Water containing wastes – aka wastewater – from residential,
commercial and industrial processes requires treatment to remove
pollutants prior to discharge. After treatment, the water is
suitable for nonconsumption (nonpotable) and even potable use.
In California, water recycling is a critical component of the
state’s efforts to use water supplies more efficiently. The state
presently recycling about 669,000 acre-feet of water per year and
has the potential to reuse an additional two million acre-feet
per year.
Non-potable uses include:
landscape and crop irrigation
stream and wetlands enhancement
industrial processes
recreational lakes, fountains and decorative ponds
toilet flushing and gray water applications
as a barrier to protect groundwater supplies
from seawater intrusion
wetland habitat creation, restoration, and maintenance
A family-owned landfill serving Napa County is facing a
$619,400 fine for allegedly polluting a nearby creek in 2019. A
proposed settlement agreement, announced by the San Francisco
Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board in late November, is
based on five alleged violations of Calistoga’s Clover Flat
Landfill’s use permit. The problems include allowing
tainted and acidic stormwater to flow into a nearby stream. The
company also allegedly failed to properly stabilize erodible
areas on the hillside facility and fix leaking equipment
quickly.
As they seek to reduce their reliance on imported water
supplies, the city of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and
other local governments in the area are looking to increase the
extent to which they engage in water reuse, a proven tactic for
extending existing supplies in water-stressed regions. As
a means of improving water quality, some local agencies also
plan to divert dry weather urban runoff from storm sewers to
best management practices, such as detention ponds,
infiltration basins, or rain gardens, or treatment facilities.
Significant increases in reuse and dry weather diversions would
decrease the volume of treated effluent and untreated runoff
entering the heavily managed LA River, raising questions about
potential effects on water quantity and quality.
The California State Water Resources Control Board (State Water
Board) adopted the Statewide Sanitary Sewer Systems General
Order (General Order) Reissuance at its December 6, 2022
meeting. As reported in a Somach Simmons & Dunn news alert in
May of 2022 (available here), the State Water Board released an
Informal Staff Draft of the revised General Order in February
of 2021 containing new requirements to address sanitary sewer
overflows, which significantly broadened the regulatory scope
of the existing General Order and raised concerns regarding the
substantial commitment of time and resources required for
compliance.
A coalition of asset managers is demanding the phaseout of
hazardous “forever” chemicals, the latest move by institutional
investors to expand their efforts to address environmental
risks beyond climate change to biodiversity and human health
concerns. Widely used in food packaging, cookware, clothing and
carpets, forever chemicals are a group of more than 9,000
compounds that do not break down in the environment and are
associated with human health problems including cancers and
reproductive abnormalities. … California’s
attorney-general, Rob Bonta, alleged in a lawsuit last month
that 18 chemical companies knew about the dangers associated
with PFAS and concealed the risks in many cases. The lawsuit
claims that PFAS have leached into at least 146 public water
systems, serving an estimated 16mn Californians.
In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the
Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed. Uranium mills that
helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste
into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in
Colorado. … The U.S. government bankrolled the industry, and
mining companies rushed to profit, building more than 50 mills
and processing sites to refine uranium ore. But the
government didn’t have a plan for the toxic byproducts of this
nuclear assembly line. Some of the more than 250 million tons
of toxic and radioactive detritus, known as tailings, scattered
into nearby communities, some spilled into streams and some
leaked into aquifers. … But the government has fallen
down in addressing another lingering threat from the industry’s
byproducts: widespread water pollution.
It was major news in August when a hazardous algae bloom turned
San Francisco Bay water a murky brown color and killed a
reported 10,000 yellowfin goby, hundreds of striped bass and
white sturgeon, and a small number of endangered green
sturgeon. That kind of attention may seem understandable today,
but just a couple of generations ago, it’s likely barely anyone
would have noticed. Why? Because fish die-offs used to be far
more common. During the 1960s and early 1970s, huge fish
die-offs were reported in San Francisco Bay almost every year,
with over 100,000 fish dying in 1965 alone. Our bay
had become a dumping ground for minimally treated sewage,
industrial wastewater, polluted runoff and solid waste — unfit
for aquatic life and unsafe for swimming. -Written by Andrew Gunther and Alexis Strauss
Hacker, members of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water
Quality Control Board; and Jay Davis, a senior scientist
at the San Francisco Estuary Institute.
A key state regulator on Thursday OK’d an agreement to have
California American Water Co. buy future water from the planned
Pure Water Monterey Expansion project. The agreement signals a
major new water supply for the Monterey Peninsula. Mike
McCullough, the director of external affairs for Monterey One
Water (M1W), said the authorization defines the terms and
conditions for the sale of water from the expansion project.
