To reduce nitrates and ensure that people have access to safe drinking water, the state has proposed tighter water quality requirements for all California dairies that collect dairy waste and apply it to land.  The dairy general waste discharge requirements regulate only existing milk-cow dairies in the Central Valley region. But the draft order, if adopted as proposed, establishes new precedential groundwater quality protection requirements that would apply to all California dairies that apply their dairy waste to land, said Kari Fisher, senior director and counsel of legal advocacy at the California Farm Bureau.