Ten years. That’s how much time the Bay Area’s 37 wastewater
treatment plants will have to reduce fertilizer and sewage in
their water by 40%. The estimated price tag for the facility
upgrades is $11 billion. The San Francisco Regional Water
Quality Control Board plans to adopt the change as part of its
new discharge permit requirement beginning June 12. Previous
permits did not require reductions …The regulatory change
follows a damaging algae bloom in 2022 and 2023. A brown algae
species called Heterosigma akashiwo, which feeds off the
nitrogen in wastewater, infected the Bay and damaged aquatic
ecosystems.
What if the looming calamities of climate change, plastic
pollution, the energy crisis and our whole environmental
doom-scroll are symptoms of just one malady and it’s something
we actually can fix? That’s right, the planet is fighting a
single archvillain: Waste. Americans live in the most wasteful
civilization in history. … Waste is so deeply embedded in our
economy, products and daily lives that it’s hard to see
clearly, or to see at all. … How is it “normal”
that 40% of what our industrial farm and food system
produces ends up as garbage? … The average American
throws out three times more trash today than in 1960. Pin much
of that garbage growth on plastic waste, so pervasive now that
tiny bits of it are in food, water, beer and even human hearts,
lungs and newborn babies’ poop. -Written by Edward Humes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist. His latest book, “Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our
Waste and Heal Our World,” will be published in April.
Environmental groups on Thursday sued officials who signed off
on a lithium project in the Salton Sea that a top Biden
official has helped advance. Comité Civico del Valle and
Earthworks filed the legal complaint in Imperial County
Superior Court against county officials who approved
conditional permits for Controlled Thermal Resources’ Hell’s
Kitchen lithium and geothermal project. The groups argue that
the country’s approval of the direct lithium extraction and
geothermal brine project near the southeastern shore of the
Salton Sea violates county and state laws, such as the
California Environmental Quality Act.
When heavy rain overwhelms wastewater treatment plants in San
Francisco, causing stormwater to overflow onto streets and
into the bay, sewage is an unfortunate part of the mix.
After heavy rain, the largest recipient of the potent brew of
stormwater and sewage in the city is Mission Creek — a
channel to the bay that is home to houseboats, walking trails
and a kayak launch. At Mission Creek, Islais Creek, another
channel at India Basin, and a few locations in between, the
city discharges 1.2 billion gallons of “combined sewer
discharges” in a typical year, according to the environmental
group S.F. Baykeeper, which has notified the city it intends to
sue over how such discharges impact the environment. A large
portion of the combined sewer overflows — which SFPUC said
are composed of 94% treated stormwater and 6% treated
wastewater — is making its way without basic treatment
into the bay during storms, according to S.F. Baykeeper.
Hastings, Minnesota, is staring down a $69 million price tag
for three new treatment plants to remove PFAS chemicals from
its water supply, ahead of new US federal regulations limiting
the amount of so-called forever chemicals in public drinking
water — which could come as early as this month. … [T]he
project amounts to a “budget buster,” says city administrator
Dan Wietecha. Operation and maintenance costs for the new
plants could add as much as $1 million to the tab each year
… Cities across the US are bracing for costly upgrades
to their water systems as the Environmental Protection Agency
moves to finalize the first-ever enforceable national drinking
water standards for PFAS — or per- and polyfluoroalkyl
substances — a large group of man-made chemicals used for
decades in manufacturing and in consumer products.
School-age children affected by the water crisis in Flint,
Mich., nearly a decade ago suffered significant and lasting
academic setbacks, according to a new study released Wednesday,
showing the disaster’s profound impact on a generation of
children. The study, published in Science Advances, found
that after the crisis, students faced a substantial decline in
math scores, losing the equivalent of five months of learning
progress that hadn’t recovered by 2019, according to Brian
Jacob, one of the study’s authors. The learning gap was
especially prevalent among younger students in third through
fifth grades and those of lower socioeconomic status. There was
also an 8 percent increase in the number of students with
special needs, especially among school-age boys.
Still water in the Tijuana River Valley reflects the chirping
birds who live there, giving the impression it is as nature
made it — until you see the floating trash and smell the
stagnant, polluted water. For decades, activists tried to clean
up the Tijuana River’s watershed as it flowed from Tijuana into
San Diego’s coastal waters, which are contaminated with both
human and industrial waste. A recent study from the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography found that coastal pollution is
also transferring to the air. “This is nothing short of an
environmental and public health crisis, and it has been made
worse by the fact that California companies are part of the
problem,” said State Senator Steve Padilla Monday, while
announcing SB 1178, a bill to address cross-border pollution.
A rusty red color in Lake Merritt that left lake stewards
scrambling to sample the water on Mar. 7 has tested positive
for the same algae that caused the devastating harmful algal
bloom in 2022. On Friday, lake stewards sent water
samples to labs run by the California Department of Public
Health and San Francisco Bay Regional Water Control Board.
Unofficial field testing initially detected no harmful algae.