Monterey One Water is the public wastewater agency operating
the Pure Water Monterey recycled water project and which will
operate the Pure Water Monterey Expansion … The three
involved parties – Cal Am, the Monterey Peninsula Water
Management District and Monterey One Water reached an agreement
on the language of what’s called a Water Purchase Agreement
more than a year ago.
Months before this fall’s rains began, Victoria Sanchez stood
out in front of her home on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco’s
Mission Terrace neighborhood. Her block appeared ordinary on
that July day: rows of colorful Mediterranean-style homes
stretched wall-to-wall as the 44 Muni bus rumbled past the
corner. The scene was typical of many neighborhoods across San
Francisco with one distinct difference. Along the sidewalks and
driveways of Cayuga Avenue lay rows of sandbags, a reminder of
the destructive floods of sewage and stormwater that the rainy
season can bring — inundations that have ravaged the
neighborhood for decades. Sanchez walked her street with
an album full of photographs and news clippings as she retold
stories of the floods.
Looking down at the coast from a hill above the historic L
Ranch at Point Reyes National Seashore, rolling swells appear
on the ocean surface like blue corduroy. The peninsula that
stretches south toward the horizon is almost entirely taken up
by ranchland and weathered buildings. Among them, coyotes stalk
gophers on the dun hillsides, red-tailed hawks perch on fence
posts and a skunk waddles along the road’s asphalt margin.
Those beef and dairy ranches are the focus of a recent water
quality report showing high levels of fecal bacteria downstream
from the cattle, and their manure, in lagoons and beaches
popular with park visitors. The report, which was commissioned
by an environmental group and is disputed by the ranching
industry, is the latest flareup in a decades-long debate over
the ranching that occupies more than one-third of the national
seashore.
“The sewage is killing us.” Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina
did not mince words in 2017 after yet another spill from
Tijuana’s broken wastewater system contaminated local beaches.
He also did not waste time. Dedina pushed for answers from U.S.
and Mexico officials, and got none that were satisfying. So he
sued the federal government in 2018 and was later joined in the
lawsuit by Chula Vista and the Port of San Diego.
… Imperial Beach has long been a beach town beset by
water contamination due to sewage spilling from Mexico. The
battle for clean water has sometimes turned neighbor against
neighbor, such as when Imperial Beach officials criticized
their more affluent neighbor Coronado for not joining the 2018
lawsuit.
Abortion opponents and their allies in elected office are
seizing on an unusual strategy after suffering a wave of
election defeats — using environmental laws to try to block the
distribution of abortion pills. … It claims without
direct evidence that trace amounts of the drug in wastewater
could threaten livestock and wildlife as well as humans, citing
some studies in which the drug was given directly to animals
rather than ingested from groundwater, and others where drugs
flushed directly down the toilet contaminated the water supply.
Napa County’s drought-easing ideas include using highly treated
wastewater for drinking, having communities with extra water
help out those in need, and tapping into the planned Sites
Reservoir in Colusa County. There are 22 proposals in all
within the recently released Napa Valley Drought Contingency
Plan. Those three rose to the top for further
exploration. The plan, done for local agencies along with
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, might not help much with the
current drought, should this winter be dry. Most of the ideas
would take time to become reality. … One idea is to turn
wastewater from the Napa Sanitation District and the city of
American Canyon into drinking water. NapaSan and American
Canyon already clean up wastewater to a degree that
it can be used for irrigation.
Seeking to modernize aged equipment and cut down on the
nitrogen that flows into the San Francisco Bay, Palo Alto and
its partners are embarking on an ambitious makeover of the
Regional Water Quality Control Plant, a project that will cost
$193 million and take about five years to complete. The City
Council is preparing to approve next month a $161 million
contract with Anderson Pacific Engineering Construction to
upgrade the wastewater treatment system at the regional plant
on Embarcadero Road, near the Baylands. … A key goal of
the upgrade is to reduce this outflow of nitrogen, which causes
algae to bloom in the bay, [plant manager] Jamie Allen
said. Over the summer, the a red algae bloom across
the region killed fish throughout the area.
Arizona State University and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced
Nov. 16 that the university will lead a multi-year Arizona
Water Innovation Initiative to provide immediate, actionable
and evidence-based solutions to ensure that Arizona will
continue to thrive with a secure future water supply, according
to a news release. Ducey has committed resources and has
asked ASU to work with industrial, municipal, agricultural,
tribal and international partners to rapidly accelerate and
deploy new approaches and technology for water conversation,
augmentation, desalination, efficiency, infrastructure, and
reuse.
