
To read SLC’s comments on the first phase of the resurrected permit process—“Findings”.
In 2025, Siskiyou Land Conservancy acquired two beautiful and ecologically vital riverfront properties on Baduwa’t, or the Mad River, in Humboldt County, California, to create a 353-acre reserve on this important North Coast river.
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“It’s a toxic soup in there.”—NMFS fisheries biologist In April 2024, Siskiyou Land Conservancy released a comprehensive report that documents forty years of complicity by the state of California in the pesticide contamination of the Smith River estuary, in the far northwestern corner of California. Pesticide use now threatens the ongoing survival of at least
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Still slogging through the state’s malfeasant muck at the Smith River estuary! Historic contamination at the Smith Riverestuary by the carcinogenic pesticide 1,2-dichloropropane. Map created in 2002 bythe Smith River Project, which mergedwith Siskiyou Land Conservancy in 2004. During the past five years the California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken several
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This year Siskiyou Land Conservancy celebrates our twentieth year in service of protecting critical habitat in northwestern California! We are forever grateful for our many individual and institutional supporters, who have allowed Siskiyou Land Conservancy to reach this milestone and continue contributing equitable solutions to environmental challenges that sometimes appear intractable. Read our annual newsletter
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