However, lab testing confirmed over the weekend the presence of
Heterosigma akashiwo, a type of algae often associated with
harmful blooms. Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, occur when
certain types of algae grow rapidly and release toxins, lower
oxygen levels, and cause other changes in water quality that
can kill fish and other marine creatures.
A dozen tire companies are asking a California federal judge to
toss a suit claiming a rubber additive is harming protected
salmon, arguing that the litigation stretches the Endangered
Species Act “beyond its breaking point” and that regulation of
the substance belongs with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, not in courts.
The California State Water Resources Control Board issued a
$6.6 million grant for a city of San Luis Obispo project
intended to clean up contaminated groundwater. Presently, the
city does not use groundwater for its drinking water supply.
SLO’s potable water supply comes from Whale Rock Reservoir,
Santa Margarita Lake and Nacimiento Reservoir. City
officials have sought to diversify the water supply in an
attempt to achieve “greater drought and climate change
resiliency.” Previously, contamination from
tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, served as a barrier to doing so.
PCE is a toxic chemical produced by dry cleaning and industrial
activities, which took place in the city decades ago. The
cleanup project will consist of the city building two new
groundwater supply wells that are expected to be fully
operation in 2026.
A pair of new state bills are looking to crack down on some of
the polluters fueling the cross-border sewage crisis that has
hobbled access to San Diego County’s southernmost beaches for
decades. Senate Bill 1178 and Senate Bill 1208, introduced on
Monday by State Sen. Steve Padilla, add regulations to water
discharges for large corporations, as well as prevent water
authorities from issuing additional permits for waste releases
into areas in the Tijuana River system.
A report released by the Navy confirmed concerns that for years
have been hanging over the radiological cleanup of San
Francisco’s Hunters Point Shipyard: that rising seawater
levels, and other environmental factors resulting from climate
change, could cause toxic materials that have long been buried
at the site to surface. The study, called Climate
Resilience Assessment, was included in an ongoing review
process that the Navy must undertake every five years to
evaluate its remediation plan for the former shipyard, which
has long been a designated Superfund site. The shipyard is
also slated for redevelopment into a new neighborhood, with
cleaning efforts by the Navy and its contractors underway for
more than a decade to prepare it for reuse. The report is
the first time that the Navy has studied the impacts of climate
change in relation to the shipyard, which spans hundreds of
acres and contains radioactive waste and other contaminants.
California today took another step in implementing the nation’s
most comprehensive measure to tackle the rise in plastic waste
polluting our communities and ecosystems. Plastic waste is a
major contributor to climate and trash pollution,
with less than 9% of plastic recycled in California
and the rest of the U.S. Governor Gavin Newsom signed
the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer
Responsibility Act (SB 54) in 2022, which requires
producers to cut single-use plastic waste and ensure the
packaging on products they sell is recyclable or compostable.
The state today released draft regulations for the
measure, kicking off the formal rulemaking process.
The State Water Resources Control Board is exploring regulating
nutrients emitted from Southern California wastewater treatment
plants into the ocean. The controversial move is prompted by
concerns that these discharges may accelerate acidification and
oxygen loss in the region’s coastal waters, harming nearshore
marine life. The wastewater treatment industry says this
nutrient regulation is premature. Environmentalists say it’s
overdue. … Wastewater effluent from 23 million
people is piped offshore in Southern California. The resulting
acidity boost could be enough to start dissolving the shells of
crabs and small snails called pteropods, which swim near the
ocean surface and are a favorite food of many fish and whales.
And the resulting oxygen depletion could deprive anchovies,
which many commercial fish eat, of their habitat.
Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known
cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking
and stress: microplastics. In a study released Wednesday in the
New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of
physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who
had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial
plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack,
nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post
surgery than those who did not. … Petroleum-based
plastics do not biodegrade. Over time, they break down into
smaller and smaller pieces — known as microplastics,
microfibers and nanoplastics — and have been found in
household dust, drinking water and human tissue and
blood.
Clean Up The Lake, the environmental non-profit responsible for
the 72-mile cleanup of Lake Tahoe, has recently completed a
two-year monitoring effort on the lake. CUTL conservation dive
teams revisited 20 litter hotspots in the 0 to 25-foot depths
along the Nevada shoreline that were identified during the
72-mile cleanup of Lake Tahoe in 2021. The primary purpose of
this project was to survey these nearshore zones along the
Nevada shoreline to observe changes in litter accumulation and
perform surveillance for aquatic invasive species (AIS) that
may have progressed since 2021. By revisiting places that were
already cleaned, the data collected helped determine the status
of litter accumulation in Lake Tahoe, its rate of change since
the 72-mile cleanup, and the efficacy of CUTL’s SCUBA-enabled
cleanup methodology.
Three weeks after citizens stood up at a public meeting in
Siskiyou County, California, and raised concerns about heavy
metals in the Klamath River, the situation is about as clear as
the river. And the river’s pretty muddy. The breaching of the
Iron Gate, Copco 1 and JC Boyle hydroelectric dams in January
was done to draw down the reservoirs behind the dams as a
prelude to dam removal later this year. But the drawdown
released vast amounts of sediment that had been backed up
behind the dams. And some of those sediments contain metals.