Sacramento County officials on Friday said that two fuel tanks
at a Sacramento gas station have leaked gasoline into soil and
groundwater, though the risk to the general public is “very
low.” The county said the leak happened with two
underground fuel tanks at Bonfare Market and Gas Station, which
is located at 2600 Rio Linda Boulevard. A third underground
tank was not found to be faulty. The tanks have since been
emptied and are offline, the county said. The issues stem
from an initial report of a leak in February 2022, county
spokesperson Samantha Mott said. One tank was immediately
emptied and put out of service and an initial assessment did
not reveal groundwater contamination. Later, an
investigation as part of a clean-up plan found that gasoline
contamination had migrated, exposing groundwater to
contamination.
The Board of Supervisors this week will consider the analysis
used for proposed new rates for Middletown sewer customers.
… In a discussion timed for 10:15 a.m., the board,
sitting as the Lake County Sanitation District Board of
Directors, will consider a proposed resolution to receive,
approve and adopt the financial planning, revenue requirements
and rate setting analysis for Lake County Sanitation District’s
Middletown sewer system. In their report to the board,
Special Districts Administrator Scott Harter and Special
Districts Deputy Administrator Jesus Salmeron said that the
rate structure hasn’t been adjusted since sewer rates were
adopted in 1995 for the district.
Some residents in Planada are calling on county officials to
block a proposed expansion of a dairy. Merced County is
currently in the process of deciding whether to allow the
Hillcrest Dairy just north of the town to expand its herd from
8,050 cows to 9,750 cows. Some residents are saying that the
expansion would make current problems with bad smells and flies
worse, as well as threaten the community’s supply of
groundwater. … The matter is still in the process of review,
and has yet to come before the Board of Supervisors. But it
will ultimately be their call as to whether or not the
expansion with the dairy moves forward.
It’s an October morning at Point Reyes National Seashore and
I’m scooting under barbed wire fences, wary of sliding into cow
pies. My guide on this safari is Jocelyn Knight, wildlife
photographer. We’re stalking a toxic waste dump hidden from
public view behind a hill at “Historic E Ranch, established
circa 1859” land lorded by the National Park Service. Park
regulations require Seashore pastures to remain open to the
public, but the dump is inside the E Ranch “core” of barns and
dwellings, and the public is disallowed. … According to
EHS investigators, a septic tank was installed without the
required permit; its sewage level exceeded the operational
limit; they could not locate a leach field. The ranch land
drains into the Pacific.
More than half of anchovies and all of the seabirds that feed
on them were found to have microplastic particles in their
digestive tracts, according to a study by researchers at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. The researchers tested 24
anchovy and 19 common murres for microplastic particles and
found particles of at least 5 millimeters in 58 percent of the
fish and all of the birds. The researchers also analyzed
seawater samples from Santa Cruz and Moss Landing, finding a
microplastic concentration of about 2 microparticles per 1,000
liters.
Santa Monica has found itself on the cutting edge of modern
water infrastructure in California, and the latest example of
that innovation is SWIP, the Sustainable Water Infrastructure
Project (SWIP), four years in the making, that is set to open
with a community celebration on Thursday morning, Nov. 17. The
project features some key innovations: a massive, 1.5-million
gallon stormwater harvesting tank that stores water prior to
treatment (meaning the city is far less limited in the amount
of water it can process during storm events); can
simultaneously treat stormwater runoff and wastewater generated
in Santa Monica; is enabled to provide water for irrigation,
dual-piped buildings and groundwater replenishment; and is
poised to convert to potable water supply if and when state
regulations permit.
Recycled wastewater is not only as safe to drink as
conventional potable water, it may even be less toxic than many
sources of water we already drink daily, Stanford University
engineers have discovered. … The engineers found that,
after treatment, potable reuse water is cleaner than
conventional drinking water sourced from pristine-looking
rivers. In most rivers, someone upstream is dumping in their
wastewater with much less treatment than occurs in potable
reuse systems. Conventional wastewater treatment plants just
aren’t equipped to deep clean. This leaves many organic
contaminants, such as chemicals from shampoos and medicines,
floating down river and straight into a drinking water plant.
A Los Angeles County judge on Monday advanced LA’s lawsuit
against Monsanto over chemicals the city says have contaminated
its water supply. Monsanto filed a demurrer — essentially a
series of objections to the city’s complaint — arguing,
among other things, that the city filed a public nuisance claim
“for property located outside the city’s jurisdictional
boundaries.” … The city sued Monsanto in March
over polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a “probable”
human carcinogen, and which were banned in 1979 but have
nonetheless lingered in a variety of older products like
paints, sealants and electrical equipment. According to LA’s
complaint, and similar complaints filed by other California
cities, rain causes those chemicals to seep into rivers, lakes
and streams.
