The San Francisco Bay (Bay) drains water from 40 percent of
California. This includes flows originating from the Sierra
Nevada mountain range and the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers
that make their way down through Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta
through the Bay to the Pacific Ocean.
The Bay is the largest harbor on the U.S. Pacific Coast and
covers about 400 square miles with an average depth of 14 feet.
Its deepest point is 360 feet at the Golden Gate.
Every year, more than 67 million tons of cargo pass through the
Golden Gate. The Bay also supports commercial bait shrimp,
herring and Dungeness crab fisheries.
The Bay is a vital estuary and a key link in the Pacific Flyway,
and millions of waterfowl use the shallow portions of the bay as
a refuge each year.
The state will suffer dire long-term consequences if lawmakers
set aside concerns about rising seas to focus solely on
COVID-19, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office warned
Monday. Sea level rise will likely put at least $8 billion in
property underwater by 2050, and could affect tens of thousands
of jobs and billions in gross domestic product, according to
studies cited by the office. Sea level rise and related
flooding and erosion … also pose threats to water treatment
plants, roads, marinas, ports and railways.
When Brenda Goeden first started working on mud, silt, and sand
in the San Francisco Bay two decades ago, dredgers and
contractors couldn’t get rid of all the sediment they excavated
fast enough. … But today sediment is a hot commodity, as
restorationists and developers scramble to elevate salt marshes
and building sites before rising tides claim them. Now, a new
plan is in the works to optimize allocation of this critical
resource.
Saving our planet will require unprecedented focus and
investment from every sector of our society and all levels of
government — especially the federal government. Yet when it
comes to the San Francisco Bay — a national treasure and the
lifeblood of our region, producing over $370 billion in goods
and services annually and supporting more than 4 million jobs —
the federal government has been complicit in its deterioration.
The California coast has been largely spared from sea level
rise for decades, but the trend is now set to reverse, and the
coastline has already started disappearing due to land
subsidence.
As part of Valley Water’s mission to provide flood protection
for our communities, we are continuously preparing for the
possibility of flooding. We must regularly keep our streams and
creeks well maintained to handle the rainy season and protect
the many species of wildlife that live there.
As flames danced from one commercial building to another early
Tuesday, San Francisco firefighters were faced with a dilemma
as they battled the conflagration — they had run out of
hydrants.
State water regulators have issued a $285,000 penalty against
the Phillips 66 refinery for releasing millions of gallons of
industrial wastewater into San Pablo Bay early last year. The
penalty is the 11th issued in the last 17 years against the
Houston-based oil company. Its refinery sits on the bay shore
in Rodeo, just south of the Carquinez Strait and Vallejo.
The 49-year-old Callender grew up in San Jose and graduated
from Santa Teresa High School. He has been with the district
for 24 years and is the first African-American to head the
agency in its 90-year history. Rick Callender is well known for
his political connections and his role as the long time former
head of the local NAACP.
More than a year after planning efforts began, municipal
officials and advocates have determined that the Islais Creek
Adaption Strategy should include a comprehensive vision for how
the watershed can best serve nearby residents, workers and
businesses, as well as address ways to manage increasing flood
risks.
The work, which begins June 29, will complete critical
improvements to the North Shore Force Main (NSFM), a
pressurized sewer pipeline that transports wastewater in
northern San Francisco to the Southeast Treatment Plant in the
Bayview, which treats 80 percent of the City’s wastewater.
After an absence of many decades, Chinook salmon swim up the
Guadalupe River in San José most winters. The fish look for
places to lay eggs and often find them. If there’s enough water
left in the dry season, their offspring swim back down the
river in the spring to head out to sea. Surprisingly, given the
generally heated politics regarding fish in California, little
else is known about these salmon.
San Francisco’s water department, known for sourcing some of
the best supplies in the West, is building its first nature
center to commemorate its watersheds. The $27 million facility,
which broke ground this spring, is taking shape on city-owned
land in Alameda County, near the town of Sunol. The center is
designed to extend the tribute paid by the Sunol Water Temple,
a 110-year-old monument honoring local creeks…
After being docked for three months due to COVID-19
restrictions, the Department of Water Resources relaunched its
research vessel monitoring program, the Sentinel. It was the
first time since the 1970s that DWR didn’t have a monitoring
vessel taking field samples in the waters of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Estuaries.
As winter rains intensify with climate change, flooding will
worsen in Santa Clara County, the Bay Area’s largest by
population… The Coyote Creek system — 1,500 miles of
waterways that drain a 350-square-mile watershed — connects
half a dozen elements that are key to climate adaptation, from
reservoirs to creek confluences to the Bay shore.
The North Marin Water District will push off a planned water
rate hike and restructuring plan for Novato until fall in
response to economic hardships caused by the coronavirus
pandemic. After a nearly two-hour discussion, the district
board of directors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to delay changes set to
take effect July 1 to Oct. 1.
Driving on Highway 101 from the South Bay, up the Peninsula,
commuters zoom by nearly invisible infrastructure keeping the
highway and nearby communities dry. Beyond the highway, at the
edge of the San Francisco Bay, are levees and tide gates
protecting roads and neighborhoods against high tides and storm
flooding. Unless you visit the bay lands to walk the levee
trails, you might never know these important structures exist.
San Francisco Bay is the largest estuary on the West Coast, and
in recent years much effort has been put into restoring tidal
marsh habitat in the Bay. … FISHBIO was recently invited to
tour one such project in the North Bay, where we had the
opportunity to use our ARIS sonar camera to examine the fish
community in the restored area.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) Board of
Directors has selected Clifford C. Chan as the District’s next
general manager, succeeding Alexander R. Coate who served in
the role for nearly ten years. Chan, a 23-year employee of
EBMUD, has served most recently as the water utility’s Director
of Operations and Maintenance.
Water pollution in San Francisco Bay, California has reduced
significantly due to the reduction in traffic, according to a
recent study in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
The toxic particles emitted by cars, in fact, fall into the
surrounding waters, inlets and on the coast for miles.
The City of San Mateo’s Clean Water Program is progressing to
Phase 2 of the upgrade and expansion of its wastewater
treatment plant on Detroit Drive. … The wastewater treatment
plant upgrade is the largest component of the $1 billion,
decade-long Clean Water Program.
When most people think of sea otters, they picture these
charismatic creatures wrapped in kelp as they float on their
backs in the ocean. But this iconic image is only part of the
story. Sea otters also once abounded in the San Francisco Bay
and other coastal estuaries. Now, a team of sea otter experts
is raising the idea of bringing sea otters back to our bay.