… Only after a year from when drawdown is complete will
the company test for more metals, as directed by the state.
Sprawl development built far from city centers carries direct
and indirect costs that pull resources away from existing
neighborhoods, harming communities and natural habitats,
according to a new report published by the Center for
Biological Diversity. The True Cost of Sprawl analyzed the
environmental harms — including pollution, wildfire risks and
public health threats — that come with poor land-use decisions.
It found that suburban and exurban housing developments
increase per capita infrastructure costs by 50%, pulling public
funds from schools, parks, public transportation and other
needs in existing communities for things like new roads and
sewer systems.
For decades, raw sewage from Tijuana, Mexico has, and
continues, to flow across the border into San Diego,
California. This discharge flows into the Tijuana River
Valley, and ultimately to the Pacific Ocean. This
pollution has negatively impacted the Tijuana River Valley and
the Tijuana River Estuary, one of the last remaining estuaries
in California, and the beaches. Unhealthy concentrations
of fecal indicator bacteria has forced the County of San Diego
to close 10 miles of beach access from the US-Mexico Border all
the way to the beaches of Coronado. At the urging of
Congressman Scott Peters, the San Diego State University School
of Public Health issued a white paper which details the public
health risks posed by the transborder flow of sewage.
On Sept. 7, 1993, the San Diego City Council declared a state
of emergency regarding the discharge of raw sewage it said was
coming from Tijuana, Mexico, and polluting the international
border. More than 30 years later, the San Diego City Council
renewed the state of emergency on Feb. 27 over an ongoing issue
that has been traced back to 1934. In the past five years, the
International Boundary and Water Commission stated that more
than 100 billion gallons of untreated sewage, industrial waste
and urban runoff have been discharged into the Pacific Ocean
from the Tijuana River.
The Salton Sea is shrinking. The sea formed about 120 years ago
when a Colorado River levee burst, creating an extremely large
body of water and a thriving resort town. But as agriculture
runoff and evaporation impacted water quality, the sea slowly
became toxic, turning the once vibrant area into a ghost town.
However, local groups are working together to change that
narrative. The Sonny Bono Salton Sea Wildlife Refuge is an
example of what life at the sea looks like when its supported
and managed. At sunrise, coyotes run along berms, snowy egrets
forage for food and thousands of snow geese travel as a noisy
flock. Award-winning wildlife photographer Paulette Donnellon
spends her time capturing life at the refuge.
… [Denise] Moreno Ramírez wasn’t surprised when she heard an
Australian mining company, South32, planned to open a
manganese, zinc, lead and silver operation in the same area
where her family had worked. … The grasslands, woodlands,
swamps and prairies of south-east Arizona’s Sky Islands are
home to more than 100 species of large mammals: the greatest
number north of Mexico. Residents from the borderlands area
have long dealt with the health impacts of pollution linked
with earlier industrial activity, including mining – from lupus
to cancer. And in spite of it all, they have managed to
preserve a patch of one of the most biodiverse, and imperiled,
ecosystems in the world. … The lithium
boom has received the bulk of attention amid calls to
electrify everything – but another mineral, manganese, has
been earmarked by the US as a critical element to ramp up
the production of electric vehicle batteries.
A new study finds that boiling and then filtering tap water can
remove up to 90 percent of microplastics. Minute particles of
plastic, no larger than a grain of sand, have been found in
every corner of the globe, from the bottom of the Tyrrhenian
Sea, in the Mediterranean, to the clouds floating over Mount
Fuji, in Japan. Shed from car tires, fleece sweaters, and
myriad other plastic items, microplastics and even smaller
nanoplastics are getting into our food and drinking water, and
even the air we breathe. Scientists have found microplastics in
blood and breast milk and in the lungs of people undergoing
surgery — all troubling discoveries as microplastics have also
been shown to damage human cells.
When residents of the Yuba River watershed northeast of
Sacramento saw a stretch of the emerald-green river suddenly
turn an alarming reddish-brown on a recent winter day, they
knew immediately who to call. Though water quality concerns are
the purview of federal, state and county environmental
agencies, they alerted the local South Yuba River Citizens
League, confident its volunteers could get to the scene quicker
and investigate the discoloration faster than any regulator.
… The league is among dozens of volunteer organizations
that monitor the health of their local waterways and native
fish populations across California and the West.
The cause of Santa Barbara County’s biggest offshore sewage
spill in recent memory — north of one million gallons — remains
the subject of an ongoing investigation, the county supervisors
were told in an informational briefing this Tuesday
morning. The supervisors were most interested in figuring
out why it took six days for its Department of Public Health to
get the news of a leak that was first detected late Friday,
February 16.
Green groups are pushing the Ninth Circuit to revive their
petition asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to
craft new, stronger Clean Water Act regulations for the large
animal feeding facilities …
In Northern California, before European settlement it’s been
said that clouds of birds would block out the sun and one could
cross a river by walking across the backs of fish. According to
historic accounts, the Laguna de Santa Rosa was once such a
place. That’s the 22-mile-long network of wetlands that drains
the Santa Rosa plain. After a century of degradation,
restoration is underway. Once a thriving wetland, history
hasn’t been kind to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Historic dumping
of untreated sewage, industrial and agricultural waste and
cities growing up around it have all taken a toll. State health
officials still recommend limitations on eating certain fish
caught there, due to mercury and PCB contamination.
