The lawsuit Kern County filed this week against Gov. Gavin
Newsom is aimed at not only ending his de-facto ban on fracking
but also at easing state regulatory constraints on at least two
other oilfield techniques common locally. As part of its
larger argument that the Newsom administration has overstepped
its constitutional authority, Monday’s petition for a writ of
mandate in Kern County Superior Court asserts Newsom had no
right in 2019 to place a moratorium on high-pressure cyclic
steaming or require extensive “area of review” analyses prior
to approval of underground injections.
Environmentally minded residents of East County have an
opportunity to help make the Delta a little better. The annual
Delta Waterway Cleanup will take place Saturday, Sept. 18 from
9 a.m. to noon. The Delta Protection Commission (DPC) sponsors
this event, and has similar ones scheduled in each of the five
counties that adjoin the Sacramento San-Joaquin Delta. In
Contra Costa County, volunteers will focus their efforts on
Bethel Island. The Delta cleanup is part of California’s
Coastal Cleanup Day, the state’s largest annual volunteer
event.
Water quality regulators let a Sonoma County-based quarry know
last week it could face a $4.5 million-fine for multiple
alleged violations of the Clean Water Act that threaten the
survival of endangered salmon populations in tributaries of the
Russian River. The proposed fine from the North Coast
Regional Water Quality Control Board is part of a legal
proceeding known as an administrative civil liability that
alleges the operator of Mark West Quarry, Dean Soiland, doing
business as BoDean Co. Inc., discharged highly turbid
stormwater from its quarry operations into Porter Creek from
September 2018 through May 2019.
The annual Truckee River Cleanup Day set for September 25, 2021
is a 17 year-old beautification tradition. Every year, the
nonprofit organization Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful (KTMB)
organizes hundreds of volunteers who, in a four-hour period,
remove trash, erase graffiti, and stencil a warning on storm
drains along a 20-mile stretch of the river, from Verdi to
Lockwood. Last year, in one day, some 500 volunteers
removed over 35 tons of trash and green waste from the Truckee
River Watershed. … But trash is only one environmental
threat to the Truckee.
A federal jury awarded the city of Pomona $48 million in
damages to be paid by a foreign corporation for contaminating
its groundwater with a toxic chemical mixed with fertilizer and
sold to citrus farmers for decades. On Sept. 7, the city won
its case against the American subsidiary of a multi-billion
dollar Chilean company, Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile,
known as SQM. The case, which began in 2011, bounced between
courts until the city won after presenting its full argument
recently in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
Central Valley water-quality regulators released a final report
Friday concluding oil field wastewater from central Kern
County, when blended with other water sources, can
safely be used to irrigate a variety of locally grown
crops. The report, based on five years’ work and
incomplete in some respects, found no evidence of risks to
human health from watering tree nuts, citrus, berries, tubers
and other ag products with the saline water that comes up from
the ground along with oil and which contains small
concentrations of toxic chemicals.
“The Lagoon is getting worse and worse every year,” said Andy
Lyon, former Malibu city council candidate, surfer, and
community activist. His concerns were validated on August 12,
when the Los Angeles County Health Department issued a water
quality warning, cautioning citizens to refrain from swimming,
surfing, and playing in ocean waters at Surfrider Beach and the
Malibu Lagoon due to potentially hazardous conditions,
including exceeding bacteria standards, and to exercise caution
where Malibu Creek discharges into the ocean and near
discharging storm drains.
What had gone so wrong that we could not swim in the ocean in
an American city? The problem of Mexican sewage-tainted
water polluting southern San Diego County beaches has been
going on for decades. What was once viewed as an
environmental problem has become a public health issue. –Written by Rita Schmidt Sudman, former longtime
executive director of the Water Education Foundation and
author of a book on California water issues, Water:
More or Less.
The Upper Sacramento River was again at risk of devastation
after a Union Pacific train derailed recently at Cantara Loop,
reminding many of the disastrous spill over 30 years ago in the
same location. Luckily this time, no spills of any kind
occurred, but this further strengthens the argument that this
pristine stretch of river requires protection. Disastrous spill
In July 1991, a 97-car Southern Pacific train derailed at the
Cantara Loop near Mt. Shasta and dumped 19,000 gallons of
herbicide metam sodium into the Sacramento River.
The California Legislature took an important step to protect
Californians from toxic, “forever” PFAS chemicals by passing
Assembly Bill 1200 (Ting) today. Having previously passed on
the Senate floor 36-0, the bill now goes to the
Governor. AB 1200 would help make our food and our
environment safer by banning the use of toxic, “forever” PFAS
chemicals in paper-based food packaging.
Jesse Patterson, of Keep Tahoe Blue, said the organization is
funding research into the effects of the Caldor Fire on Lake
Tahoe. “It’s going to look very different. Huge areas are burnt
down, a burn scar — there can be runoff now from those areas
that use to be protected by the trees. Now, those trees are
gone and that runoff can come from the land and affect the
lakes,” Patterson said. Dr. Geoffrey Schladow, professor
of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis,
said ash is a problem too. When ash bleeds into the lake, it
turns into nutrients that cause algae blooms.
A bloom of toxic blue-green algae in a Central California
reservoir has reached the danger level, the state Department of
Water Resource said Tuesday. Lab results from this week’s
tests showed an increase in toxin levels at San Luis Reservoir
in Merced County, the department said. Boating is allowed
but people and pets should avoid physical contact with the
water and algal scum. Fish and shellfish from the lake should
also be avoided.
In the last five years, the environmental problem known as PFAS
has become mainstream public knowledge and a growing public
concern. Aided by popular movies, books, and
environmental advocates, including dozens of recently-formed
citizen action groups, many have now heard of PFAS — shorthand
for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — and are familiar with
one or more potential health consequences from prolonged
exposure to these chemicals — e.g., cancer, immune system
malfunctions, hypertension, thyroid and kidney disease.
Rare earth elements are finding their way into Colorado water
supplies, driven by changes in climate, finds a new study
published in the journal Environmental Science &
Technology. Rare earth elements are necessary components
of many computing and other high-tech devices, like cell phones
and hard drives. But there is growing recognition that they can
be hazardous in the environment even at low levels of
concentration.
Concerned that tens of millions of dollars promised to
help address woes at the Salton Sea could vanish
from this year’s state budget, a chorus of
Riverside and Imperial County officials this week wrote to
Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Natural Resources Secretary
Wade Crowfoot politely demanding that the funding stay on
track. … Residents in rural communities ringing the
rapidly shrinking water body suffer disproportionately high
asthma rates and other risks from dust released into the air as
the shoreline grows.
Trump-era EPA appointees engaged in “considerable political
level interference” on an assessment for a controversial
“forever chemical,” documents obtained by E&E News
indicate. But the Biden administration wasted no time in
yanking that document, moving to scrub the assessment of
alterations made by political appointees and restore language
advocated by EPA career scientists shortly after the
president’s inauguration. At issue is a toxicity assessment for
PFBS, part of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances family.
Sierra National Forest officials closed a portion of trails in
Mariposa County where a family and their dog were found dead
under mysterious circumstances in mid-August, citing
unspecified safety concerns. … Officials have not ruled
out water toxicity as a contributing factor in the family’s
death as they await the results of water tests taken from the
area where the family was found.
Environmental justice groups gathered Monday, Aug. 30, in front
of the California EPA building in Sacramento, demanding cleanup
of contaminated sites around the state … Organizers of the
demonstration said the California Environmental Protection
Agency and Department of Toxic Substances Control, the
regulatory agency overseeing the investigation and cleanup of
contaminated soil and groundwater at the SSFL, failed to hold
polluters accountable, allowing them to walk away from cleaning
contaminated sites often located in low-income and
working-class communities.
More than 90 small frogs were released back into the wild this
week after being recovered from an oil spill at Toro Canyon
Creek near Summerland. The frogs were rescued in August by the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife Oiled Wildlife Care
Network (OWCN) and Santa Barbara’s Wildlife Care Network
(SBWCN). Crews said the frogs were found coated in oil. They
were washed and rehabilitated back to prime health before being
prepared for release.
Sierra National Forest closed numerous hiking trails, picnic
areas and campgrounds, citing “unknown hazards found in and
near the Savage Lundy Trail,” where a Mariposa family was
mysteriously found dead two weeks ago. The closures went into
effect Sunday and extend through Sept. 26. … The
Sheriff’s Office previously said known harmful algal
blooms along the south fork of the Merced River are among
the many possible causes of death being considered in the
case with “no smoking gun” clues.
Near Southern California’s dying Salton Sea, a canopy next to a
geothermal power plant covers large containers of salty water
left behind after super-hot liquid is drilled from deep
underground to run steam turbines. The containers connect to
tubes that spit out what looks like dishwater, but it’s
lithium, a critical component of rechargeable batteries and the
newest hope for economic revival in the depressed region.
A federal judge Monday threw out a major Trump administration
rule that scaled back federal protections for streams, marshes
and wetlands across the United States, reversing one of the
previous administration’s most significant environmental
rollbacks. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez wrote that
Trump officials committed serious errors while writing the
regulation, finalized last year, and that leaving it in place
could lead to “serious environmental harm.”
Smoke and ash from wildfires near Lake Tahoe — one of the
deepest lakes in the world — is already clouding the lake’s
famously clear water, researchers say. While the long-term
effects are unclear, ash and soot are now coating the surface
of the High Sierra lake and veiling the sun, which can disrupt
the lake’s ecosystem and its clarity. More debris and sediment
are likely to wash into the lake from runoff and rain this fall
and winter.
Extreme heat waves have made this a devastating summer for the
endangered salmon species of the U.S. West Coast. In mid July,
California wildlife officials warned that almost all of the
young Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River would likely die
because of lower water levels and higher water temperatures.
… But, amidst all the catastrophic headlines was a cool
spring of good news. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) is finally acting to protect more than two dozen
endangered West Coast salmon and steelhead species from
pesticides.
A collapsed underground pipe leaked at least 12,500 gallons of
raw sewage into Martinez storm drains and residents are being
cautioned to avoid surface water in the area, authorities said.