The water keeps rising, shrinking the window for implementing
solutions. Sea-level rise already threatens the bay shore,
which, at about 500 miles, is half the length of the entire
California coast. The worst is yet to come: The Bay Area needs
to plan for a 2-foot rise by 2050 and up to 7 feet by 2100.
The nation’s environmental watchdog may investigate federal
enforcement of water policy in California after Democratic
lawmakers accused the Trump administration of “irregular”
interference targeting San Francisco, according to a letter
sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Though Nina Hawk cited personal considerations as the reason
for her hasty exit, Hawk had recently faced
conflict-of-interest charges related to her husband’s
employment by Valley Water’s largest customer, a contract
overseen by the division she headed.
The survey data indicated that shotgun wads, the plastic piece
inside a shotgun shell that separates the shot from the powder,
are one of the top ten most commonly found plastic items on all
surveyed beaches. These shotgun wads likely come from waterfowl
hunting, year-round shooting ranges, and target shooting fields
along the San Francisco Bay and Delta.
As part of an ongoing effort to protect San Francisco’s
homeless population from Covid-19 infection, the city’s Board
of Supervisors passed an emergency ordinance Tuesday requiring
more restrooms and hand-washing stations for those living on
the street.
Valley Water CEO Norma Camacho is set to retire July 10, but
with the coronavirus outbreak forcing so many aspects of
society online, the district’s board members have had to get a
little creative in conducting their search for a successor.
West County Wastewater and East Bay Municipal Utility District
announced a recycled water partnership that will preserve
valuable drinking water for the region and support West County
Wastewater’s ongoing mission of environmental stewardship and
protecting public health.
On a recent sunny, windy March day – just before COVID-19 sent
the [San Francisco] Bay Area into lockdown – Dave Halsing stood
on the trails at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve and
pointed out what used to be old industrial salt ponds. He noted
how they’re gradually being restored into a rich mosaic of
tidal wetlands and other ecosystems in the South Bay Salt Pond
Restoration Project.
One unintended side effect of the novel coronavirus crisis
could provide much-needed relief for the San Francisco Bay,
according to David Lewis, executive director of the
environmental group, Save the Bay. Lewis says that cars
contribute to pollution in the bay in ways that aren’t always
obvious, and the reduction in traffic from the COVID-19
shelter-in-place order could help.
Ecologist Jonathan Young steered his rowboat alongside a
rectangular container that was floating between two bright
orange buoys. He reached under a plastic mesh covering and
pulled out a large black and brown object the size of his fist
that looked a lot like a clam. “These are the underdogs of
water quality,” he said. “And also, unfortunately, on their way
to extinction.”
The whole San Francisco Bay ecosystem—that enormous estuary
with its maze of bays, rich delta, and associated rivers and
streams—is in the midst of an ecological calamity. Decades of
dam building and water extraction to quench the thirst of
California’s growing population and the needs of its mighty
agriculture industry have starved the state’s waterways, as
well as the bay itself, of crucial freshwater supplies. As a
result, the entire estuary is under enormous stress.
Led by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development
Commission, the report takes study findings from throughout the
region to demonstrate the shared impacts of sea level rise
ranging from 12 to 108 inches on housing, transportation
networks, critical environmental habitat, jobs and
disadvantaged communities.
A 48-inch increase in the bay’s water level in coming decades
could cause more than 100,000 Bay Area jobs to be relocated.
Nearly 30,000 lower-income residents might be displaced, and
68,000 acres of ecologically valuable shoreline habitat could
be lost. These are among the findings in the most detailed
study yet on how sea level rise could alter the Bay Area.
The effluent is hauled ashore on barges, hit with a dose of
disinfectant, then deposited into a huge East Bay Municipal
Utility District sewer main called the Alameda Interceptor.
From there, the material joins the underground river of
everything else that’s been flushed down local toilets and
flows to the agency’s wastewater treatment plant at the foot of
the Bay Bridge.
The advice is simple and universal: Washing your hands with
soap and water is one of the most effective ways to stop the
spread of the coronavirus. But for millions of people across
the country, that’s not simple at all: They lack running water
in their houses due to service shutoffs prompted by overdue
bills.
Highlighting the threat that coronavirus poses to basic public
health systems around California and the nation, a worker at
San Jose’s wastewater treatment plant — a facility that treats
the sewage from 1.5 million people in San Jose and seven other
cities — has tested positive for COVID-19. The employee is a
janitor working as part of a contract company.
The return of rainbow trout to Calaveras Creek marks a
milestone in an ongoing, multi-agency restora-tion of Alameda
Creek, which drains more than 600 square miles of the East Bay.
Much of the watershed is heavily developed and modified,
especially the northern reaches in and around Pleasanton and
Livermore.
For decades, the discussion over flood mitigation in Petaluma
has almost exclusively centered around storm surges and heavy
rainfall events. Now, months after the city made its landmark
climate emergency proclamation, attention is shifting to focus
more on sea level rise and scientific projections that offer a
glimpse into what could be a sodden future.
An employee at Silicon Valley’s largest water district has
tested positive for coronavirus, and at least eight other
employees, including CEO Norma Camacho, were in self-quarantine
as a result. … The employee is not involved with the
treatment or delivery of drinking water, and that service
continues uninterrupted, officials at the district, also known
as Valley Water, said Monday.
Stanford’s Newsha Ajami spoke with Sonia Tagare, host of
theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio,
during the Women in Data Science conference in Stanford,
California. They discussed how Ajami is working to bridge the
gap between science and policy in water management, building
solutions for water resilient cities, and changing the
traditional top-down water management model to a more
collaborative bottom-up approach.
Let’s be clear, the Redwood City salt ponds are simply the
wrong place for development. This is an open space tidal plain
that’s part of the Bay and was a thriving wetland for
centuries.
Spurred by a recent change in federal flood zone maps and a
desire to prepare for rising seas, Foster City is in the
process of raising its levees by 1 to 7 feet. Residents voted
in 2018 to tax themselves in order to pay for the estimated $90
million upgrade. When the project breaks ground later this
year, the city of 35,000 people will vault to the forefront of
urban adaptation in the Bay Area to rising waters.
The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project is the largest
tidal wetland restoration project on the West Coast. When
complete, the Project will restore 15,100 acres of industrial
salt ponds to a rich mosaic of tidal wetlands and other
habitats. The Project is intended to restore and enhance
wetlands in South San Francisco Bay while providing for flood
management, wildlife-oriented public access, and recreation.
As sea levels rise, so do the waters in the bay, which connects
to the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate. That relationship
between rising ocean levels and rising bay levels is well
known. What is less obvious is that groundwater levels are
rising as well, adding another variable to the region’s
equation of increasing flood risk.