Senators agree more research is needed to understand how
microplastics affect human health, but they’re split on what
actions should be done in the meantime. During a joint hearing
Tuesday of two Environment and Public Works subcommittees, Sen.
Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) urged lawmakers to move “with
caution.” “We have to be careful that we’re not getting ahead
of, as we would say, the science and burden these
municipalities that are trying to meet today’s regulations,”
said Mullin, ranking member of the Chemical Safety, Waste
Management, Environmental Justice and Regulatory Oversight
Subcommittee.
Microplastics have been found in every human placenta tested in
a study, leaving the researchers worried about the potential
health impacts on developing foetuses. … [T]he most common
plastic detected was polyethylene, which is used to make
plastic bags and bottles. A second study revealed microplastics
in all 17 human arteries tested and suggested the particles may
be linked to clogging of the blood vessels. Microplastics have
also recently been discovered in human blood and breast milk,
indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The
impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been
shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory.
We know that greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide
should increase rainfall. The emissions heat the atmosphere,
causing a one-two punch: warmer oceans make it easier for water
to evaporate, and warmer air can hold more water vapor, meaning
more moisture is available to fall as rain. But for much of the
20th century, that increase in precipitation didn’t clearly
show up in the data. A new study led by researchers at the
Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
(Berkeley Lab) finds that the expected increase in rain has
been largely offset by the drying effect of aerosols –
emissions like sulfur dioxide that are produced by burning
fossil fuels, and commonly thought of as air pollution or
smog.
More problems arose on the Central Coast following a
wild storm Monday that flooded the region and transformed
the runways at the Santa Barbara Airport into a flooded
plain. The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department
announced Thursday that it was closing two beaches in the
county indefinitely, after waterways were contaminated by
thousands of gallons of sewage spilling from a sewer line and
manhole that were damaged due to the storm. Goleta Beach
is closed from 1 mile east to 0.5 mile west of the Goleta
Slough outfall after “a release of approximately 500,000
gallons of sewage from a damaged force main sewer line near the
Santa Barbara Airport to the Goleta Slough during the
recent rain event,” the department wrote in a media
release.
The system that California uses to screen neighborhoods at risk
of environmental harm is highly subjective and flawed,
resulting in communities potentially missing out on billions of
dollars in funding, according to new research. The study, by
researchers who began the project at Stanford University,
investigated a tool that the California Environmental
Protection Agency developed in 2013 as the nation’s “first
comprehensive statewide environmental health screening tool” to
identify communities disproportionately burdened by pollution.
… CalEnviroScreen evaluates 21 environmental, public
health and demographic factors to identify which neighborhoods
are most susceptible to environmental harm. Among the factors
considered: air pollution and drinking water contaminants,
pesticide usage, toxic releases, low birth weight infants,
poverty and unemployment rates.
After years of controversy, the Nevada County Board of
Supervisors unanimously struck down a Grass Valley gold mining
project. … Rise Gold first submitted an application to resume
gold mining operations at the Idaho Maryland Mine, which is in
Grass Valley, in 2019. The site had been inactive since its
closure in the 1950s, but Rise Gold said it had untapped
potential. But the company was quickly met with mass
opposition. Christy Hubbard, a Grass Valley resident and
volunteer for a couple local groups opposing the project …
said she was particularly concerned with the potential for
mining operations to contaminate or otherwise negatively impact
local groundwater supply. As a member of the Wells Coalition, a
local group of well owners, and an owner of a well herself, she
worried mining could reduce water flows or contaminate
them.
A California environmental group has sued Radius Recycling
(RDUS.O), opens new tab, alleging the recycled steel company’s
operations are polluting the San Francisco Bay and its
tributaries with dirty stormwater runoff. San Francisco
Baykeeper filed its lawsuit on Tuesday in Oakland federal
court, alleging the company has violated the federal Clean
Water Act by failing to stop heavy metals and other pollutants
from washing away during storms at four of its facilities in
the San Francisco Bay area where cars are
dismantled. Radius Recycling was formerly known as
Schnitzer Steel, and was recognized last year by the
research firm Corporate Knights as the world’s most sustainable
company due to its reported improvements in things like energy,
carbon, water and waste use.
Toxic “forever” PFAS chemicals are a serious environmental
health issue in California and across the globe, linked to
numerous health harms. California has been a leader in
addressing PFAS, including banning PFAS use in multiple
products (such as fire-fighting foam and textiles). Yet PFAS
continue to be used in hundreds of different consumer and
industrial products and our new analysis, released today,
shows drinking water sources serving up to 25 million
Californians are or have been contaminated with PFAS. A
bill by Senator Nancy Skinner, also introduced today, proposes
a much needed comprehensive, efficient, and health-protective
approach to phasing out the use of these highly problematic
chemicals. Such preventative legislation will be key to helping
to address the PFAS crisis. We also need to tackle current
contamination by setting drinking water standards for PFAS.