The leak, first noticed on Monday by oil refinery workers, was
blamed on the deterioration of a municipal sewer line just
south of the PBF oil refinery, formerly known as the Shell
refinery.
High schooler Eshani Jha from [Lynbrook High School in San
José, California] received the prestigious 2021 Stockholm
Junior Water Prize for research on how to remove contaminants
from water. …. Stockholm Junior Water Prize is an
international competition where students between the ages of 15
and 20 present solutions to major water challenges.
In 2020 the U.S. government through the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) committed $300 million in The United
States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade agreement to
identify infrastructure solutions to mitigate the transboundary
pollution. Infrastructure solutions for transboundary flows
from the Tijuana River have been studied for the past year. The
Environmental Protection Agency, which has been tasked with
creating solutions, originally proposed 10 possible
projects.
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced
that Sixteen to One Mine, one of California’s oldest
operational gold mines, has agreed to an Administrative Order
on Consent requiring the mine to install a new treatment system
that will remove pollutants from mine drainage before entering
local waters. The mine was found to be in violation of its
permit under the U.S. Clean Water Act after consistently
discharging mine-influenced water that exceeded limits on
pollutants.
The state of California took the first step to order and
potentially pay for the city of Exeter in Tulare County to
extend water service to hundreds of homes in a nearby town
without safe and stable drinking water. For decades, the 340
residents of Tooleville have relied on contaminated groundwater
as their main source of tap water….
You can usually find Trish and me walking our dog CoBe around
Los Osos in the evening. Our favorite walk is along the
shoreline that stretches from Baywood Park Beach off Pasadena
Drive to the Audubon overlook at the end of 4th Street. Over
the past year, we’ve noticed a gradual increase in the amount
of eelgrass washed up on the sand. In fact, on our last hike,
there were areas that you couldn’t see any sand below the wrack
of eelgrass that formed in different ribbons of colors by the
tides.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael
Regan got a first-hand look Friday at the Tijuana River Valley,
where hundreds of millions of gallons of water laced with raw
sewage, trash and industrial chemicals regularly foul San Diego
shorelines, shuttering beaches as far north as Coronado.
A sewage spill into Lake Tahoe was prevented this past
weekend. South Tahoe Public Utility District received a
call regarding a foul odor coming from the beach by Valhalla
boat house. Upon arriving on scene, crews discovered that
the sewer main had backed up causing a manhole 35 feet from the
edge of Lake Tahoe to fill with sewage, the district said in a
press release.
Toxic algae in Sierra National Forest, now being considered in
the mysterious deaths of a family this week, was being retested
on Thursday by the California State Water Resources Control
Board and Mariposa County. … Mariposa residents John
Gerrish, Ellen Chung, their daughter, Miju, and family dog,
Oski, were found dead in this area on Tuesday after
not returning from a day hike in the Hites Cove area of Devil’s
Gulch, between Mariposa and Yosemite National Park. The
family may have been exposed to cyanobacterial toxins, the
water board said, which can form in algal blooms.
Efforts to rid the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of abandoned
boats received a boost when Assemblymember Jim Frazier, D-11,
secured a $12 million allocation for that purpose in the
state’s budget for fiscal year 2021 – 2022. The
allocation is specifically earmarked for the removal of
abandoned and derelict commercial vessels that litter the
Delta. These vessels have the potential to leak any number of
dangerous pollutants into the Delta, which is also the heart of
the water supply for two-thirds of all Californians.
Plastic pollution is one of the world’s most pressing and
observable modern issues, possessing the potential to
significantly impact human health, aquatic species health, and,
undoubtedly, environmental health. This pollution is
categorized by the size in which plastics occur due, in part,
to varied fate and transport in soil, water, and even
atmospheric compartments. Beyond the very visible nuisance of
macro-and mesoplastics, researchers and regulators are now
turning their attention to less visible microplastics, which,
according to the California Water Resources Control Board
(WRCB), includes nanoplastics.
Tucson Water plans to start discharging water containing low
levels of PFAS compounds from its south-side water treatment
plant into the Santa Cruz River in early October — if it gets a
state permit for the discharge by then. The utility is building
a pipeline to take the water from that treatment plant near
Interstate 10 and Irvington Road to the river near Irvington.
It also has submitted a permit application for the discharge to
the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
Several law firms are moving to sue Los Angeles and the
Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant over the foul smells and water
pollution caused by the emergency release of 17 million gallons
of raw sewage into the ocean last month. The Bloom Law and
Parris Law firms jointly filed a claim for damages — the first
step toward a potential class-action lawsuit — in early August
on behalf of at least a dozen residents. A second group of
about 20 families, represented separately by attorney Abraham
Sandoval, is expected to submit its claims within the next
week.
Efforts of the Salton Sea Management Program to achieve to
goals of mitigation efforts “will be difficult, if not
impossible” without investment in continuing scientific
research, according to a new report. The report was prepared
for policymakers and stakeholders by the University of
California, Riverside Salton Sea Task Force. The task force
consists of an interdisciplinary group of scientists,
engineers, medical experts and economists gathered to identify
critical scientific research necessary to guide policymakers in
making decisions about the region’s future.
In a region that lauds itself as a bastion of environmental
progress, the 100 billion gallons of polluted runoff that flows
out of storm drains annually is Los Angeles’ dirty secret. When
rain water hits L.A.’s largely impervious landscape it drains
into run-off channels that criss-cross through the county
accumulating a toxic slew of chemicals, oil, fertilizer, trash,
hard metals, and bacteria before entering a storm drain and
spewing out into the ocean.
There are finally efforts under way to improve the
environmental health disaster that is the Salton Sea —
California’s largest and most polluted lake. However, a group
of UC Riverside scientists, engineers, medical experts, and
economists has published a new report warning that these
efforts may not succeed. The report warns that the scientific
assumptions informing current mitigation efforts are outdated
or lacking entirely.
Water in Lake Tahoe could rise to unprecedented
levels, potentially placing communities downstream in
jeopardy, according to a study from environmental scientists at
UC Davis’ Tahoe Environmental Research Center. In the past
two years, California saw brutal heatwaves and droughts shrink
Lake Tahoe’s water level to a point so low that some boats
couldn’t be launched. However, that’s expected to change. While
temperatures aren’t projected to cool off, Lake Tahoe could see
a rapid depletion of its snowpack and an influx of water during
the coming years.
California’s Coachella Valley is my home, made complete by the
proximity and awe of the stunning Salton Sea. My community is
proud of the traditions, unique desert landscape and vibrant
culture that make our valley a special place. Yet as years pass
and our leaders fail to act, the Salton Sea, California’s
largest inland lake, is dying and people are getting sick. For
decades, we have lived under a cloud of dangerous pollutants
from the Salton Sea’s drying lakebed. -Written by Conchita Pozar, a community advocate from
the community of North Shore.
For the second time, State Oil and Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe
Ntuk has used his discretionary authority, as opposed to
technical standards, to reject a series of permit applications
to use the controversial oilfield technique known as fracking.
Ntuk sent a letter Monday to Bakersfield-based oil producer
Aera Energy LLC saying he has reviewed and denied applications
filed by the company to hydraulically fracture 14 wells in the
South Belridge oil field in western Kern County.
6-PPD is a chemical widely used to protect car tires from
ozone. However, when rainwater washes it into freshwater, 6PPD
degrades into 6-PPD quinone, a contaminant that a recent study
has linked to the mass deaths of Coho salmon in the Pacific
Northwest of the US. Researchers from Northeastern University
and the University of Washington found that even small doses of
6PPDq were lethal for the salmon. … According to the
California Water Board, Coho populations today are
probably less than 6% of what they were in the 1940s, and there
has been ‘at least’ a 70% decline since the 1960s.
The Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant is expected to continue
releasing millions of gallons of partially treated wastewater
into the Pacific until the plant is restored to normal
operations later this month, but the amount of pollutants in
the water flowing into the ocean is already dropping
dramatically as more of the damaged facility is brought back
online, according to new water quality data.
A “fish die-off” is generally a natural phenomena and occurs in
summer when low oxygen and warm temperatures causes large
mortality in a localized population of fish. Fish die-offs can
also happen in winter months when temperature stress can kill a
fish population. We have seen winter die-off happen during
extreme winters here in Clear Lake and her tributaries,
especially to the fragile, small bait fish populations like the
threadfin shad and silversides.
Federal officials are getting closer to identifying how they
plan to control persistent cross-border sewage flows which
routinely foul the San Diego ocean. They talked publicly on
Friday about ongoing efforts to fix a persistent problem,
sewage coming from Tijuana which fouls a sensitive estuary in
the United States and also contaminates the ocean.
Microplastic pollution is seemingly ubiquitous, and few know
this as well as staff research associate with the UC Davis
Tahoe Environmental Research Center Katie Senft. Senft, in
collaboration with the Nevada Division of Environmental
Protection, is looking for sinks of microplastics in Lake
Tahoe. … Senft is looking at five different areas of the
lake. The first is surface water.
The first pull of the day was a Corona bottle, its label
scraped off by the coarse sand just off the shore of South Lake
Tahoe. How long it had been there was anyone’s guess. A
freediver in the floating cleanup crew unearthed it from the
sand — only about 12 feet deep here — and surfaced to dump it
in a green floating trash raft named Darlene. It was Day
15 of the first-ever effort to systematically scoop up
submerged litter and junk that has accumulated on the bottom
along Lake Tahoe’s 72-mile shoreline.
The water quality of several beaches near Dockweiler State
Beach has returned to state standards after a sewage spill,
according to the California Department of Public Health.
Beachgoers had been warned against swimming along a stretch of
coastline after an emergency discharge from the Hyperion Water
Reclamation Plant sent 17 million gallons of raw sewage into
the waters off Dockweiler and El Segundo beaches on July 11 and
12.