An environmental watchdog group has filed lawsuits against the
cities of Mountain View and Sunnyvale alleging that the cities’
aging sewer systems are leaking bacteria from human feces into
stormwater drainage systems, contaminating local creeks and
ultimately the Bay.
The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission
has created an online mapping tool known as the Bay Shoreline
Flood Explorer that allows you to see the impacts of rising
oceans if precautions aren’t taken. You can see how much of the
shoreline is inundated at 12 to 144 inches of rise, as well as
the impacts of storm surges and exceptionally high tides that
can temporarily cause water levels to rise.
An investigation by NBC Bay Area has found more than two dozen
major construction projects worth billions of dollars – either
recently completed or still in development or – located in
areas along San Francisco Bay that scientific computer models
show will be flooded or surrounded by water by 2050 or earlier.
11,000 households in San Jose’s Willow Glen and Williams Road
neighborhoods received letters in the mail beginning in late
January from the San Jose Water Company warning that the wells
that provide them with drinking water tested positive for
elevated levels of per-flouro-octane sulfonic acid, known as
PFOS.
Two sprawling metropolitan areas offer a glimpse of the future.
One rich, one poor, they sit on opposite sides of the Pacific
Ocean: the San Francisco Bay Area (population 7 million) and
metropolitan Manila (almost 14 million). Their history, their
wealth, and the political and personal choices they make today
will shape how they fare as the water inevitably comes to their
doorsteps.
A Bay Area environmental group has sued the cities of Sunnyvale
and Mountain View, saying they are in violation of the federal
Clean Water Act for discharging raw sewage and polluted storm
water into creeks, sending bacteria pollution to levels more
than 50 times legal limits.
To adequately prepare for the impacts of sea level rise,
regional collaboration must be enhanced and a considerable
investment by the state is needed and soon, according to the
experts and officials who spoke at a hearing on sea level rise
Friday in Foster City.
The fate of Foster City and the rest of the Bay Area was front
and center last week as state lawmakers grappled with the many
threats California must confront as the ocean pushes farther
inland. A special committee of state lawmakers gathered — for
the second time in two months after years without meeting — to
reignite a much-needed discussion on how to better prepare
communities up and down the coast…
This week the California Regional Water Quality Control Board
and the Sonoma Valley County Sanitation District agreed to the
financial settlement over one of the district’s largest sewage
spills in recent memory.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission recently
purchased nearly 800 acres of verdant, rolling hills and
expansive bay area views east of Milpitas, a property known as
Wool Ranch, adding cohesion to its collection of protected
lands that surround the watershed feeding the Calaveras
Reservoir.
When the now-historic finger piers along San Francisco’s
Embarcadero were built, you can bet the builders never expected
that a century later, there would be engineering studies on how
to prepare the gaunt sheds for seas that could rise nearly 7
feet.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s top official in
California was abruptly removed from office Wednesday. No
reason has yet been given for Mike Stoker’s dismissal. …
Stoker’s tenure was mired in controversy. In 2018, a few months
after he was appointed regional administrator, a “hotline”
complaint was filed with the EPA’s inspector general regarding
his infrequent visits to the region’s main office, in San
Francisco.
Researchers at Virginia Institute of Marine Science issued
their annual report card which looked at tide-gauge records for
32 coastal locations, stretching from Maine to Alaska. … The
Bay Area was home to two of those stations: one in Alameda and
one in San Francisco, which both recorded a year-over-year
rise.
“A lot of cities not at risk of sea of level rise will
experience the effect of it,” says Bistra Dilkina, a computer
scientist at the University of Southern California, who led the
study. “This will require an adjustment in terms of the
[increased] demand on the cities’ infrastructure.”
In the South Bay, Santa Clara County’s 10 reservoirs combined
are at about two-thirds of their normal levels at this point in
the year. Lexington Reservoir, near Los Gatos is just half
full. Water managers say local groundwater supplies remain
strong so the reduced Sierra snowpack is not yet of critical
concern.
As an initiative funded through our Safe, Clean Water and
Natural Flood Protection program, the Almaden Lake project is
locally financed, and it is very important that our community’s
voice is heard.
Fracta combines artificial intelligence with machine learning
and measures everything from soil quality to population density
of an area, along with historical information on when pipes
were installed and what they are made of. The startup says it
has already won contracts in 23 states, including cities such
as San Francisco and Oakland, which have faced water shortages.
Doug Ridley and Sherry Shen figured their condominium in Santa
Clara would serve as a retirement nest egg, drawing enough
rental income so they could comfortably travel to the United
Kingdom and Asia visiting relatives. Instead, the last two
years have turned into a homeowner’s nightmare, thanks to an
old artesian well
Since the 19th century, close to 90 percent of the marshland
that historically ringed San Francisco Bay has been lost to
development. The effects include diminished wildlife habitat,
increased flood risk, degraded water quality, and far fewer
opportunities for nature-based recreation. In 2016, more than
two-thirds of voters across nine counties supported ballot
Measure AA, a $12 per year parcel tax over 20 years to provide
$500 million in restoration funding to reverse some of those
effects.
In an effort to aggressively combat the impacts of climate
change on low-lying areas of the Bay Area, the San Francisco
Regional Water Quality Control Board today proposed changes to
the region’s Water Quality Control Plan to better protect
shorelines from sea level rise, storm surges and flooding.
San Francisco homeowner Carmen Hermida was suspicious when she
got a postcard in the mail this month bearing the logo of the
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission from a private
company selling “protection programs” for water and sewer lines
on their property.
Last month, high tides in San Francisco Bay washed up onto the
shoreline of a large former pharmaceutical company in Richmond.
A few hours later, the outgoing tide pulled
contamination—including pesticides, toxic chemicals and
radioactive waste—off the industrial land and into the Bay.
Although water purified at the Silicon Valley Advanced
Purification Center is not currently part of Santa Clara
County’s supply of drinking water, the goal is to make that a
reality within the next decade or so.
Construction projects aimed at providing flood protection to
thousands of Mountain View properties is over budget and more
than a year behind schedule. The Santa Clara Valley Water
District’s board of directors signed off on another round of
funding in November for $4.7 million, aimed at offsetting cost
overruns that ate through most of the project’s contingency
fund.
Inside the dome on top of the Penitencia Water Treatment plant
in San Jose is the first permanent x-band weather radar system
in the Bay Area. “The radar system that you see up there is
collecting crucial data as we speak,” said Norma Camacho, CEO
of Valley Water.“ Camacho joined the San Francisco P.U.C.,
Sonoma Water and other partners in unveiling the new system,
which will improve weather forecasting across the region.
