On the evening of June 2, a Southern Humboldt resident looked at Redwood Creek from the Seely Creek Road crossing and knew something was wrong. The water was white — not muddy the way it gets after rain, but opaque, for miles. … What happened next revealed something bigger than a single spill on a rural creek. The white water running through Southern Humboldt was connected to one of the largest infrastructure investments California has ever made — a $3.25 billion effort to bring high-speed internet to communities that have gone without it for years. And at the end of a long chain of contractors and subcontractors, someone had apparently been dumping thousands of gallons of drilling waste on private land, with apparently not enough planning for where it would go.

Other water pollution news:

• Monterey County Weekly (Seaside, Calif.): Two nonprofits petition state board to demand stormwater permits from facilities that allegedly pollute Salinas Watershed
• The Modesto Bee (Calif.): Cancer-causing ‘forever’ chemicals in 88% of Stanislaus water samples, report finds​
• CBS8 (San Diego): New report finds high bacteria levels in Mission Bay and connecting waterways