The California State Water Resources Control Board (“State
Water Board”) has issued an Order to approximately 160 bulk
fuel storage terminals and refineries in California requiring
implementation of a PFAS site investigation. The State
Water Board identified the recipients of the Order on the basis
that they had stored and/or used materials that may contain
PFAS such as AFFF for fire suppression, fire training, and
flammable vapor suppression.
A $1.3 million study is underway at the University of Arizona
to learn more about how PFAS enters the ground and contaminates
water to effort remediation. “It’s a really big issue and
we are starting to tackle this particular problem of PFAS being
present in soils due to the many decades of the use of PFAS in
almost every aspect of our life and also at the military
sites,” said Bo Guo, principle investigator.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S.
Department of the Army announced plans for upcoming community
engagements to inform their efforts to revise the definition of
“waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to better ensure clean
and safe water for all. EPA and Army are committed to
developing a reasonable, effective, and durable definition of
WOTUS that protects public health, the environment, and
downstream communities while supporting economic opportunity,
agriculture, and other industries.
Greater buffer zones around bodies of water and more consistent
enforcement of water protection regulations are needed to
reduce agriculture-based pollution in the Western U.S., a
recent review from Oregon State University found. Prior
research has shown that agricultural pollution, both from
croplands and rangelands, is the cause of 48% of water-quality
impairment in U.S. surface waters, which in turn disrupts
habitat for fish and insects and reduces biodiversity in
aquatic environments.
Several Los Angeles County beaches near Dockweiler State Beach
continue to exceed state standards for bacteria in water,
according to the Department of Public Health. However,
special water sampling conducted Friday determined water
quality levels returned to state standards at the Hyperion
Water Reclamation Plant outfall at Dockweiler State Beach and
the Topsail Street extension at Venice Beach, lifting warnings
there.
Thirty-five years ago, California voters approved a landmark
law meant to halt exposure to dangerous chemicals in drinking
water and everyday products like food, flip-flops, and face
shields. Decades later, the water cases are few and far
between—while hundreds of product lawsuits bring in millions of
dollars annually for plaintiffs’ attorneys, some of whom
represent environmental groups focused only on this law.
A new trend of pool toys containing glitter and microbeads is
complicating the already pervasive environmental problem of
microplastic pollution. University of California, Davis,
scientists studying plastics pollution encourage beach-goers to
take care to leave natural waterways as clean or cleaner than
they found them this summer by reducing their use of all forms
of plastic at the beach and leaving pool toys full of
microbeads and glitter at home.
High bacteria levels at beaches near the site of a massive
sewage discharge in Playa del Rey have prompted Los Angeles
County health officials to issue a warning about going in the
water. The L.A. County Department of Public Health did not rule
out a link between the 17-million-gallon sewage release from
the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant on July 11 and the rise in
bacteria. But a connection was “unlikely,” given the currents
and the more than two weeks that have elapsed since the
incident, the department said.
Rain fell on San Diego Monday. It wasn’t a lot of rain – an
Accuweather forecast called for “a brief morning shower or two”
with an anticipated rainfall of 0.01 inches. But it was enough
to prompt a beach closure at the Tijuana Slough, just south of
Imperial Beach. That section of the beach is closed whenever
the Tijuana River is flowing. Cross-border sewage spills have
been an issue in South County for decades.
As drought conditions worsen in the western U.S., it is there
that water is becoming more and more scarce. As for that which
is at the surface and below, you know, the subsurface supply,
is everything being done that can be done to get the most out
of this extremely valuable resource? In California’s San
Joaquin Valley, according to information imparted on the Jul.
20, 2021 edition of the PBS “News Hour,” agriculture drinks up
half of the groundwater supply. In some Valley locations, water
availability is extremely limited.
California’s courts routinely impose punitive damages awards
against polluters that knowingly release hazardous substances
which contaminate groundwater. But California has been slow to
follow the nationwide trend favoring punitive damages awards
against polluters that knowingly fail to remediate their past
hazardous releases before those releases spread and cause
greater harm.
For years, oily, odorous and — at times — thick runoff water
flowed from the back end of the Knolls Lodge Mobile Home Park
in Torrance into the storm drain of a neighboring cul-de-sac.
Marc Evans’ family home happens to be in the runoff water’s
path, and he has been trying to get it to stop for years. Evans
shared that the area recently caught a break from the eyesore.
… The flow came from the park’s resident car wash area
that’s located along a brick wall sharing a property line with
Evans’ family home.
Multiple failures in communication between Los Angeles city and
county agencies delayed crucial public warnings and a full
emergency response to a massive sewage discharge earlier this
month at the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, according to a
report obtained by The Times that was discussed Tuesday by
county officials. The report provides new details regarding
plant flooding and the evacuation of staff just before an
hours-long discharge of 17 million gallons of raw sewage into
the waters off Dockweiler and El Segundo beaches July 11 and
12.
The California Water Environment Association (CWEA) selected
Eshani Jha from Lynbrook High School in San Jose as
California’s first place winner of the Stockholm Junior Water
Prize, 2021. Jha’s project, Thiol Functionalized and
Manganese Doped Biochar for the Removal of Toxic Organic and
Inorganic Contaminants from the Water was selected as the
first-place project for California out of 21 papers submitted.
Jha, one of 43 state winners announced by the Water Environment
Federation (WEF), represented California in the national finals
in June where she was declared as the U.S. winner.
Here, in California’s far south-east, there’s no escaping the
noxious air. The haze that hovers over Imperial [County] is a
peculiar blend – incorporating pesticide plumes, exhaust fumes,
factory emissions, and something curious: vaporized dust rising
from the nearby Salton Sea. … It is California’s largest
lake, an ecological oasis, a former mecca for famous
vacationers, and a muddy sink for agricultural runoff. For
decades, it has been shrinking, exposing a powdery arsenic-,
selenium- and DDT-laced shoreline that wafts into the
atmosphere.
On a jog in her El Segundo neighborhood, Corrie Zupo’s head
hurt and her eyes watered. She blamed the symptoms on noxious
fumes from the nearby Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, which
is undergoing at least a month of repairs after discharging 17
million gallons of raw sewage into the ocean on July 11. Other
residents have complained of rashes, nausea and burning eyes.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment
Department, which runs the plant, announced that it would
reimburse El Segundo residents for air conditioners if they
stay in their homes, or hotel vouchers if they would rather
leave.
Environmental lawyers are urging a California appellate court
to overturn a pair of district court rulings that handed
significant victories to the Squaw Valley ski resort as it
moves forward with expansion plans critics say will
dramatically increase traffic in the area and harm Lake Tahoe’s
air and water quality. Justice Vance W. Raye, chief of the
Third District Court of Appeals, appeared sympathetic to their
arguments this week that Placer County may have violated a
public records law in approving part of an environmental
analysis and mitigation plan at the home of the 1960 Winter
Olympics.
Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin sent a letter to LA
Sanitation and Environment on Tuesday, July 20, demanding
answers about the cause and impact of a 17 million gallon
sewage spill early last week that temporarily closed beaches
from El Segundo to the southern end of Playa del Rey. … The
Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, near El Segundo, discharged
17 million gallons of untreated sewage through a one-mile
outfall beginning the evening of July 11 and into the morning
of July 12, prompting the beach closures.
Lawmakers and regulators are increasingly mobilizing behind
efforts to crack down on so-called forever chemicals as
pressure to find a solution swells to a fever pitch. At an
inaugural conference pegged to issues around per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, EPA Administrator Michael Regan
vowed to “follow the science” on the chemicals and offer a
strong federal partner to local governments.
A South Carolina federal judge issued an order late last
week allowing the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, the Trump
administration’s “waters of the United States” rule, to remain
in place while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
Army Corps of Engineers work on rulemakings to revoke and
replace it. The final rule was issued in April 2020, redefining
“waters of the United States” and narrowing the scope of Clean
Water Act jurisdiction.
For years, petroleum hydrocarbons have been seeping from the
groundwater beneath the old oil tank farm property in Avila
Beach into tide pools below. Much of the source of the
pollution has been cleaned up, but an unknown amount remains.
The question now is, what should be done with it and could
over-aggressive remediation cause more harm than good?
The trickle of hydrocarbons — comprised of a mixture of
diluted, broken-down gas from the tank farm — was discovered in
May 2012 …
Residents, along with the local population of Mallard ducks,
Canada geese and coots will soon get their Legacy Park nature
preserve back. The pond, which is normally kept full most of
the year with storm runoff water, totally dried up this spring
in the middle of duckling season. The statewide drought took
its toll. Meanwhile, the construction of a new office park and
shopping center—the La Paz project—right across the street was
running into difficulties with groundwater as workers excavated
a future underground parking garage.
There is growing scrutiny over a 17-million-gallon sewage spill
into the Santa Monica Bay, with many asking how the spill
occurred and why it took so long to alert the public. … Here
is a breakdown of what we know — and what we don’t. The
emergency discharge at Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in
Playa del Rey began Sunday evening and ended around 4:30 a.m.
Monday, according to interviews. The 17 million gallons —
about 6% of the facility’s daily load — amounted to the largest
emergency discharge conducted at the Hyperion plant in a
decade, officials said.
While algae growing in our lakes, ponds and reservoirs can be
quite visible, the algae in many of our rivers and their
tributaries is often not so obvious, lurking on the bottom of
the rivers, and clinging to rocks. Yet, some of these riverbed
blue-green algae, referred to as “cyanobacteria,” can create
algal blooms that produce toxins harmful not only to aquatic
life, but also to pets, livestock and humans. University of
Nevada, Reno Assistant Professor Joanna Blaszczak is conducting
research to identify the specific conditions conducive to
producing these blooms and their toxins…
To finally determine a lasting definition of waterways that
qualify for federal protection under the Clean Water Act, the
Environmental Protection Agency’s new water director says
everyone with a stake in the issue will need to be engaged.
Radhika Fox recently spoke to The Associated Press about the
Biden administration’s plan to rewrite the regulation, also
called Waters of the United States. The contentious rule was
scaled back by the Trump administration after being expanded
under President Barack Obama.