…Local artists and curators…have taken on the task of
remembering the [Mexicali] region’s departed waters. Since
2020, [they] have overseen the Archivo Familiar del Río
Colorado, or Colorado River Family Album, a project that brings
together contemporary art, environmental education and
historical research to document bodies of water that are
disappearing or are already gone … In 2024, an
exhibition at Planta Libre will collect archival documents and
artwork that engages with water and its loss. Local artists
will lead a series of walks in the surrounding region so that
visitors can develop their own relationship with it
… the absence of the Colorado River and the waters it
nourished forms a cartography of loss that is written on the
landscape. Their mission is to make those absences visible — to
keep their memories alive, and to imagine possibilities for the
future.
If anyone can accurately describe the massive scope of the
plastics problem in the Pacific, it’s [Mary] Crowley, the
founder and director of Ocean Voyages Institute, a nonprofit
based in Sausalito. She didn’t, however, set out to become an
expert on the topic. In fact, the seasoned mariner was happy
operating her yacht chartering company and logging 125,000
miles sailing the world. Yet with each passing year, she
noticed more and more plastic in the ocean. Finally, Crowley
knew she had to act. Since 2009, she’s led eight cleanup
expeditions, hauling more than 700,000 pounds of plastic out of
our planet’s blue heart and transporting it to recyclers.
The plastics industry has worked for decades to convince people
and policymakers that recycling would keep waste out of
landfills and the environment. Consumers sort their trash so
plastic packaging can be repurposed, and local governments use
taxpayer money to gather and process the material. Yet from the
early days of recycling, plastic makers, including oil and gas
companies, knew that it wasn’t a viable solution to deal with
increasing amounts of waste, according to documents uncovered
by the Center for Climate Integrity. … But the industry
appears to have championed recycling mainly for its public
relations value, rather than as a tool for avoiding
environmental damage, the documents suggest.
A new report released Tuesday and written by researchers
at San Diego State University calls the Tijuana River a “public
health crisis,” citing broad evidence of unhealthy conditions
from untreated sewage to industrial waste. Authors
synthesize multiple studies that have documented pollution over
the years, leading with a recent paper that documented that the
threat also extends to ocean-going mammals. Bottle nose
dolphins stranded in San Diego died from infection by a
bacteria “generally transmitted through contact with feces or
urine in contaminated water, food or soil.
Another company has given up on trying to develop oil shale in
the Uinta Basin, faced with legal battles, environmental
concerns and money going down the drain. Estonia’s national
energy company announced that it was wrapping up its fruitless
oil shale venture in Utah at the end of last month. Estonia
Finance Minister Mart Võrklaev said that the company’s project
in Utah was “neither profitable nor promising” in a news
release. … Oil shale is a hard sedimentary rock that can
be heated to release synthetic crude oil. It’s a thirsty and
expensive process that threatens air quality, water quality and
endangered species, and exacerbates global warming, according
to nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust staff attorney
Michael Toll.
It’s a type of pollution we see everywhere. We see them by the
side of the road, floating in creeks and on our beaches. They
are plastic water bottles. A state assemblyman from the
Tri-Counties wants California to set an example, and to use
alternatives. “Single use plastics just have a very negative
impact on pollution, on the environment over,” said Democratic
State Assemblyman Steve Bennett of Ventura. He said they do
everything from create pollution which harms ecosystems to
creating greenhouse gas emissions. On Wednesday, Bennett
introduced a bill in Sacramento intended to make the state
government a leader on this issue. It would ban state agencies
from buying single use water bottles.
California oil and gas regulators have formally released their
plan to phase out fracking three years after essentially
halting new permits for the practice. The California Geologic
Energy Management Division (CalGEM) wrote that they would not
approve (PDF) applications for permits for well stimulation
treatments like fracking to “prevent damage to life, health,
property, and natural resources (PDF)” in addition to
protecting public health and mitigating greenhouse gas
emissions. … Hydraulic fracturing injects liquids,
mostly water, underground at high pressure to extract oil or
gas. Oil companies say fracking has been done safely for years
under state regulation and that a ban should come from the
Legislature, not a state agency.
Nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom directed it,
California’s oil and gas industry regulator kickstarted a
process to outright ban hydraulic fracturing, the fossil fuel
extraction method known as ‘fracking.’ Fracking permits have
not been issued in the state since 2021, but environmentalists
celebrated the move as a win in the fight against climate
change. Oil industry groups called it yet another example of
regulatory overreach and argued it could lead to higher oil
prices. … As the practice exploded in the
mid-2000s, research gave fracking a reputation for pollution
and public health dangers. Fracking not only is water
intensive, it releases potent greenhouse gases such as methane
and benzyne and can contaminate groundwater basins with
chemical additives.