Slogging through thick mud may not be everybody’s idea of a
rewarding morning, but for a handful of dedicated volunteers,
it meant helping Mother Nature thrive. The Solano Land Trust’s
“Citizen Science Volunteer” program was at Rush Ranch Friday to
plant native plants around an area that has undergone major
tidal marsh restoration project…
San Francisco city officials and employees will no longer be
sipping bottled water, but instead tap water provided by the
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission under a new pilot
program announced Thursday. The program aims to install new
reusable five-gallon containers at nine departments with
offices within City Hall, filled with tap water from the city’s
water system.
When most think of the possible impacts of sea level rise, they
think of coastal flooding and the growing risks to shore-based
infrastructure — but there’s another sea level rise-related
threat that is much less talked about. As sea level rises, so
too will groundwater levels in coastal aquifers, and some
recent studies have concluded that in some coastal areas, as
much or more land could flood as a result of rising groundwater
tables than will flood directly from rising tides.
King tides, a naturally occurring phenomenon that received a
common name only a decade ago, are heading to California
shorelines this weekend — and with them, a series of public
events intended to show people the dangers posed by sea level
rise.
Hailing it as a “historic” agreement, Santa Clara County’s
primary water supplier, Valley Water, enthusiastically approved
on Dec. 10 a 76-year deal with Palo and Mountain View to
construct a water purification plant in the Baylands with the
intent of greatly expanding use of recycled water.
The low-lying island, as well as neighboring Yerba Buena
island, are also the site of a multibillion-dollar neighborhood
development. The project calls for 8,000 new homes and condos
that could house more than 20,000 people, 500 new hotel rooms,
and over 550,000 square feet of commercial space. But how will
climate change affect these plans?
The House has torpedoed a proposal to allow limited boating on
Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. Critics
feared the plan could introduce contaminants to the reservoir
that supplies famously pure drinking water for 2.7 million
people in the Bay Area. Boating on its waters has been banned
for nearly a century.
Those who are the most politically correct among those that
lecture the rest of the state from their perches atop the 40
plus hills of San Francisco about the environmental
shortcomings of the rest of California should take a long hard
look in the mirror. They thrive on some of the original — and
most hideous — environmental sins ever committed in the Golden
State.
The company, Watsonville-based Monterey Mushrooms Inc., was
accused of polluting a South Bay creek with manure for years,
despite orders and warnings dating back to the 1980s. The
judgment, the largest for a water pollution lawsuit in county
history, will be used in part to restore the damaged Fisher
Creek…
California’s coastal waters are acidifying twice as fast as the
rest of the oceans, a study published Monday shows. And some of
California’s most important seafood — including the spiny
lobster, the market squid and the Dungeness crab — are becoming
increasingly vulnerable.
During its 10 years, the Ellis Wastewater Treatment Facility
has reshaped itself to take in waste produced by a rapidly
changing city, factoring in an increased population and new
industries like large-scale beer production. Recently-completed
projects costing roughly $9 million have changed the face of
the wastewater facility by expanding treatment capacity,
tackling hard-to-process industry waste and building a system
that will provide biofuel to city vehicles.
The top Democratic and Republican leaders in the House are
pushing for their own home-state projects in this year’s final
spending bills — a spectacular park overlooking San Francisco
Bay and a dam across the largest reservoir in California — but
without agreement from each other in the negotiations’ final
days.
Urban flooding is increasing in the Bay Area for four main
reasons: California’s naturally variable precipitation
patterns, climate change increasing precipitation extremes,
population growth, and aging and insufficient infrastructure.
Homeless volunteers collect so much trash in the Russian River
watershed — 150,000 pounds as of October this year — that the
state Water Resources Control Board sees it as a model for the
rest of California.
The City Council will certify the Water Quality and Flood
Protection Initiative at its Dec. 17 meeting after Alameda
property owners voted in favor of a fee hike. … The increased
fee will fund repairs and new pump stations, which is vital to
combat potential flooding as sea levels rise; improve lagoon
systems, enhance street sweeping procedures and maintain and
install new trash capture devices. These devices are key to
keeping the shoreline free of trash and other debris.
As land around the Bay was developed, creeks were rerouted
underground through pipes called culverts for flood protection.
But in some spots, these hidden waterways can be brought back
up to the surface to provide habitat for wildlife and respite
for people. The Bay Area is a national leader in this type of
restoration, which is aptly called daylighting. And now we’re
undertaking our most ambitious such project yet.
Studies suggest that in the US alone, the introduction of
invasive mollusks into local ecosystems costs more that USD 6
billion per year. In an attempt to respond to this problem, the
state of California (which is perhaps one of America’s most
environmentally conscious states) has introduced the ‘Marine
Invasive Species Act’.
Over the past three decades, a shoreline lagoon and a historic,
natural lake have been restored. Hundreds of thousands of
native plants — some of them endangered — have been planted.
Indigenous wildlife has returned, and an ancient creek
ecosystem was freed from underground pipes, exposing hidden
streams and ponds that once quenched the thirst of American
Indians.
A group of California Democrats on Monday pressed the EPA’s
internal watchdog to investigate whether the agency has
retaliated against their state for political reasons, including
by threatening to withhold federal funds for multiple
transportation projects.
The Environmental Protection Agency fanned the flames of an
ongoing dispute with San Francisco on Thursday, reaffirming its
stance that the city’s water agency improperly discharges
wastewater into the ocean. In a letter to the San Francisco
Public Utilities Commission, EPA officials reiterated their
assessment that the city was out of step with its wastewater
discharge permit, which regulates water quality standards.
With drone photography, “we can track all of the trash in a
creek, river, or stream, examine how it’s distributed, and then
apply machine-learning algorithms to analyze those images as
often as we want,” says Tony Hale, program director for
environmental informatics at the nonprofit San Francisco
Estuary Institute. The drone research is part of a new project
by SFEI and its sister organization Southern California Coastal
Water Research Project, through funding from the Ocean
Protection Council…
San Francisco Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously declared a
State of Urgency, calling on the city to expand its Emergency
Firefighting Water System to ensure the entire city is
protected in the event of a major earthquake or fire.
Currently, the water system only covers about one third of the
city, leaving neighborhoods in the city’s west and south sides
vulnerable.
Lew Stringer is leading a tour of the massive renovation
of the entire watershed on the Presidio’s waterfront. The
next string of pearls to be unearthed is Quartermaster Reach, a
7-acre salt marsh on the south side of Mason Street. … The
$118 million park project, opening in late Spring of 2020, is
part of a wetlands restoration movement across the Bay Area
that will benefit all species – including us – facing the
uncertain future of climate change.