After 17 million gallons of raw sewage were discharged into the
ocean off Los Angeles beaches early Monday, county officials
waited hours before notifying the public to avoid swimming in
areas potentially affected by high levels of bacteria. The
delay occurred even though officials from the Los Angeles
County Department of Public Health, which is responsible for
notifying the public, were at the Hyperion Water Reclamation
Plant in Playa del Rey during the emergency discharge procedure
that began Sunday evening and ended Monday around 4:30 a.m.,
according to interviews.
A prominent oil and gas lobbying group seeks to strip
environmental protections from groundwater sources designated
by the state for agricultural use and which may grow
increasingly important to California’s water-scarce future,
according to a memo obtained through a records request. The
proposal, which hasn’t been publicly announced, suggests
removing protections for groundwater reserves underneath 1,500
square surface miles in western Kern County, where the
upper groundwater zone alone can extend down thousands of feet.
Global warming has already left its mark on the backbone of
California’s water supply, and represents a growing threat to
its first developed agricultural region, state experts have
warned in a new study. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
fuels California’s $3 trillion economy, including its $50
billion agricultural industry, sustains more than 750 plant and
animal species and supplies 27 million people with drinking
water. But global warming is likely to destabilize the
landscape that made the delta a biodiversity and agricultural
hotspot …
Nearly $3.25 million in federal funding was preliminarily
secured for separate project requests at the Salton Sea and the
New River on Monday, July 12, according to the office of
Congressman Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista. The funding was
part of a 2022 House Appropriations Energy and Water
Subcommittee bill that included requests of $2.546 million for
a major Salton Sea research project, $200,000 for a Salton Sea
feasibility study, and $500,000 for planning and design phases
for a potential New River restoration project, Vargas’ press
release states.
For years, the city of Eureka sent treated wastewater directly
into Humboldt Bay from its Elk River processing plant.
But five years ago, the North Coast Regional Water Control
Board ordered the city to “cease and desist” and to move to
ocean discharge by 2030. The city is now seeking a
resolution that would allow wastewater to continue to be
discharged into the bay. The water board will meet in
mid-August to decide. Whether or not the city is granted
the exemption to continue, there are plans in the works to make
upgrades to the Elk River wastewater facility.
Extreme heat and wildfires are engulfing the [West] amid a
historic drought that scientists think may be the region’s
worst in at least 1,200 years. In response, some drinking water
systems are beginning to grapple with maintaining both water
supplies and water quality as they deal with potential legal
and regulatory concerns. … California contracted with
the U.S. Geological Survey to study the link between drought
and water quality … Some systems saw increases in nitrates,
arsenic, and uranium …
Miles of beaches in Los Angeles were closed to swimmers Monday
as 17 million gallons of sewage from the city’s largest
treatment plant spilled into Santa Monica Bay the night
before. A mechanical failure “at the Hyperion plant last night
caused untreated sewage to be discharged into the ocean,” Los
Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said on
Twitter. … Closure signs were posted in the areas around
El Segundo and Dockweiler State Beaches, as well as Grand
Ave. Storm Drain, and officials urged visitors from going
into the water.
The Clean Water Act has traveled a successful but tortuous
path. From combustible beginnings on the Cuyahoga River;
through the Lake St. Clair wetlands; to reservoirs near the
Miccosukee; and eventually discharged (or “functionally”
discharged) off the Maui coast. With each bend, the nearly
fifty-year-old Act has proven to be not just resilient, but
among our most successful environmental laws. Much of that
success stems from an effective enforcement structure that
focuses more on treating pollutant sources rather than just
impaired waters. –Written by Sean G. Herman, an attorney with Hanson
Bridgett LLP and an adjunct professor at Golden Gate University
School of Law.
California denied 21 oil drilling permits this week in the
latest move toward ending fracking in a state that makes
millions from the petroleum industry but is seeing widespread
drought and more dangerous fire seasons linked to climate
change. … Fracking involves injecting high-pressure
water deep underground to extract oil or gas from rock. Critics
say it can pollute groundwater and contributes to climate
change.
Community members in Alameda County are outraged by the huge
amount of trash blown into the Bethany Reservoir in Alameda
County. They believed it was coming from a nearby landfill and
were demanding action. … Residents of nearby Mountain
House came with cameras to document it. They believed high
winds carried trash from the Altamont Landfill.
The confluence of the tiny San Pedro River and the much larger
Gila was once one of the richest locales in one of the most
productive river ecosystems in the American Southwest, an
incomparable oasis of biodiversity. The rivers frequently
flooded their banks, a life-giving pulse … The
confluence now is a very different place, its richness long
diminished. A massive mountain of orange- and dun-colored
smelter tailings, left from the days of copper and lead
processing and riddled with arsenic, towers where the two
rivers meet. Water rarely flows there, with an occasional
summer downpour delivering an ephemeral trickle.
The Salton Sea has been a health problem for decades with
longtime inaction from agencies charged with actually doing
something about it. But there is recent movement on a couple
wetland projects around the lake.
Lake Tahoe’s water continues to show some of the murkiest
levels on record, according to a new report from UC Davis.
Readings from 2020 put the average depth of Tahoe’s water
clarity at 62.9 feet, on par with 2019’s average of 62.7 feet
but down a substantial 8 feet from the year before. The 2019
and 2020 data show the lake near its lowest level of clarity
since UC Davis researchers began keeping records 53 years ago.
The worst year was 2017, when lake clarity measured 59.7 feet.
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (“Regional
Board”) is in the process of issuing a new permit for water
discharges through the municipal separate storm sewer systems
(“MS4”) in Los Angeles County and Ventura County. The MS4
permit is an important document that regulates how
municipalities can allow stormwater to flow through the MS4
system and out into natural (or modified) waterways. Stormwater
typically contains high quantities of pollutants, including
toxic metals, bacteria, and other materials picked up from
buildings and streets during wet weather events, all of which
harms both the ecosystem and human health.
The beaches are back, and according to research taken from the
coastal watchdogs at Heal the Bay, there are plenty of
excellent Southland beaches for people to enjoy this summer.
Even so, a handful of beaches across California, including a
perennial “beach bummer” in Los Angeles County, leave something
to be desired. Heal the Bay’s complete 2020-2021 Beach Report
Card covers the entirety of the west coast, from the Pacific
Northwest down to Tijuana, and includes brief water quality
updates from along the coast. It also features grades on
freshwater sources and swimming holes, such as those along the
LA River.
Here’s some good news (and then, some not-so-good news) for
those seeking a summer respite by the sea: Beaches across
California are much cleaner than in years past. In its annual
survey of more than 500 beaches, Heal the Bay reported Tuesday
that 93% of California’s beaches logged good water-quality
marks between April and October 2020 — an encouraging
assessment for a coastline that sees all manner of trash,
pesticides and bacteria (not to mention microplastics,
automotive fluids and tire particles) flushed into the ocean
whenever it rains.
With a vast portion of the United States coping with
exceptional drought this summer, conditions are ripe in many
places for harmful algal blooms, bringing additional threats to
already-stressed water systems and increased health risks for
communities. The blooms are in large part fueled by phosphorus
and nitrogen runoff from industrial agricultural operations,
which provide a feast of nutrients for cyanobacteria — a group
of aquatic, photosynthetic bacteria that grow out of control
and overwhelm their ecosystems in the presence of excess
nutrients.
The Clean Currents Coalition – a global network of local
projects – is on a mission to clean up the world’s rivers,
using scientific solutions to address the problem of plastic
waste … Pollution doesn’t respect international
boundaries, making plastic waste in the Tijuana River Estuary,
which forms the border between the US and Mexico, everyone’s
problem. As the river is the sole source of clean drinking
water for many people, California and Mexico-based
environmental non-profit WILDCOAST, has erected a “Brute
Boom” across the Los Laureles Canyon to collect debris.
SCV Water’s response to removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl
(PFAS) chemicals in the local groundwater supply
received top honors as the Best Environmental Project from the
American Public Works Association (APWA) — High
Desert Branch. … PFAS chemicals are manmade and can
cause adverse health effects. Officials recognized the
opening of the plant, which is adjacent to the William S. Hart
Pony Baseball & Softball fields, in early
October. The $6 million facility restores up to 6,250
gallons of water per minute.
Mission Springs Water Districtis facing as much as
$9.4 million in fines from state and regional water
regulators after district officials failed to report
a nearly million-gallon spill from a breached
wastewater percolation pond as required, and failed to
notify state authorities that a temporary holding pond had
been constructed. District officials waited two weeks to
notify state authorities that last Oct. 3,
large amounts of treated wastewater
gushed through Desert Hot Springs residential streets …
California’s existing release reporting requirements, which are
in addition to federal requirements, are viewed by many as
vague and often require companies to make difficult judgment
calls to determine if small spills or threatened releases must
be reported. In workshops held on June 22 and 24, 2021 the
California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) previewed
amendments to its Hazardous Material Release Reporting
regulations that aim to clarify when a release or threatened
release of a hazardous substance must be reported.
As science and policy director for Santa Barbara Channelkeeper
and a 14-year resident of Carpinteria, I appreciated Bob
Franco’s June 16 letter to the editor, “Don’t drink the water,”
for its effectiveness in raising awareness about an important
pollution issue impacting Carpinteria’s local waterways.
Channelkeeper is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to
protecting and restoring the Santa Barbara Channel and its
watersheds. -Written by Ben Pitterle, Channelkeeper’s interim
executive director and science and policy director.
PG&E will pay the Central Coast Regional Water Quality
Control Board $5.9 million in a landmark settlement that
recognizes the long-term impacts of dumping water used to cool
Diablo Canyon Power Plant back into the Pacific Ocean — but
also the realities of a plant that is expected to close in the
next decade.
Help may be on the horizon for the about 700 residents of East
Orosi dependent on bottled water. The Tulare County Board of
Supervisors has directed county staff to begin negotiating the
scope of work and a budget … to take control of the East
Orosi Community Services District public water system.
… East Orosi’s water has been plagued with nitrates from
fertilizers and coliform bacteria since at least 2003, for
which their water system has been cited for violating the
Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) both contaminants dozens of
times.