A Union Pacific train carrying 118 tons of coal derailed Sunday
due to a track defect and dumped its contents into and around
Plumas County’s Feather River, according to railroad officials
and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Fifteen
rail cars chugging west on tracks parallel to the Middle Fork
Feather River in Blairsden derailed, spilling the coal into the
river. At least 14 rail cars tipped over or sustained damage,
Fish and Wildlife officials said. At least one rail car fell
into the water. … The cost estimate to clean up the river is
more than $150,000, according to the CalOES spill
report. There could be potential “smothering effects” on
organisms in the river, but its short-term impacts are not
expected to affect the water, the Department of Fish and
Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response said in a
Facebook post.
During November 2018, the Camp Fire burned more than 150,000
acres in Butte County, California, including the Town of
Paradise. The fire was the deadliest and most destructive in
California history, causing at least 85 fatalities and
destroying more than 18,000 structures. In the fire’s
aftermath, understanding of the impact on connected ecosystems,
including the regional watershed, will inform how we may
prepare for and respond to fire events in the future. This was
prime focus of a multi-year research effort led by faculty at
Chico State University and supported by researchers at the
University of Colorado Boulder, the USGS, and other research
institutions.
The flooding caused by intensifying winter rainstorms in
California is helping to spread a deadly fungal disease called
coccidioidomycosis, or Valley fever. “Hydro-climate whiplash is
increasingly wide swings between extremely wet and extremely
dry conditions,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at
University of California, Los Angeles. Humans are finding it
difficult to adapt to this new pattern. But fungi are thriving,
Swain said. Valley fever, he added, “is going to become an
increasingly big story.” Cases of Valley fever in
California broke records last year after nine back-to-back
atmospheric rivers slammed the state and caused
widespread, record-breaking flooding.
It was a decade ago when California became the first state in
the nation to ban single-use plastic bags, ushering in a wave
of anti-plastic legislation from coast to coast. But in the
years after California seemingly kicked its plastic grocery
sack habit, material recovery facilities and environmental
activists noticed a peculiar trend: Plastic bag waste by weight
was increasing to unprecedented levels. … Plastic has
been found everywhere scientists have looked: From the deepest
oceanic trenches to the highest alpine peaks. Petroleum-based
plastics do not biodegrade. Over time, they break down into
smaller and smaller pieces — known as microplastics,
microfibers and nanoplastics — and have been found in
household dust, drinking water and human tissue and
blood.
In a move that Imperial County Public Works officials hope will
set to rest an issue at Brawley’s Wiest Lake that has been
ongoing since last summer and beyond, an algae-control system
will now be installed as a preventative measure to halt the
harmful algae blooms that intermittently closed the lake and
threatened native ecosystems in the area. The Imperial
County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the purchase
and installation of the system at the meeting on Tuesday, Feb.
6, by recommendation of Public Works Director John Gay. The
proposed LG Sonic device is a “floating, solar-powered
platform” that, according to the algae-control professionals,
should “reduce algal blooms by up to 70-90%.” “It’s an
ultrasonic system that is solar-powered, and it delivers sounds
that we cannot hear,” Assistant Public Works Director David
Dale summarized for the county board.
… A bill lawmakers introduced Thursday, Feb. 8, in Sacramento
would apply the Trader Joe’s policy statewide, banning stores
from offering customers any sort of plastic film bags at
checkout. If you’re thinking “didn’t we already do that?” the
answer is yes and no. … “If you have been paying
attention – if you read the news at all in recent years – you
know we are choking our planet with plastic waste,” state
senator Catherine Blakespear said. “A plastic bag has an
average lifespan of 12 minutes and then it is discarded, often
clogging sewage drains, contaminating our drinking water and
degenerating into toxic microplastics that fester in
our oceans and landfills for up to 1,000 years.”
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
issued two new proposed rules, which further expand EPA’s
regulatory oversight of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS). The first rule would modify the definition of hazardous
waste as it applies to cleanups at permitted hazardous waste
facilities and to clarify EPA’s authority to address emerging
contaminants that are not included in the regulatory definition
of hazardous waste. The second rule would add nine particular
PFAS, their salts, and their structural isomers, to the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act’s (RCRA) list of
hazardous constituents for potential assessments and corrective
actions. Nicknamed “forever chemicals,” PFAS have been used in
a wide range of consumer products and industrial processes due
to their qualities to be waterproof, stain-resistant, and
nonstick.
Rosa Mandujano … said her son’s [respiratory problems]
problems get worse when the air quality is awful – another
common issue for Coachella and Imperial Valley residents.
Mecca, where the Mandujano family lives, is enveloped by
agricultural fields and a short distance from the north shore
of the declining Salton Sea, a saline lake facing similar
turmoil as Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Dust storms have
become the norm being so close to agricultural fields and the
Salton Sea, she said. Winds reaching 75 miles per hour whip
through predominantly low-income and immigrant communities. The
dust gets so bad, Mandujano said, that “you can’t see what’s in
front of you.” With the exposed Salton Sea lakebed and the
loose dirt and pesticides from the surrounding fields,
Mandujano said it’s rare to find a Coachella Valley resident
who doesn’t suffer from allergies or asthma. But the impact of
the bad air quality and dust storms is worse for some, like
Ruben.