The start of work on the restoration of the Bel Marin Keys
wetlands is another example of efforts to bring back the miles
of wetlands that, over the past century, have been lost to
development, other encroachments and years of sedimentation
buildup.
State transportation crews are wrapping up paving and drainage
improvement work along Highway 37 ahead of winter rains in an
attempt to avert flooding, which in two of the past three years
led to multiday closures of the critical North Bay commuter
artery.
Seeking to fortify the city against future droughts, the Palo
Alto City Council endorsed on Monday a long-term agreement with
Santa Clara Valley Water District and Mountain View to build a
salt-removal plant in the Baylands and then transfer the
treated wastewater south.
The board charged with overseeing the water quality in much of
the San Francisco Bay Area unanimously approved a plan
requiring local businesses, residents and government agencies
to reduce the amount of fecal bacteria they put into the
Petaluma River watershed, including San Antonio Creek.
Even today, with all we know about the challenges posed by
climate change and sea-level rise, some cities seem determined
to continue to fill and develop their shorelines. One of the
most flagrant examples is taking place in the city of Newark…
On Thursday, the East Bay city of Newark will consider
approving 469 single family homes and 2,739 parking spaces at
the edge of the San Francisco Bay shoreline, on a 430-acre
parcel where conservation groups and state and federal agencies
have for decades hoped to restore wetlands. … The proposal
illustrates one way even straightforward and widely agreed-upon
regional climate solutions can fall apart at the local level…
Instead of pushing efforts to restore wetlands and wildlife
habitat to help our region become more climate resilient,
developers and city leaders are pushing to advance plans to
fill in Newark’s Bay shoreline. The proposed “Sanctuary West
Residential Project,” would build 469 luxury units along the
City of Newark’s shoreline on a 559-acre site…
While breaking this levee would seem like a catastrophe, state
and federal agencies intend to do just that. The purpose is not
to unleash some biblical, punishing flood, but rather to allow
nature to reclaim nearly 1,600 acres of wetland habitat.
A state agency cannot make the federal government dredge two
vital San Francisco Bay channels more frequently, a federal
judge ruled Monday, despite arguments that less dredging could
increase the risk of a container ship accident or oil spill.
In order to take care of environmental concerns and maintain
our facilities in a safe and effective manner, we have
identified about 900 encroachments on public lands managed by
Valley Water that require resolution. … Valley Water has
implemented a new process to resolve these encroachments by
working with our community.
Working with the East Bay Regional Park District,
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan has secured $4 million in
state funding to daylight and restore an over 2,000-foot
culverted section of creek in the upper San Leandro watershed.
The health of North America’s largest estuary, the San
Francisco Estuary, is showing some signs of improvement, but
much of the historic damage caused to the massive watershed has
either not improved or worsened, according to a new report.
The Trump Administration’s EPA takeover, with its race to the
bottom rollbacks of the environmental and public health
protections that Americans have relied upon for decades, is
low; so low that even some of the industries the Administration
seeks to support are pushing back. But what the Trump
Administration has been up to lately in California–
weaponizing the Clean Water Act to serve a political
vendetta…well, can it get any lower than that?
Alameda property owners are being asked whether they are
willing to pay more to maintain and upgrade the city’s aging
stormwater system. … The reason? The city’s stormwater fund
is running a $1 million annual deficit and the system needs
about $30 million in upgrades, including at its pipe stations,
some of which date to the 1940s…
When the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Andrew
Wheeler, accused California of allowing “piles of human feces”
on city streets to contaminate sewer systems … the
accusations, contained in a Sept. 26 oversight letter, had been
developed without the knowledge of the California-based staff,
which would normally issue such notices. Instead, it was put
together by a small group of political appointees in Washington
assigned specifically to target California, according to three
current E.P.A. officials.
The Alameda County Water District is considering shelling out
$72 million for a fourth-generation, 50,500-acre cattle ranch —
touted as the largest potential land sale in the state — to
preserve water quality, officials say. … The N3 Cattle Co.
ranch is roughly the size of Fremont. It’s located east of
Fremont, Milpitas and San Jose, south of Livermore, and
stretches into parts of Alameda, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and
Stanislaus counties.
A tiny fiberglass island is bobbing up and down in the San
Francisco Bay right now. From far away, it looks like a beluga
whale poking through the water. Up close, it looks like a
misshapen raft. In reality, it’s a buoyant structure known as
the “Float Lab,” which is designed to foster a floating
ecosystem.
Concerned that rising waves will flood runways and buildings in
the coming years, officials at San Francisco International
Airport are moving ahead with a $587 million plan to build a
major new sea wall around the entire airport.
The loss of oyster reefs in the bay has affected its entire
ecosystem. Oysters are natural filter feeders, filtering out
small sediments and contaminants in the water. The unclean
water has made it difficult for underwater grass to grow,
reducing habitats for fish. The California Shellfish Initiative
… works to advance local restoration plans for the bay,
partnering with the California Coastal Conservancy to rebuild
its native oyster reefs and wetlands.
Areas under Clean Water Act, or CWA, jurisdiction are not
prohibited from being filled for development, but if developed,
the act does require federal oversight, permitting and full
mitigation for any loss of wetlands and wildlife habitat.
Removing CWA protections would likely make the 1,400-acre salt
pond site more profitable to develop, and thus more difficult
to purchase for tidal marsh restoration.
On a biological scale, 20 years is like the blink of an eye —
if not faster. But for San Francisco marine biology
researchers, 20 years is priceless in what it can tell about
the changing nature of the bay’s wildlife, especially in the
face of a changing climate.
California’s senators have asked the Environmental Protection
Agency’s watchdog to investigate whether the agency abused its
enforcement powers when it accused San Francisco of improperly
dumping waste into the ocean.
Chronicle reporter Ryan Kost spent four days along the bay. He
didn’t have a plan, but he had a map showing future flood zones
— and a desire to know what would be lost under all the blue.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of
violation to San Francisco on Wednesday, accusing the city of
improperly discharging waste into the ocean and bay and
following through on President Trump’s recent pledge to cite
San Francisco for water pollution.