The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) and
Sonoma County Department of Environmental Health Services
advise caution for anyone who boats, fishes or swims after
harmful algal blooms (HABs) were discovered in multiple Sonoma
County rivers. Because children and dogs are most susceptible
to serious health impacts, it is recommended that they avoid
touching any suspicious-looking algal material found in the
water or along river banks.
San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDG&E) appears to be
violating a water discharge waver by the California Water
Quality Control Board issued earlier this month by the board,
according to Larry Schmidt of the VC Planning Group, whom The
Roadrunner contacted Saturday. Schmidt is the lead for the
planning group on this issue after being appointed Monday night
to head the group’s subcommittee investigating the utility’s
work on Cole Grade Road that is near Cool Valley Road.
Hot temperatures are drawing people to the cool water of
Tiscornia Beach, but what many there may not know, there are
high levels of E.coli found in the water. … Robert
Metcalf is a retired professor who’s taught microbiology at
Sacramento State University for 42 years. He said finding
E. coli in the water means there is recent fecal
contamination. Mary Beth Metcalf, a retired clinical
professor of pediatrics from UC Davis, said E.coli leads
to other infections.
The Senate voted 55-43 Wednesday to confirm Radhika Fox as head
of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Water.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Tom
Carper (D-Del.), in remarks on the Senate floor, praised Fox’s
record and highlighted the organizations endorsing her for the
position. These include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
Family Farm Alliance and the U.S. Water Alliance, where she
previously served as CEO.
The first glimpse of the water driving down Highway 86 is
breathtaking. From some angles, you can’t even see the other
side of California’s biggest lake. It seems out of place in the
vast desert expanse of the Imperial Valley, just north of the
Mexican border, where it’s over 100 degrees for much of the
year. But then the car door opens, and it hits: the
overwhelming smell of rotten eggs. At the shoreline is a
sign saying not to touch the toxic water.
Instead of turning on the faucet to fill her pots to cook
dinner, Maria Olivera turns to her drums of state issued water
sitting next to the stove at her home in Tooleville.
… Tooleville spans all of two dusty dirt roads at the
edge of the Friant-Kern Canal, where the blue hue of flowing
water is just out of sight over raised levees. Along with it,
the basic human right of having clean drinking water. Nitrates
from farming fertilizers have rendered the water undrinkable in
Tooleville, and the community is dependent on biweekly water
deliveries.
As California suffers from a major drought and enters a climate
change fueled wildfire season, oil and gas operators continue
to use hundreds of millions of gallons of freshwater for
drilling operations annually. It’s a vicious symbiotic cycle:
fracking and drilling contribute to climate change and suck up
finite water resources, then drought and wildfires worsen from
climate change.
With harmful algal blooms (HABs) being forecast to increase, in
part due to the effects of climate change, more water systems
can expect to face problematic cyanotoxin conditions more
frequently and for more days per year. In its efforts to
mitigate the negative effects of such increases, the U.S. EPA
has enhanced its information resources for water utilities by
issuing a new Cyanotoxins Preparedness and Response Toolkit.
As California plunges into another “historic” drought, people
across the state are worried about water shortages. But the
last drought never really ended for some Californians, like
residents of East Porterville that still have emergency water
storage tanks in their front yards. With the state’s current
financial surplus, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity
to fund drought preparedness and water safety in communities
that have lived for decades with shallow and contaminated
drinking water wells, inadequate water treatment, and other
infrastructure failures… -Written by Carolina Garcia, a resident of Tombstone
Territory, and Sandra Chavez, a member of the
Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER)
Advisory Group.
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced
selections under two Clean Water Act (CWA) grant programs to
support leadership of Tribes in protecting and restoring water
resources. The agency anticipates awarding approximately $3
million to 18 Tribal nations and one Intertribal organization
under the Tribal Wetland Program Development Grant competition
and an additional $3 million in CWA Section 319 Tribal
Competitive Grants to 32 Tribal nations to support projects to
manage nonpoint source pollution.
Toxic manmade chemicals, like per- and poly-fluoroalkyl
substances (PFAS) and 1,2,3-Tricholoropropane (TCP), are
showing up in water systems across the US. It’s not new, but it
has become more common, as municipalities are now increasing
mandatory testing due to new state and federal
regulations. … TCP was tagged as a carcinogen in
1999 by the state of California which lead to the strictest
state MCL level in the country at 5 ppt. One ppt is the
equivalent of one drop of impurity in 21 million gallons of
water – in other words, TCP is very toxic.
A large oilfield wastewater disposal pond near Buttonwillow
will likely close this summer, and its operator and last
remaining customer will together pay $645,000 in penalties and
fees, under a recent court settlement that further restricts a
decades-old practice that has become a focus of regional water
quality regulators. The accord concludes a 2019 lawsuit that
accused facility owner Valley Water Management Co. and
Colorado-based oil producer Sentinel Peak Resources of dumping
fluid containing harmful chemicals above a reservoir that
provides local drinking and irrigation water.
Humboldt County gave the public two chances to air concerns
this week surrounding Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed onshore fish
farm on the Samoa Peninsula. County planners held two public
scoping meetings Thursday to gather input from the public and
affected governmental agencies on areas that should be covered
in the project’s environmental impact report (EIR). The
Humboldt County Planning and Building Department had released a
mitigated negative declaration (MND) for the project in April
but a coalition of environmental groups argued that the
assessment didn’t go far enough.
Military bases across California, including some in San Diego,
have tested positive for a toxic chemical. A bill sponsored by
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla attempts to find the money to finally
clean up the legacy of PFAS. The Department of Defense has
known for decades that a chemical found in aviation fire
fighting foam contains potentially toxic polyfluoroalkyl
substances (PFAS), which has been linked to cancer when found
in groundwater, Padilla said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of
Engineers announced their intent to revise the reach of the
federal Clean Water Act by changing the definition of “waters
of the United States.” This move, announced yesterday, would
reverse the Navigable Waters Protection Rule adopted during the
Trump administration, which itself replaced a 2015 revision by
the Obama administration.
A Central Valley pistachio processing plant whose wastewater
ponds triggered numerous odor complaints from nearby residents
will pay a $221,440 fine, a portion of which will fund improved
ventilation at two public schools in the area. The Central
Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Central Valley
Water Board) fined Setton Pistachio after determining the
company had violated the terms of an August 2020 cease and
desist order (CDO) directing it to immediately eliminate
objectionable odors coming from ponds at its plant in Terra
Bella in Tulare County.
The Biden administration began legal action Wednesday to repeal
a Trump-era rule that ended federal protections for hundreds of
thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways,
leaving them more vulnerable to pollution from development,
industry and farms. The rule — sometimes referred to as “waters
of the United States” or WOTUS — narrowed the types of
waterways that qualify for federal protection under the Clean
Water Act. It was one of hundreds of rollbacks of environmental
and public health regulations under President Donald Trump, who
said the rules imposed unnecessary burdens on business.
The Union has printed several opinion pieces by Idaho-Maryland
Mine Project opponents. The majority of these columns present
“information” that’s either biased or misleading and based
neither on science nor logic. Here are the facts.
… Recent columns erroneously suggest that groundwater
impacts cannot be accurately predicted. Numerous expert
hydrogeologists and a century of mining at the Idaho-Maryland
say otherwise. … The actual conclusion is that no wells
would be drained… -Written by Ben Mossman, president of Rise Grass
Valley and CEO of Rise Gold Corp., U.S. corporations.
In unburned forests, the spring runoff is a glorious, annual
event. But not this year. [U.S. Forest service ecologist Liz]
Roberts and other forest experts know that the runoff will
carry an array of frightening heavy metals and ash-laden
sediment generated in the burned soils, posing danger to the
people of Glenwood Springs, who rely on Grizzly Creek and its
neighbor just to the west, No Name Creek, for drinking
water.
For decades, large red-hot furnaces cooked the lead from
smashed batteries at the Exide plant, just seven miles from
Downtown Los Angeles, spouting plumes of toxic air that settled
on and contaminated thousands of homes. … In the years
since, the facility has been cited repeatedly for serious
compliance problems. According to a former DTSC senior
scientist’s review of public records, at least four are
responsible for soil and groundwater contamination that the
department has or should have known about for years or even
decades.
Citing numerous “concerns” with the Clean Water Act (CWA)
section 401 water quality certification rule enacted by the
Trump Administration in 2020, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has issued a Notice of Intention to
reconsider and revise the rule. EPA’s notice states that
the new rule will be “better aligned with the cooperative
federalism principles that have been central to the effective
implementation of the Clean Water Act” and is “responsive to
the national objectives outlined in President Biden’s Executive
Order 13990.”
Recent research from the US Geological Survey (USGS) suggests
that droughts, particularly the prolonged kind happening in
parts of the US, could increase the risk of harmful arsenic
exposure for people that rely on well water. Hundreds of
millions of years ago, the baseline quality of your drinking
water may have been set in stone, literally. Arsenic is a
common groundwater contaminant, largely because of local
geology. In Maine, for instance, the formation of the
Appalachian Mountains and volcanic activity came together to
concentrate arsenic and other metals into cracks inside the
bedrock…
The ocean shoreline at Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge
and Border Field State Park was closed Saturday due to
contaminated sewage water that may be moving north into the
U.S., county water authorities said. The San Diego County
Department of Environmental Health and Quality issued the
contact closure for the ocean shoreline Saturday. Ocean water
samples exceeded state health standards, DEHQ officials said.
Oxygen levels in the world’s temperate freshwater lakes are
declining rapidly — faster than in the oceans — a trend driven
largely by climate change that threatens freshwater
biodiversity and drinking water quality. Research published
today in Nature found that oxygen levels in surveyed lakes
across the temperate zone have declined 5.5% at the surface and
18.6% in deep waters since 1980.
Too often, ocean water is laced with sewage and pollutants,
affecting how safe beaches are for swimming and surfing –
that’s the message of this year’s Clean Water Report released
Tuesday, May 25, by the Surfrider Foundation. …
[T]he report highlights inefficiencies in sewer
infrastructure and a need to stop urban runoff before it
reaches the coast, both main contributors to dirty water that
plagues the country’s coastlines.