Dealing a blow to three of the world’s biggest agrochemical
companies, a US court this week banned three weedkillers widely
used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on
the market. The ruling is specific to three dicamba-based
weedkillers manufactured by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, which
have been blamed for millions of acres of crop damage and harm
to endangered species and natural areas across the midwest and
south. … Dicamba is also prone to drifting on the wind
far from where it is applied. And it can move into drainage
ditches and bodies of water as runoff during rain
events. Monsanto, along with the chemical giant BASF,
introduced new formulations of dicamba herbicides they said
would not be as volatile, and they encouraged farmers to buy
Monsanto’s newly created dicamba-tolerant crops.
Young adults whose diets are rich in unsweetened teas,
processed meats and takeout foods could be increasing their
exposure to “forever chemicals,” a new study has found.
Altering these eating habits could bring notable declines in
the levels of these compounds, known as PFAS, that are
contaminating their blood, according to the study, published
Monday in Environment International. … Known for
their ability to linger in the environment and the human body,
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been linked to
kidney cancer, thyroid disease and other illnesses. While
most notorious for their presence in certain types of
firefighting foams and industrial discharge, PFAS are also
present in many household and commercial products, such as
nonstick pans and food packaging, as well as contaminated
livestock and drinking water.
When you drive through parts of rural Arizona, it’s hard to
imagine that cattle ranchers once came here for the grass. But
Eduardo Pagan, a history professor at Arizona State University,
says the state looked different a couple of centuries ago. …
Cattle ranching helped shape rural Arizona into what it is
today. It was one of the five C’s that once formed the backbone
of the state’s economy, along with copper, citrus, cotton and
climate. But many ideas we have about the history of
grazing are wrong, and researchers say that cattle have emerged
as a major driver of climate change. Conservationists say it’s
time to re-examine grazing on public lands. … Ranching
has changed the way wildfire moves across the landscape.
Ranching also helped introduce invasive plants, as new grasses
were planted to offset overgrazing. Grasslands have been turned
into deserts. Streambeds that once nourished shady cottonwoods
and willows bake in the sun after cows eat the young trees.
Wildfires burn bigger and hotter.
The Zone 7 Water Agency completed the construction of two new
monitoring wells at the Ken Mercer Sports Park in Pleasanton in
early January that representatives said will help the agency
detect PFAS contamination before it spreads any further. While
there haven’t been any contaminants found in the area around
the sports park along Hopyard Road, having these two wells will
help warn the water agency before any contaminants seep into
any wells with actual drinking water.
Tiny pieces of plastic waste shed
from food wrappers, grocery bags, clothing, cigarette butts,
tires and paint are invading the environment and every facet of
daily life. Researchers know the plastic particles have even made
it into municipal water supplies, but very little data exists
about the scope of microplastic contamination in drinking
water.
After years of planning, California this year is embarking on a
first-of-its-kind data-gathering mission to illuminate how
prevalent microplastics are in the state’s largest drinking water
sources and help regulators determine whether they are a public
health threat.
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
It’s been a year since two devastating wildfires on opposite ends
of California underscored the harsh new realities facing water
districts and cities serving communities in or adjacent to the
state’s fire-prone wildlands. Fire doesn’t just level homes, it
can contaminate water, scorch watersheds, damage delivery systems
and upend an agency’s finances.
Blasted by sun and beaten by waves,
plastic bottles and bags shed fibers and tiny flecks of
microplastic debris that litter the San Francisco Bay where they
can choke the marine life that inadvertently consumes it.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Each day, people living on the streets and camping along waterways across California face the same struggle – finding clean drinking water and a place to wash and go to the bathroom.
Some find friendly businesses willing to help, or public restrooms and drinking water fountains. Yet for many homeless people, accessing the water and sanitation that most people take for granted remains a daily struggle.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Low-income Californians can get help with their phone bills, their natural gas bills and their electric bills. But there’s only limited help available when it comes to water bills.
That could change if the recommendations of a new report are implemented into law. Drafted by the State Water Resources Control Board, the report outlines the possible components of a program to assist low-income households facing rising water bills.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
Disadvantaged communities are those carrying the greatest
economic, health and environmental burdens. They include
poverty, high unemployment, higher risk of asthma and heart
disease, and often limited access to clean, affordable drinking
water.
For decades, cannabis has been grown
in California – hidden away in forested groves or surreptitiously
harvested under the glare of high-intensity indoor lamps in
suburban tract homes.
In the past 20 years, however, cannabis — known more widely as
marijuana – has been moving from being a criminal activity to
gaining legitimacy as one of the hundreds of cash crops in the
state’s $46 billion-dollar agriculture industry, first legalized
for medicinal purposes and this year for recreational use.
As we continue forging ahead in 2018
with our online version of Western Water after 40 years
as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also
got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.
State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing
up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and
combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish
and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps
unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved
Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if
anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that
marijuana was legal.