To optimize mitigation for impacts to wetlands, other
wildlands, and at-risk species, the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife is developing a program called the Regional
Conservation Investment Strategy (RCIS). … Each RCIS
identifies top conservation needs, such as habitat for
sensitive species…
A new “green infrastructure” project under construction along
the western side of the block is designed to slow down that
process by detoxing the water through soil and plants and
pumping a purified product back out to the creek. The project,
a whopping seven years in the making, is part of a $4 million,
four-city effort…
Jaime Jahncke, a marine biologist with Point Blue Conservation
Science, which is headquartered in Petaluma, said the concern
is that another long-lasting warm water episode could do
serious harm to an already fragile ecosystem. “We’re going into
a blob and we don’t know what’s happening next,” said
Jahncke…
Now that the San Francisco Giants’ underwhelming season is
over, the team has big off-season plans — at least in terms of
real estate. Construction should begin this winter on the first
phase of the remake of the team’s parking lot south of McCovey
Cove along Third Street, including a 5-acre waterfront park
with tide pools open to waders and a bayside lawn capable of
holding 5,000 people.
In an effort to widen the use of a nearly limitless — but
expensive — source of water for California and other places
worldwide that are prone to shortages, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory has been selected to lead a $100 million
project aimed at bringing down the cost of desalination.
If the battle against climate change has a front line, the
shore of San Francisco Bay might be it. At the County Parks
Marina in Alviso, trucks rolled in like an armored column,
delivering tons of dirt that will eventually be used to build a
4-mile-long sea wall.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Bay Area
conservation groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency
Tuesday for failing to protect Redwood City’s salt ponds under
the Clean Water Act, a decision they say will harm the San
Francisco Bay ecosystem.
Santa Clara County has 23 active Superfund sites, more than any
other county in the United States. … The sites came to the
attention of the EPA after groundwater testing in the area
revealed that toxic chemicals—notably, a solvent called
trichloroethylene—were present, possibly from leaking pipes or
underground storage tanks.
In an effort to open the spigot on recycled water in the
region, Palo Alto and Santa Clara Valley Water are exploring a
deal that would send the city’s wastewater to a treatment plant
elsewhere in the county, where it would be treated, transformed
into potable water and potentially resold to the city for its
residents and businesses.
Two bills to ban smoking at all state beaches — with a $25 fine
for violators — have reached Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk and await
his signature. Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed similar bills
three times, saying people should be allowed to smoke outdoors
in parks. But this year there’s a new governor.
Claims by President Donald Trump on Wednesday that discarded
drug needles in San Francisco are making their way through the
city’s sewage system and into San Francisco Bay and the Pacific
Ocean were widely blasted the following day by experts who say
he has no idea what he’s talking about.
It’s a big feat to get 65,000 people to do anything, let alone
spend three hours picking up soiled trash. Yet, state officials
are expecting around that number to turn out Saturday for the
35th annual Coastal Cleanup Day.
“There’s tremendous pollution being put into the ocean because
they’re going through what’s called the storm sewer that’s for
rainwater,” Trump said. “And we have tremendous things that we
don’t have to discuss pouring into the ocean. You know there
are needles, there are other things.”
Dr. Jim Cloern is a recently retired senior scientist emeritus
at the US Geological Survey who has spent his career learning
how estuaries respond to human activities and variability of
the climate system. In this brown bag seminar, Dr. Cloern gives
specific examples of how local, regional, and global scale
processes affect the San Francisco Bay and Delta.
An intensifying marine heat wave in the northeastern Pacific
Ocean has triggered government warnings about harm to salmon
and other fisheries along the U.S. West Coast, and it’s raising
concerns about hurricane risks to the Hawaiian islands and
wildfire risks in California.
Valley Water is looking for volunteers to aid with cleaning up
local waterways in Santa Clara County. … In addition to
contaminating water, and harming birds and wildlife, waste and
debris can block our creeks potentially causing flooding,
according to Valley Water.
For San Franciscans … there are new worries for the city.
Fires now burn more regularly across the Sierra Nevada as well
as coastal mountain ranges. The flames may ruin plans for
weekend getaways to Yosemite or deliver noxious smoke to the
Bay Area. And locals may start to reach for air masks as
dangerously smoky days become more common.
There’s a lot to like about the Bay Area’s efforts to prepare
for sea level rise: the collaborative efforts, the detailed
studies and, laudably, the voters who are willing to tax
themselves with an eye to future needs. But if the long-term
threat is as grim as scientific projections indicate, local
experts say the region needs to respond with increased urgency
— an urgency that is at odds with the Bay Area’s often
cumbersome decision-making processes.
In 2015, the Board of Supervisors gave initial approval to a
$58 million shoreline protection program to protect SFO from
sea-level rise. But on Wednesday, the board’s Budget and
Finance Committee approved an updated program that will now
cost $587.1 million. City officials attributed the increase to
new sea-level rise estimates and guidelines issued by the State
of California…
For perhaps the first time in 80 years the California State
Lands Commission … faced a decision this summer between
competing ideas for the same parcel. The commission staff
announced at the end of August that it will enter negotiations
to lease a shoreline parcel for a park in Burlingame,
potentially shaping the way the lands commission considers sea
level rise in its decision-making, and the way the Bay
shoreline is developed in the future.
While researching the impacts of industrial site restoration on
aquatic ecosystems in the Coyote Creek watershed, a major
tributary in the southern San Francisco Estuary, scientists
with the University of California, Davis, observed surprisingly
high densities of reproductive adult smelt in the marshlands,
which were not previously known to be heavily exploited by the
species.
California’s Great America announced it will open South Bay
Shores in summer 2020. The expanded space will include three
new water attractions, more food locations, cabanas and a sandy
beach area.
A major oil spill in one of the nation’s most economically
important waterways could become more likely unless a plan to
dredge two San Francisco Bay channels less frequently is
reconsidered, lawyers for the state of California and a
conservation group argued in court Wednesday.
Known to locals as “Long Beach,” it’s part of the San Leandro
Shoreline Marshlands and once stretched at least 23 miles. The
most recent official estimate done back in 2008 put the beach
at seven miles amid development and rising sea levels.
South County gets most of its water from groundwater, so this
project, part of the Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood
Protection Program that was overwhelmingly approved by voters
in 2012, is vital to ensuring a reliable water supply for the
region.
Restoration of nearly 1,600 acres of wetlands near Bel Marin
Keys is set to begin this year after the approval of $20
million in funding on Thursday. The state Coastal Conservancy
voted unanimously during its meeting in Sausalito on Thursday
to allocate the money to begin the first phase of
construction…
More than 60 elected officials and environmental and community
groups throughout the Bay Area are urging Redwood City
officials to reject proposals to develop the Cargill salt ponds
and rather have them restored as wetlands.
Lake Temescal in Upper Rockridge sits atop the Hayward Fault,
which passes underneath the right abutment of the manmade
lake’s aged dam. Experts agree that creep has been observed
near Lake Temescal Dam, but disagree on whether this indicates
the area is at risk of suffering major damage during a strong
quake.