Hidden from view when driving by is the [Rise Gold]
mine that is filled with water contaminated with
byproducts of hard rock mining. The water now forms a murky
lake several hundred yards wide. Rise Gold plans to pump out
3.6 million gallons of water every single day for six months
and after that another 1.2 million gallons a day for up to 80
years from this site. Let that sink in. Get your mind
fully around this. This is real. They will dump this water
into the little creek alongside the site and send it on its way
down Wolf Creek to the Feather River to the Sacramento River to
San Francisco Bay … -Written by Billy Packard.
Free bottled water has begun to arrive at homes
with nitrate-tainted wells in parts of Stanislaus and
Merced counties. The ambitious effort, funded by farmers
and other parties, launched the week of May 10 with free
testing of residential wells. Those that exceeded the nitrate
threshold can start getting the 5-gallon jugs about 17 to 21
days later.
[R]esearchers collected water during heavy rainstorms from 12
streams flowing into the San Francisco Bay. … Microscopic
fibers and black rubbery fragments were the most common
microparticles, while natural debris, glass, paint and wool
were only minor components. Then, the team identified a subset
of plastic- or rubbery-looking fragments as being made mostly
of plastic polymers or other synthetic materials, and many of
the black rubbery particles originated from tires.
It was a question asked of panelists discussing the Salton Sea
on Tuesday, May 25. State and local officials were asked a
number of questions about the drying sea during a one-hour
online forum. The Red Hill Bay project that stalled after
breaking ground in 2015 was one of the topics panelists
discussed.
Malibu residents voiced concerns about a large algae bloom in
Malibu Lagoon at the Monday, May 24, Malibu City Council
meeting, with one requesting the city demand California State
Parks to do something about the lagoon—which public speakers
said could breach as soon as the early morning of Wednesday,
May 26. Malibu Lagoon has previously been plagued by algal
blooms; in 2018, one large bloom choked native plants and
fish—which suffocated, died and floated to the surface in a
massive, smelly die-off.
The Kern River Conservancy received a $23,000 grant to study
whether last year’s Sequoia Complex Fire harmed the water
quality in the wild and scenic section of the Kern River. The
Virginia and Alfred Harrell Foundation awarded the grant to the
non-profit conservancy, Gary Ananian, the conservancy’s founder
and executive director, told the Kern Valley Sun.
In terms of sheer size, Nordic Aquafarms’ land-based
aquaculture facility, slated for construction on the Samoa
Peninsula, would be the largest development project Humboldt
County has seen for decades, maybe since the heyday of the
timber industry. The facility’s five buildings — including two
massive production modules where Atlantic salmon would be
raised inside fully-contained recirculating tanks — would total
766,530 square feet, nearly an acre larger than the footprint
of the Bayshore Mall. It’s been more than two years since the
Norwegian company announced its ambitious plans, and the
environmental review period was scheduled to wrap up this
week.
Just who is in charge of revitalization of California’s largest
lake, and why has it been so tough to solve the issues at the
Salton Sea? … There has been a lot of blame passed around by
those who own the land around and under the Salton Sea. The
biggest land owner here is the Imperial Irrigation District, or
IID. Then, the federal government. Next, the Torres-Martinez
tribe.
Growers in the Central Coast region of California produce most
of the cool-season vegetables for the U.S. from March to
mid-November. After several years of multi-cropping vegetables,
the groundwater in many of the coastal valleys has become
contaminated with nitrate. Some wells have concentrations of
nitrate several times the federal drinking water standard of 10
ppm (parts per million) nitrate-N. Rural communities that rely
on groundwater as their sole source of drinking water must
purchase bottled water or install small reverse osmosis
systems.
The deadline is looming: According to a state law adopted in
2018, the California State Water Resources Control Board has
until July 1 to adopt a standard methodology for testing
drinking water for the presence of microplastics; adopt
requirements for four years of testing and reporting of
microplastics in drinking water, including public disclosure of
the results; and accredit qualified laboratories in California
to analyze microplastics. The problem? Testing for
microplastics … is not quite ready for prime time. It is not
yet precisely clear what effects microplastics have on animals,
including humans, and at what levels they may be harmful.
More wildfires. Hotter days. Drought. Sea-level rise. Those
conditions are an increasing reality in California, which is
steadily becoming an altered state. But if the grimmest
predictions of experts about our state and climate change
become true, the conditions will become far worse.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Radhika Fox, former US Water Alliance
CEO, as EPA Office of Water Assistant Administrator during a
confirmation hearing May 12. With the confirmation, Fox became
the first woman of color and first individual of Asian heritage
to be both nominated and confirmed to lead the EPA Office of
Water. Fox had been appointed to the Office of Water after
President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.
A state appeals court has upheld California’s cleanup standards
for a cancer-causing chemical that was added to pesticides and
has polluted groundwater in the Central Valley, rejecting
challenges by manufacturers that may have to pay the costs. The
State Water Resources Control Board’s 2017 mandate for removing
nearly all TCP (1,2,3-trichloropropane) from drinking water was
contested by the California Manufacturers and Technology
Association, representing Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Oil, which
included the chemical in worm-killing fumigants widely used by
farmers through the 1980s.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on May 14 unveiled
his May budget revision that allocates $200
million to plug abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells, many
located near low-income residential areas where the majority of
residents are Latino and Black. In January
2020, a report by the California Council on
Science & Technology revealed that California taxpayers could
be on the hook for more than $500 million to plug thousands of
“orphan” wells drilled and abandoned by oil and gas companies.
.. Plugging all 107,000 oil and wells in California when
they become idle would cost more than $9 billion, the
report also found.
[I]n a new study, UCLA researchers found that nitrogen in
treated sewage is driving a massive growth of oceanic algae and
loss of oxygen, which will likely have lasting effects on the
region’s ecosystem. From 1997 to 2000, for example, the growth
of microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton was 79% higher
than it would have been without nitrogen from human sewage in
the waters along the coast from the Baja California Peninsula
to Santa Barbara. The problem occurs in large part because
freshwater from sewage is less dense than the seawater it’s
injected into, which causes the wastewater to rises to the
surface, where phytoplankton live.
Nancy Smith remembered that children had called it “the sick
land” — the wedge of property alongside the 110 Freeway where a
dry cleaning facility had laundered aprons and uniforms for
decades across from a Lincoln Heights elementary school.
… Decades after the old Welch’s laundry was shuttered,
California regulators worked to clean up the soil and check the
groundwater for the chemicals used there — volatile
organic compounds such as tetrachloroethylene that could damage
the human liver and nervous system and have
been tied to an increased risk of cancer. The Department
of Toxic Substances Control oversaw a cleanup effort that
lasted for years and has continued to monitor groundwater at
the site.
The Salton Sea continues to be a big talker when it comes to
lithium, but a long problem remains in and around the sea when
it comes to toxic air. During our extensive coverage of the
Salton Sea, we learned that toxic air is not only coming from
dried-up parts of the sea, but other parts of the sea are now
contributing to the toxicity. “It is not just the toxic
elements that have been trapped by the water and now exposed as
the sea recedes,” explained Frank Ruiz, Salton Sea Director
with Audubon California. Ruiz has been working with researchers
who have been studying the toxic levels at the Salton Sea.
May is American Wetlands Month and this year also marks the
50th anniversary of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of
International Importance. This intergovernmental treaty is
focused on the conservation and wise use of important wetlands
and their resources. … Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine
Research Reserve … provides habitat for a diversity
of wildlife species, including more than 100 species of fish,
500 species of invertebrates, and the region’s iconic southern
sea otters. … Tomales Bay is a marine-coastal
wetland consisting of estuaries, eelgrass beds, sand dune
systems, and tidal marshes.
Although Indigenous people had, since prehistoric times,
modified the [Sierra Nevada] landscape and caused widespread
ecological change, the arrival of Europeans and Americans for
the gold rush brought a much more invasive level of alterations
with the construction of dams, permanent manipulation of
rivers, clear-cutting of old-growth trees and an ill-advised
practice of fire suppression that makes these forests ripe for
wildfires, especially when compounded by climate change, which
means more heat waves, decreased snowpack and drier conditions
among other impacts.
Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla (both D-Calif.)
today joined with Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky
Rosen (both D-Nev.) to introduce bipartisan legislation to
extend authorization of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. The
original Lake Tahoe Restoration Act was passed in 2000 and
authorized $300 million for the restoration of the lake and
surrounding basin. The current authorization, which was passed
in 2016, will expire in 2024. Reauthorizing the bill will
prevent an interruption in conservation and restoration
planning.
When Sandra Chavez’ mother discovered she had stage four cancer
last year, one of Sandra’s first thoughts was about their
water. Her family’s private well is contaminated with nitrates
and Chavez wondered if years of drinking the water could have
caused her mother’s sickness. Chavez and her family have relied
on bottled water since they found out their well water was
unsafe in 2015. But sometimes they don’t have enough and are
forced to drink the contaminated water. So when Chavez
found out about a new program providing free bottled water
delivery for families with nitrate-contaminated wells, she was
frustrated she hadn’t been contacted.
AB-377, is a proposed state Assembly bill titled Water Quality:
Impaired Waters. The premise of this legislation seems to be
that local authorities are responsible for all the dirty water
in local waterways. While the goal of “cleaning up the water”
is commendable the proposed solution is problematic. The Lompoc
City Council discussed a staff request to oppose this
legislation on May 4; the staff explains that “Assembly Bill
(AB) 377 seeks to ensure California’s waterways are drinkable,
fishable and swimmable by 2050.” -Written by Ron Fink, a Lompoc resident.
Tiny specks of degraded plastics have been documented in the
snowpack around Lake Tahoe — and in the lake itself. They
have been found in the Las Vegas Wash. The phenomenon is not
unique to Nevada. Microplastics, the end product of our plastic
consumption, have been found in ecosystems across the
world, even in remote areas. Microplastics are small
— less than 5 millimeters — but they are not uniform.