Joaquin Esquivel learned that life is
what happens when you make plans. Esquivel, who holds the public
member slot at the State Water Resources Control Board in
Sacramento, had just closed purchase on a house in Washington
D.C. with his partner when he was tapped by Gov. Jerry Brown a
year ago to fill the Board vacancy.
Esquivel, 35, had spent a decade in Washington, first in several
capacities with then Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and then as
assistant secretary for federal water policy at the California
Natural Resources Agency. As a member of the State Water Board,
he shares with four other members the difficult task of
ensuring balance to all the uses of California’s water.
A new study could help water
agencies find solutions to the vexing challenges the homeless
face in gaining access to clean water for drinking and
sanitation.
The Santa Ana Watershed Project
Authority (SAWPA) in Southern California has embarked on a
comprehensive and collaborative effort aimed at assessing
strengths and needs as it relates to water services for people
(including the homeless) within its 2,840 square-mile area that
extends from the San Bernardino Mountains to the Orange County
coast.
Microplastics – plastic debris
measuring less than 5 millimeters – are an
increasing water quality concern. Entering the water as
industrial microbeads or as larger plastic litter that degrade
into small pellets, microplastics come from a variety of
consumer products.
Contaminants exist in water supplies from both natural and
manmade sources. Even those chemicals present without human
intervention can be mobilized from introduction of certain
pollutants from both
point and nonpoint sources.
Directly detecting harmful pathogens in water can be expensive,
unreliable and incredibly complicated. Fortunately, certain
organisms are known to consistently coexist with these harmful
microbes which are substantially easier to detect and culture:
coliform bacteria. These generally non-toxic organisms are
frequently used as “indicator
species,” or organisms whose presence demonstrates a
particular feature of its surrounding environment.
Point sources release pollutants from discrete conveyances, such
as a discharge pipe, and are regulated by federal and state
agencies. The main point source dischargers are factories and
sewage treatment plants, which release treated
wastewater.
Problems with polluted stormwater and steps that can be taken to
prevent such pollution and turn what is often viewed as
“nuisance” runoff into a water resource is the focus of this
publication, Stormwater Management: Turning Runoff into a
Resource. The 16-page booklet, funded by a grant from the State
Water Resources Control Board, includes color photos and
graphics, text explaining common stormwater pollutants and
efforts to prevent stormwater runoff through land use/
planning/development – as well as tips for homeowners to reduce
their impacts on stormwater pollution.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Salt. In a small amount, it’s a gift from nature. But any doctor
will tell you, if you take in too much salt, you’ll start to have
health problems. The same negative effect is happening to land in
the Central Valley. The problem scientists call “salinity” poses
a growing threat to our food supply, our drinking water quality
and our way of life. The problem of salt buildup and potential –
but costly – solutions are highlighted in this 2008 public
television documentary narrated by comedian Paul Rodriguez.
A 20-minute version of the 2008 public television documentary
Salt of the Earth: Salinity in California’s Central Valley. This
DVD is ideal for showing at community forums and speaking
engagements to help the public understand the complex issues
surrounding the problem of salt build up in the Central Valley
potential – but costly – solutions. Narrated by comedian Paul
Rodriquez.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
As the state’s population continues to grow and traditional water
supplies grow tighter, there is increased interest in reusing
treated wastewater for a variety of activities, including
irrigation of crops, parks and golf courses, groundwater recharge
and industrial uses.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to California
Wastewater is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the history of wastewater
treatment and how wastewater is collected, conveyed, treated and
disposed of today. The guide also offers case studies of
different treatment plants and their treatment processes.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
This printed issue of Western Water, based on presentations
at the November 3-4, 2010 Water Quality Conference in Ontario,
Calif., looks at constituents of emerging concerns (CECs) – what
is known, what is yet to be determined and the potential
regulatory impacts on drinking water quality.
This issue of Western Water looks at some of the issues
facing drinking water providers, such as compliance with
increasingly stringent treatment requirements, the need to
improve source water quality and the mission of continually
informing consumers about the quality of water they receive.
This issue of Western Water examines PPCPs – what they are, where
they come from and whether the potential exists for them to
become a water quality problem. With the continued emphasis on
water quality and the fact that many water systems in the West
are characterized by flows dominated by effluent contributions,
PPCPs seem likely to capture interest for the foreseeable future.
This issue of Western Water examines the presence of mercury in
the environment and the challenge of limiting the threat posed to
human health and wildlife. In addition to outlining the extent of
the problem and its resistance to conventional pollution
remedies, the article presents a glimpse of some possible courses
of action for what promises to be a long-term problem.
This issue of Western Water examines the problem of perchlorate
contamination and its ramifications on all facets of water
delivery, from the extensive cleanup costs to the search for
alternative water supplies. In addition to discussing the threat
posed by high levels of perchlorate in drinking water, the
article presents examples of areas hard hit by contamination and
analyzes the potential impacts of forthcoming drinking water
standards for perchlorate.
2002 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most significant
environmental laws in American history, the Clean Water Act
(CWA). The CWA has had remarkable success, reversing years of
neglect and outright abuse of the nation’s waters. But challenges
remain as attention turns to the thorny issue of cleaning up
nonpoint sources of pollution.