Newly released documents shed light on why a sewage processing
agency, Silicon Valley Clean Water, paid its general manager
$875,000 as part of a severance agreement, and it appears a big
part of that was equity the agency gave him in a $4.5 million,
six-bedroom home in the hills overlooking Redwood City.
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, the editor in chief of Estuary Magazine
and long-time Bay Area science writer, talks about the
resiliency of the largest estuary on the West Coast, the
challenges facing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, and the
potential impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on the
San Francisco Bay.
California Water Service crews are at work in Los Altos’ Rancho
neighborhood and the surrounding areas, installing a new water
pipeline aimed at strengthening infrastructure reliability and
resiliency for customers and enhancing fire protection in the
area for first responders.
In the past, California city planners have been largely
reactive, reconstructing boardwalks lashed by winter storms.
Now, with the long-term outlook for the coast coming into
focus, the California Coastal Commission is urging communities
from San Diego to Humboldt counties to revise their local
coastal programs to take comprehensive adaptive approaches…
There is hard reality that can’t be dodged in pursuing a dreamy
idea that’s existed as long as the 100-year old water and power
system. Pulling the plug on the watery expanse to expose the
original valley is much more complicated than a sunny study
commissioned by an anti-dam environmental group hoping to pump
up its cause.
Environmentalists have raised concerns about the project’s
costs, and the fact that it would submerge 1,245 acres of oak
woodlands… But the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a San
Jose government agency that provides water to 1.9 million
Silicon Valley residents, says the reservoir is needed to store
more water as insurance against California’s next drought.
Marin health officials have reopened beaches along Tiburon’s
shoreline after recent water quality tests showed low levels of
bacteria, but the source of contamination that shut those
beaches down for more than two months remains elusive. “I’m
just as confused as I was before,” said Bill Johnson of the San
Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board…
There was a glint in Michael Boland’s eyes as he watched cars
zooming along the Presidio Parkway over an ugly panorama of
broken asphalt, weeds and construction debris behind a
chain-link fence next to Crissy Field. The chief of park
development and visitor engagement for the Presidio Trust was
excited as he envisioned what the vacant lot was about to
become — a picturesque lagoon surrounded by walking trails,
vivid greenery and a spectacular view.
With targeted autism/neurodiversity employment programs
emerging regularly now around the country, a small employment
program by a water utility in California would normally not
draw attention. However, this employment program of the San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC), has several
distinctive features.
Contractors are busy digging, stockpiling and hauling off an
average of 40 truckloads of contaminated soil a day from the
site of a former wastewater treatment plant at Larkspur
Landing. About 64,000 tons of the mixed soil and demolition
debris, which contains trace amounts of polychlorinated
biphenyls, or PCBs, will be sent to a municipal landfill, while
another 2,600 tons, will be shipped to a hazardous waste
landfill.
To reduce flooding on roads near Novato Creek, a Marin County
flood control agency and a local environmental group are
partnering to upgrade flood control equipment and improve
wetlands in the Simmons Slough basin.
Scientists, water quality experts and lawmakers are learning
more about what microplastics are, the extent of contamination
and how to keep them out of the environment. California aims to
have the beginnings of a control plan in place by 2021.
Blasted by sun and beaten by waves,
plastic bottles and bags shed fibers and tiny flecks of
microplastic debris that litter the San Francisco Bay where they
can choke the marine life that inadvertently consumes it.
When the population collapses, like it did between 2013 to
2016, the effects ripple across the ecosystem. Brown pelicans
struggled to reproduce and those that did abandoned their
chicks. Thousands of sea lion pups were found malnourished and
dehydrated on California’s beaches. These effects may be
exacerbated by humans, especially when high fishing rates
remain when stocks are in decline. California anchovies are
almost exclusively sold abroad as food for fish farms and bait
for tuna.
Fifty feet below the platform of the Powell Street BART Station
sits the starting point for one of the largest water recycling
projects in San Francisco — one that’s transforming dirty
groundwater into clean steam heat for hundreds of downtown
buildings. In the process, it’s saving tens of millions of
gallons of drinking water annually.
The Trump Administration last year proposed to combine the
responsibilities of both the NMFS and the USFWS under one
federal roof. This would promote more efficient, effective, and
coordinated management of all ESA responsibilities for
anadromous and freshwater fish in Western watersheds, from the
highest reaches of our headwaters to the Pacific Ocean.
The latest update of the California Water Plan was released
this past week. You may not have heard the news. You may not
even know there is a California Water Plan. And that’s just
fine, because it doesn’t mean a darn thing.
While the local sewerage agencies followed state and federal
law in reporting spills to governmental agencies, the public
wouldn’t necessarily know much about them. In this case, it has
taken Heal the Bay, a statewide environmental organization, to
dig them out of bureaucracies’ files.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District is replacing an aged
and faulty 3,000-foot water pipeline that would most likely
rupture during a major earthquake and cut off water service to
residents for weeks, if not months. The current pipeline has
averaged a major break each year for the last 30 years,
with increasing regularity, as this land has continued to shake
and shift.
Santa Clara Valley Water District (Valley Water) has resumed
pre-construction activities in Alviso, California, delivering
on a long-made promise to protect shoreline communities in
Santa Clara County from devastating flooding.
Utilities, including several in the Bay Area, simply don’t have
the backup power to replace the electricity that Pacific Gas
and Electric Co. normally provides for water delivery and
sewage treatment. The agencies are trying to make their
operations more energy efficient and adding alternative power
sources in case the cord is cut, but it may not be enough.
Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, Cowell Beach in Santa Cruz, Keller
Beach in Richmond and Aquatic Park in San Mateo were announced
as four of the top 10 most polluted in the state, referred to
as “beach bummers.”
Before the threat of rising seas was widely understood,
California created an agency to protect its famous beaches from
overdevelopment. Now the state Coastal Commission is pouring
resources into a war against the effects of climate change, and
it could lead toward the removal of oceanfront homes.
A Pleasanton company has an unusual idea to cool data storage
machines that they say uses a fraction of the energy and cuts
greenhouse gasses. But local environmentalists are against the
plan because of the possible impact it could have on San
Francisco Bay.
An investigation into the Bay Conservation and Development
Commission found mismanagement and disorganization so rampant
that the once-celebrated watchdog agency allegedly neglected
its primary responsibility — to protect San Francisco Bay. A
state audit of the regulatory agency known as the BCDC
describes slow and inefficient enforcement, a huge backlog of
cases and an inability to perform key duties.
While Belvedere officials consider a series of flood control
projects that could cost up to $27.1 million, the city has
appointed a new advisory committee that represents some of the
hillside homeowners who say that money shouldn’t come out of
their pockets. … An engineering consultant has designed
several iterations of the projects, which are meant to
safeguard the community from the forthcoming effects of
sea-level rise.