They can have different shapes and vary in size. Microplastics
from clothing can appear as synthetic fibers, whereas degraded
plastic from bags or water bottles might take on a different
composition.
Newly announced state funding for the Salton Sea is expected to
maximize habitat outcomes and provide immediate economic relief
to the community. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $5.1 billion water
infrastructure, drought response and climate resilience
proposal, which he announced Monday as part of his $100 billion
“California Comeback Plan,” includes $220 million for the
Salton Sea. At Tuesday’s Imperial County Board of Supervisors
meeting on Tuesday, District 1 Supervisor Jesus Eduardo Escobar
wanted to know what is meant by providing immediate economic
relief to the community and how this would occur.
Newly released emails reveal that lawyers and lobbyists for
mining companies, developers and the agriculture industry had a
hand behind the scenes in shaping Arizona’s newly adopted law
on clean-water rules for rivers and streams. The emails
show the involvement of these influential groups went beyond
their public endorsements of the legislation. Their lawyers and
lobbyists were given access to offer input while the final
legislation was being drafted, and the emails show they
suggested specific language, offered “wordsmithing” tweaks and
requested significant changes that state officials incorporated
into the bill.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $5.1 billion water infrastructure,
drought response, and climate resilience proposal
includes $220 million for the Salton Sea, and Assembly
member Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, applauded the announcement.
Garcia, chair of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks, and
Wildlife, stated in a press release from his office that the
funding would maximize habitat outcomes and provide immediate
economic relief to the community.
The California State Lands Commission properly reviewed a
stalled desalination planned to be built on the coast south of
Los Angeles, a state appeals court says. In a decision filed
Saturday, the appeals court affirmed a lower court’s rejection
of a challenge to the plant by the environmental group
California Coastkeeper Alliance and others. It determined that
a 2017 re-review of the planned desalination plant in
Huntington Beach adequately complied with the requirements of
the California Environmental Quality Act.
Chula Vista resident and Imperial Beach lifeguard Lillian
Burkhart still remembers the sting on her skin after surfing in
Imperial Beach waters one day last summer. Within 24 hours, she
fell ill with a gastrointestinal infection, she said.
… Burkhart’s experience is commonplace and a reminder of
the decades-long struggle to address the recurring sewage
spills from Tijuana that pollute the South Bay shoreline.
As California slowly emerges from the depths of the COVID-19
pandemic, one remnant left behind by the statewide lockdown
offers a sobering reminder of the economic challenges still
ahead for millions of the state’s residents and the water
agencies that serve them – a mountain of water debt.
… Our latest article in Western Water explores the
hurdles to helping consumers, how some water agencies have
devised workarounds and how far more lasting solutions remain
out of reach.Western Water is just one of the publications
produced by our journalism team…
In 2020, the Salton Sea was described by Palm Springs Life
Magazine as “the biggest environmental disaster in California
history.” With the largest lake in California holding such a
bleak title, it’s amazing how obscure its legacy is. Over
spring break, we decided to go on a road trip to visit an
eccentric settlement in the middle of the lower Colorado
desert, known as a Slab City. This settlement is most well
known for being a site of post-apocalyptic garbage art and a
home for colorful nomads. Due to its libertarian ethos, it is
billed as the “last free place in America.”
Every spring, California farmers brace themselves for signs of
wriggling organisms destined to launch multigenerational
attacks on their crops. Many insect species survive the
winter as eggs or larvae and then emerge in early spring as the
first generation to feed and breed on millions of acres of
California vineyards, orchards and row crops. Climate change
will complicate farmers’ efforts to control these pests in
complex and unpredictable ways. The most alarming
consequence is apt to be ramping up pesticide applications,
with broad implications for the safety of California’s
waterways—just as the state gears up for a future filled with
drought.
A U.S. District Court judge has ordered McKinleyville-based
construction firm Kernen Construction Co. to pay over
$2,087,750 in civil penalties after it was found to have
violated the Clean Water Act by discharging contaminated storm
water into a nearby tributary creek of the Mad River. The order
was issued by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on May 2 after the
company was found to have discharged storm water without
engaging in pollution control measures mandated by the
CWA.
More than 58,000 fires scorched the United States last year,
and 2021 is on track to be even drier. What many people don’t
realize is that these wildfires can do lasting damage beyond
the reach of the flames – they can contaminate entire drinking
water systems with carcinogens that last for months after the
blaze. … Since 2017, multiple fires have
impacted drinking water systems … including the CZU
Lightning Complex, Camp and Tubbs fires in California.
Thousands of private wells have been affected too.
Just a short drive south of Palm Springs, you’ll find
California’s largest lake. The drive along the circumference of
the Salton Sea reveals surprising, majestic views unlike
anything you’d expect to find in the desert. But for its
impressive sights and size, the Salton Sea is not a household
name, least of all in the very state it’s found. These days, if
you travel along the increasingly shrinking shorelines, you’ll
see suffering communities dotted with abandoned homes and lined
with silent streets.
Pregnant women exposed to too much nitrate in their drinking
water are at greater risk of giving birth prematurely,
according to a Stanford University study of more than 1.4
million California births. Agricultural runoff containing
fertilizer and animal waste can greatly increase the nitrate
level in groundwater, which naturally contains a low level of
the chemical. … The strongest effects of nitrate on
prematurity risk were seen in California’s agricultural
regions, including the San Joaquin Valley and the Inland
Empire, the study noted. A higher proportion of births in
these areas are to Hispanic women than in other regions of the
state …
Many miles of streams and rivers in the United States and
elsewhere are polluted by toxic metals in acidic runoff
draining from abandoned mining sites, and major investments
have been made to clean up acid mine drainage at some sites. A
new study based on long-term monitoring data from four sites in
the western United States shows that cleanup efforts can allow
affected streams to recover to near natural conditions within
10 to 15 years after the start of abatement work. The four
mining-impacted watersheds—located in mountain mining regions
of California, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana—were all designated
as Superfund sites …
When Ramona Hernandez turns on her kitchen faucet in El Adobe,
an unincorporated town just a few miles southeast of
Bakersfield, the water that splashes out looks clean and
inviting. But she doesn’t dare drink it. … Drinking the
tap water in this tiny community of dusty ranches and unpaved
roads could expose Hernandez to arsenic. So, for years, she and
her husband, Gerardo, have shuttled twice a week to the nearby
town of Lamont to load up on bottled water. At a cost of about
$80 a month, it’s enough for drinking and cooking.
Regenerative farming practices integrate the entire ecosystem —
building upon the relationships of the natural world — to
simultaneously produce healthier, more abundant crops and
restore the Earth’s natural resources. … And
restoring soil health and fertility produces more abundant,
nutrient-dense crops that better resist pests and disease. It
increases soil’s ability to filter and store water, reduce
erosion and sequester carbon. And it builds a diversity and
abundance of microbes that drive every function of soil.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
A little more than a week ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that
not only would California effectively ban hydraulic fracturing,
or fracking, by 2024, but the state also would work to phase
out oil extraction entirely by 2045. … It was — like the
governor’s promise last year that the state would ban the sale
of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — a sweeping pronouncement
meant to show urgency in addressing climate change while the
state he leads struggles with many of its most dire effects.
But meeting those goals requires complex regulatory
maneuvering.
British journalist James Bartholomew is widely credited with
creating the phrase “virtue signaling” to describe positioning
oneself on the popular side of an issue without actually doing
anything about it. Politicians are particularly prone to
uttering words or making token efforts on difficult issues to
stave off criticism about their failure to act meaningfully.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is California’s champion virtue-signaler as
he faces a recall election later this year. … There’s no
better example than Newsom’s ever-shifting attitude toward
hydraulic fracturing to increase petroleum production. -Written by Dan Walters
Gold Rush communities celebrate their mining past but are
largely unaware of the lasting impacts of that era. For more
than 100 years public and private investors have purchased and
developed land for public uses seemingly unaware of the
presence and implications of the physical and chemical hazards
found on abandoned mine lands (AMLs). As a result, residents of
the Sierra Nevada’s Gold Country – the state’s headwaters – are
living on top of and surrounded by abandoned mines. The toxic
metals discharged by legacy mines continue to flow down river
and deposit into the San Francisco Bay Delta …
Poseidon Water won a key approval Thursday in its long quest to
build a seawater desalination plant on the Orange County
coastline. But the permit from the Santa Ana Regional Quality
Control Board does not ensure that the $1-billion ocean
desalter will rise on the grounds of an old power plant in
Huntington Beach. Poseidon still needs a construction permit
from the California Coastal Commission and, most critically, a
binding deal with a public agency to buy 50 million gallons a
day of purified seawater.
Disagreement over restoring the Ballona Wetlands still remains
high. Walter Lamb, president of the Ballona Wetlands Land
Trust, recently held a webinar to discuss why the current
restoration plans are inadequate. The Land Trust disagrees with
the assertions of organizations such as Friends of Ballona
Wetlands, as they aren’t supported by available facts. Lamb
based his talking points around Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive
order made on October 7, 2020, of protecting biodiversity and
an announcement phasing out fossil fuels from September 23,
2020.
Brown and Caldwell has been granted funding from The Water
Research Foundation (WRF) to study the fate of per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) through sewage sludge
incineration. PFAS is a group of human-made chemicals found in
a range of consumer and industrial products. Many PFAS are
resistant to grease, oil, water, and heat and used in many
applications, including stain- and water-resistant fabrics and
carpeting, cleaning products, paints, and fire-fighting foams.
The widespread use of PFAS and their ability to remain intact
in the environment over time can result in environmental
contamination.
The US Forest Service is taking public comments on a proposed
exploratory mining operation near the headwaters of Hot Creek
in the Eastern Sierra that could lead to harmful open pit
mining near this fishery. We need your help to stop it. This
project is problematic and disastrous in many ways: KORE
Mining wants to drill around Hot Creek for gold with no plan or
guarantee that gold exists in that area. Dredging,
excavation, and hydraulic mining will cause dramatic
stream degradation. The proposal for the exploratory operation
provides no information on how much water is needed, the depth
of drilling, or the negative impact on the wildlife and the
environment.
