Nutrients from wastewater treatment plants may threaten coastal marine life―should California regulate them?
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.