Coastal communities should not rule out a sea-level rise in
excess of 6.5 feet, according to the study published this week
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. …
Should this worst-case scenario come to pass, good portions of
cities like New York City and Miami on the East Coast and Los
Angeles and San Francisco on the West Coast would be underwater
by 2100.
The combination of droughts and floods has given rise to a
process known as saltwater intrusion — what San Jose Mayor Sam
Liccardo refers to as his city’s greatest climate threat. …
In coastal regions like San Jose, overpumping allows seawater
to seep into the city’s aquifers, exposing local residents to
excess sodium in their drinking water. The problem is
compounded by sea level rise, which pushes seawater inland
toward the city’s filtration system.
A data storage company wants to siphon water from the bay to
cool its equipment, a process it says is greener and more
sustainable than using traditional air cooling. But the idea is
not winning over some environmentalists, because the water will
warm slightly by the time it’s returned to the bay and they say
that could potentially damage marine wildlife.
According to a new study by Audubon California, the illegal
mooring of private boats has caused significant harm to the
eelgrass bed in that bay, with 25 to 41 percent of the seafloor
habitat suffering damage. … The number of boats moored in
Richardson Bay, known as “anchor-outs,” has increased from
about 90 boats in the early 2000s to as many as 240 in 2016.
The Mountain View City Council approved the water district’s
18-foot-deep basin project in 2013 in exchange for the park
upgrades. Designed to accommodate a 100-year flood, the
McKelvey Park basin is one of two basin projects of the larger
Permanente Creek Flood Protection Project, which water district
officials claim will provide natural flood protection for
approximately 2,200 properties in Mountain View and Los Altos.
Tens of thousands of people flooded into San Francisco in the
1850s looking for gold, but there wasn’t nearly enough drinking
water to quench the thirst of the boomtown. So speculators
looked south of the city to San Mateo County in hopes of
delivering clean water to San Francisco and big money to their
own pockets. And they weren’t going to let anything get in
their way.
The commission, created in 1965 and comprised of 27 members
appointed primarily by state and local officials, is supposed
to protect the environmental health of the bay. If they won’t
take their job seriously, Gov. Gavin Newsom, legislative
leaders and local officials should replace them with people up
to the task.
On a former tidal marsh in Corte Madera that’s blanketed with
bay mud and overgrown with invasive grasses, Golden Gate Bridge
officials are planning a $2 million restoration project that
would bolster habitat for an endangered bird species displaced
by the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. The district has released the
results of an environmental study of the proposed project and
is accepting comments on the report until May 26.
The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission
has “neglected its mission” to protect the bay and surrounding
wetlands, the California state auditor reported Tuesday. The
commission, which issues permits for activities like boating,
dredging and dumping, has a backlog of 230 open enforcement
cases, some decades old.
The water that irrigates Santa Clara Valley’s last farms comes
dirt cheap for growers who pump it out of the ground. They pay
just a fraction — 6 percent — of the amount residents and
businesses in the valley must pony up for their well water. The
rest of the cost for farmers’ water is subsidized, mostly from
revenue the Santa Clara Valley Water District receives through
property taxes.
Once one of most extensive wetland areas in North America, the
edges of the San Francisco Bay have become covered with farms,
industry, and urban areas, squeezing out the marches and their
animal and plant occupants. But at the lower end of the Napa
River, a remarkable effort is underway to undo a century and
half of damage to the once-thriving marshes.
For the third time in the last five years, Phillips 66 plans to
pay to settle accusations that its Rodeo refinery released
chlorine into San Pablo Bay. State water regulators announced
Wednesday that the Houston-based company will pay $80,000 for
violating chlorine limits in water it released into the bay
more than a dozen times over a five-month period last year.
There’s only one San Francisco Bay. But the Bay Area is made up
of nine counties and 101 cities, each with its own politics,
local rules and shorelines, differences that can make it
complicated to figure out how to protect billions of dollars of
highways, airports, sewage treatment plants, homes and offices
from the rising seas, surging tides and extreme storms climate
change is expected to bring in the years ahead. A new report
released Thursday aims to make that gargantuan challenge a
little easier.
While oysters and sea grasses may not immediately stand out as
defenders against sea level rise, a five-year test run using
oyster reefs and eelgrass beds in the waters off of San Rafael
has shown promising results. … Marshlands, reefs and other
natural habitats have proven to buffer shorelines from erosion
and powerful waves, but human development over the past two
centuries has resulted in a substantial loss of these natural
defenses.
If it doesn’t rain another drop for the rest of this “winter,”
we got exactly 0.13 inches more than an ordinary season,
putting 2018-19 at almost exactly the historical average.
The district is proposing to raise rates by about 4 percent
annually over the next four years and to impose a new annual
capital maintenance fee. The fee, which would be based on
customers’ meter size, would switch the district from borrowing
money to a cash-based system for funding repairs and
replacement of pipes, pumps, water tanks and treatment plants.
Unusually high concentrations of carbon dioxide have been
blowing out to sea from Bay Area cities and agricultural areas,
raising concerns that the previously unknown infusions could
increase ocean acidity faster than climate change experts have
predicted, Monterey Bay scientists said this week.
By the 1930s, the Leslie Salt Company had consolidated over a
dozen small producers into the world’s largest industrial salt
production company, and half of the South Bay’s extensive
marshes, whose ducks and salmon once far outnumbered humans,
were gone. Now, the south San Francisco bay shoreline’s next
mammoth transformation is well underway: a 50-year project to
return the salt ponds back to the bay, restoring them once
again into tidal marsh for the first time in 150 years.
In just the past week, water about an inch deep has popped up
out of nowhere in both the northbound and the southbound lanes
just south of the 880 interchange. … Underground aquifers are
full from all the recent rain and pressure is now forcing water
to bubble up in weak spots in the surface.
Expected to temporarily hold excess sewer flows during storms,
a project to build an underground flow equalization system
underneath the San Mateo County Event Center parking lot is one
of several components of San Mateo’s Clean Water Program. …
But for many residents … pile driving and the installation of
dewatering wells included in the project’s construction plans
drew concerns about noise, the structural integrity of nearby
homes and the project’s impact on neighbors’ quality of life.
Climate change is already negatively affecting the health of
Marin residents and within 15 years attendant sea-level rise
could threaten the county’s shoreline buildings, roads and
original utility systems. This was the sobering message Marin
supervisors received after Supervisor Kate Sears requested an
update on the local health impacts of climate change and
efforts to prepare for sea- level rise.