Hydraulic fracturing has occurred in California and nationwide
for decades; however, recent advancements in horizontal
drilling technologies and “well stimulation” techniques have
been instrumental in triggering an oil and gas boom, making the
U.S. the world’s largest producer of oil and gas
reserves. California produces more oil than all but three
other states (Texas, North Dakota and Alaska), and Kern County
is responsible for more than 70 percent of the state’s oil
production. Environmentalists and other members of the
public became concerned that the hydraulic fracturing process
may contaminate groundwater aquifers …
On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) unveiled a new
initiative to ban new and future permits for hydraulic fracking
beginning in 2024. The ban is part of California’s effort to
move away from oil extraction to source fuel, focusing on
developing renewable sources such as wind and solar. Fracking,
or hydraulic fracturing, is the sourcing of oil from deep
subterranean rocks, using a high-pressured water mixture
drilled into the earth that releases natural gas and oil.
The California State Water Resources Control Board Friday urged
people and their pets to avoid the water in the Salton Sea due
to a toxic algae outbreak. Officials said that patches of toxic
cyanobacteria have been discovered at numerous sites in the
sea, and a dog recently died after swimming in the water.
“Cyanobacteria harmful algal blooms can affect the skin, liver
and nervous system of people and of dogs and livestock,” the
state water board said. As a precaution, visitors were urged
not to swim in the water, or let their pets enter the water, or
eat algal mats scattered about the shore line.
For years it’s been relatively easy to measure pollution from,
say, a factory. At a factory, there might be just one pipe of
waste to measure. Easy enough. But what about a farm? We
might not typically think of farms as sources of pollution. But
they can have big impacts on the land over time. Unlike at a
factory, the waste filters slowly through soil across
the whole plot of land. This waste—excess nutrients from
fertilizer—can eventually reach groundwater.
Both proponents and opponents of the controversial Poseidon
Water desalination plant in Huntington Beach made their voices
heard Friday in an all-day virtual meeting that continued well
into the night. In the end, however, a decision by the Santa
Ana Regional Water Board on whether to permit Poseidon’s
$1.4-billion project will have to wait until at least [this]
week. Another meeting is scheduled for Thursday, with a third
meeting on May 13, as necessary.
Gov. Gavin Newsom directed the state Friday to stop issuing
permits for the oil extraction method known as fracking by
January 2024 and to draw up plans to end all fossil-fuel
drilling in California by 2045 — the most sweeping declaration
of its kind in the nation. … Eliminating all extraction would
have far-reaching consequences in California, the nation’s
seventh-largest producer of crude oil… [Fracking
has] long been a controversial method because of what
climate activists see as unacceptable dangers, including the
possibility that it can contaminate groundwater.
The Biden administration and Congress are stepping up efforts
to control the release and cleanup of poly and perfluoroalkyl
substances, or PFAS, in drinking water sources and elsewhere,
joining states that have expanded scrutiny of the chemicals,
which are used widely in manufacturing and are extremely
persistent in the environment. EPA’s current “advisory”
limit on PFAS in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion, but
some states have set or proposed required levels from 6.5 to 20
ppt, including California …
Questions have been raised over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
political maneuvers to push a controversial seawater
desalination plant proposed for the Huntington Beach
coastline. Critics say their concerns about the actual
need for the project and its potential environmental effects
remain. The company pushing it, Poseidon Water, remains
steadfast in its intent to build a plant that would suck in 100
million gallons of seawater daily and make half of it
drinkable….[The Regional Water Quality Control] board’s next
hearing is scheduled for [Friday] April 23. If the board
approves the permits, the project then goes for a final say
from the state Coastal Commission.
The Los Angeles River spans nearly 51 miles — running from
Canoga Park to Long Beach. [T]he river changed in the 1930s
after a series of catastrophic floods hit the region and the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channelized the entire length of
the river — encasing it in concrete — and turning it into a
flood control channel. … [Marissa Christiansen, president of
the Friends of the Los Angeles River, hopes] to bring the
river back to its roots. And, for Earth Week, FOLAR is planning
a huge cleanup. From June to July, the group is asking for help
cleaning up 100 tons of trash from the waterway.
A former member of a Marina water advocacy group filed a motion
with state regulators requesting a change in a water decision
under the pretense of still being a member of the group,
officials with the group say. In a letter emailed to the
California Public Utilities Commission on Monday, Liesbeth
Visscher, the chairwoman of Citizens for Just Water, and Lisa
Berkley, one of the early members of the advocacy group,
informed the commission that a request to change a CPUC
decision, called a Petition for Modification, filed by
Margaret-Anne Coppernoll under the guise of being a current
member of the group was never authorized by the organization.
In fact, Coppernoll hasn’t been a member of the group since
2017 …
Given a growing body of evidence that many chemicals in
plastics pose human health risks, Californians should welcome
recently-passed legislation putting the state on path to be the
first to track microplastics in tap water. Because
plastics are highly resistant to biodegradation, instead
fragmenting into ever smaller bits, eventually reaching micron
and nanometer dimensions (there are 25.4 million nanometers in
one inch)—they travel unseen in wind and waterways so that even
the most remote regions of the globe, like the Arctic
seabed and summit of Mount Everest, are contaminated
with microplastics. -Written by Sarah Mosko.
Thousands of wells that bring water to San Joaquin Valley homes
are at risk of drying up this summer, leaving families without
running water for drinking, cleaning and bathing. While no one
knows the extent of the threat from this second year of drought
conditions, Jonathan Nelson with the Community Water Center
says “the alarm bells are sounding.” Homes, farms and
entire communities that rely on shallow wells as their only
source of water are vulnerable to declining groundwater levels
from dry conditions and agricultural pumping.
Turlock residents impacted by nitrate groundwater contamination
will soon be supplied with safe drinking water as the state
seeks out more permanent solutions. The Central Valley
Regional Water Quality Control Board is leading the charge on a
program which will provide bottled water deliveries or
bottle-filling kiosks to six geographic zones deemed to have
the most-serious groundwater contamination issues. The
Turlock Subbasin has been identified as a Priority 1 zone by
the board and is one of the two largest zones included in the
program.
[A] study, titled “Freshwater Salinization Syndrome on a
Continental Scale,” found at least a third of U.S. streams and
rivers have become saltier over the last 25 years. On December
3, freshwater scientist John Olson of California State
University, Monterey Bay, conducted a modeling study that
validated these results, indicating that the future looks briny
as well. The study is titled “Predicting Combined Effects of
Land Use and Climate Change On River and Stream Salinity.”
Salinization levels will likely increase by at least 50% in
half of U.S. streams by 2100 if salt use persists at its
current pace, according to Olson’s party.
If the San Diego-Tijuana region were a human body, it’d have
the stomach flu: Bad stuff is coming out of both ends. But
instead of tackling the complicated source of the infection,
the border towns are fighting over where to put a Band-Aid. Six
miles from the U.S.-Mexico border lie three giant ponds full of
really old poo that regularly flush into the Pacific Ocean and
flow north along the Southern California coast during summer
tourist season.
In a potential solution to a two-decade-old problem, Sonoma
County’s water agency has commissioned a $156,000 study of a
potential pipeline carrying Occidental’s wastewater to a
treatment plant in neighboring Graton. A pipeline between
the two west county hamlets would resolve the dilemma dating
back to a 1997 state order banning Occidental from
discharging effluent into a tributary of
the Russian River. Since 2018, the Occidental wastewater
system — one of eight managed by Sonoma Water — has been
trucking raw sewage 18 miles through Graton to a county
treatment plant at the airport, an expensive program seen as a
stopgap measure.
After a year hiatus because of COVID-19, the H2O Hackathon
returned to San Joaquin County on Saturday
with middle school, high school and college students
tackling a virtual challenge to help solve California’s water
problems. … The challenge for this year’s event was to
protect the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary from harmful algal
blooms, bacteria that live in freshwater, estuarine and marine
environments that grow out of control and
produce toxic or harmful effects on people,
fish, shellfish, marine mammals and birds.
San Diegans will undoubtedly head to the ocean this weekend as
temperatures warm — but not in Imperial Beach. Sewage spilling
over from Tijuana forced officials on Friday to completely
close the city’s shoreline yet again. The move comes less than
a week after Baja officials said repairs were completed to a
broken water pump in the Tijuana River, which had allowed tens
of millions of gallons of sewage-tainted water to escape
capture starting in late March.
In what one board member called a hearing that isn’t going to
be topped, the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District
Hearing Board voted 4-0 to issue an order of abatement against
the Imperial Irrigation District over the Red Hill Bay project
site at the Salton Sea. … The Red Hill Bay project
is aimed at creating hundreds of acres of shallow marine
wetlands to provide aquatic bird habitat and reduce airborne
dust from playa exposed due to a shrinking Salton Sea.
General Waste Discharge Requirements for Discharges
from Irrigated Lands, simply known as Ag Order 4.0, will
officially begin to be implemented. Just prior to the deadline,
the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board approved
the measure Thursday evening. There has been unease among
farmers throughout the lengthy development process as to how
the rule will affect production.
For the past four years, a Canadian mining company has been in
Nevada County, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento,
collecting samples of what it suspects is one of the world’s
highest-grade underground gold deposits, potentially worth
billions. … The legacy of gold, while widely celebrated, is
not something that many in this area, now home to more retirees
and Bay Area transplants than men in hard hats and overalls,
want to revisit. … [T]he scars it left on the landscape
remain visible, and unwanted. Creeks still get mucked up
with iron and sulfuric acid from old mines. Soils contain
arsenic left over from drilling. …
California was the first U.S. state to legally recognize access
to safe, clean and affordable water as a human right. But
substantial parts of the state lack access to drinking water
that meets those criteria. A new study published by the
California State Water Board and supported by UCLA research
identifies a risk for failure among a significant portion of
the state’s small and medium-sized public water systems.