Beaches across Southern California have been placed under a
high bacteria and high surf warning after heavy rainstorms
covered the southland on Tuesday. The public is being advised
to stay out of the water across all Los Angeles County beaches
due to possible heightened levels of bacteria caused by “storm
drainage, chemicals, debris, trash, and other public health
hazards,” said the Los Angeles County Department of Public
Health. The advisory for all L.A. County beaches will last
until Thursday at 3 p.m. People who enter the ocean water
during this period could become ill, officials warned.
The bacteria and debris typically seep from nearby city streets
and mountain areas, likely contaminating ocean waters around
discharging storm drains, creeks and rivers after rainstorms,
officials said.
In California, sturgeon populations have persisted through
periods of extreme overfishing, sedimentation and mercury
contamination from hydraulic mining, species invasions, and
alteration of rivers by dams and levees (Zeug et al. 2014,
Gunderson et al. 2017, Blackburn et al. 2019). … Suddenly,
the future of these ancient fish does not seem so secure.
Between late August and early September, 2022, hundreds of
sturgeon perished in the San Francisco Estuary. According to
Jim Hobbs, program manager for the Interagency Ecological
Program at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
(CDFW) Bay Delta office, “the white sturgeon carcass count
total will be over 400 and the total for green was 15. ”
Amador County, Calif., has standing to sue a state prison for
allegedly violating the Clean Water Act by discharging
pollutants from prison labor operations into the local water
supply, a federal trial court said. The Mule Creek State Prison
uses inmate labor to conduct meat packing, coffee roasting and
packing, and textile manufacturing operations. The CWA
prohibits the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters
unless the discharge complies with delineated standards. The
county’s suit was consolidated with a suit by the California
Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and the US District Court for
the Eastern District of California previously ruled that the
…
Potable reuse, the process of treating wastewater to drinkable
standards, offers a reliable and sustainable solution to cities
and regions facing shortages of clean water. However,
implementation is hindered by perceptions of poor water quality
and potential health threats. Herein, we compare water samples
from potable reuse systems with conventional drinking waters
based on the analysis of Chinese hamster ovary cell
cytotoxicity contributed by disinfection by-products (DBPs) and
sewage-derived anthropogenic contaminants. In all cases, the
cytotoxicity of potable reuse waters is lower than that of
drinking waters derived from surface waters.
Momentum is building for a unique
interstate deal that aims to transform wastewater from Southern
California homes and business into relief for the stressed
Colorado River. The collaborative effort to add resiliency to a
river suffering from overuse, drought and climate change is being
shaped across state lines by some of the West’s largest water
agencies.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
Blasted by sun and beaten by waves,
plastic bottles and bags shed fibers and tiny flecks of
microplastic debris that litter the San Francisco Bay where they
can choke the marine life that inadvertently consumes it.
Summer is a good time to take a
break, relax and enjoy some of the great beaches, waterways and
watersheds around California and the West. We hope you’re getting
a chance to do plenty of that this July.
But in the weekly sprint through work, it’s easy to miss
some interesting nuggets you might want to read. So while we’re
taking a publishing break to work on other water articles planned
for later this year, we want to help you catch up on
Western Water stories from the first half of this year
that you might have missed.
Each day, people living on the streets and camping along waterways across California face the same struggle – finding clean drinking water and a place to wash and go to the bathroom.
Some find friendly businesses willing to help, or public restrooms and drinking water fountains. Yet for many homeless people, accessing the water and sanitation that most people take for granted remains a daily struggle.
Californians have been doing an
exceptional job
reducing their indoor water use, helping the state survive
the most recent drought when water districts were required to
meet conservation targets. With more droughts inevitable,
Californians are likely to face even greater calls to save water
in the future.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
In rural areas with widely dispersed houses, reliance upon a
centralized
sewer system is not practical compared to individual
wastewater treatment methods. These on-site management facilities
– or septic systems – are more commonplace given their simpler
structure, efficiency and easy maintenance.
Microplastics – plastic debris
measuring less than 5 millimeters – are an
increasing water quality concern. Entering the water as
industrial microbeads or as larger plastic litter that degrade
into small pellets, microplastics come from a variety of
consumer products.
Directly detecting harmful pathogens in water can be expensive,
unreliable and incredibly complicated. Fortunately, certain
organisms are known to consistently coexist with these harmful
microbes which are substantially easier to detect and culture:
coliform bacteria. These generally non-toxic organisms are
frequently used as “indicator
species,” or organisms whose presence demonstrates a
particular feature of its surrounding environment.
The biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of water determines the
impact of decaying matter on species in a specific ecosystem.
Sampling for BOD tests how much oxygen is needed by bacteria to
break down the organic matter.
Point sources release pollutants from discrete conveyances, such
as a discharge pipe, and are regulated by federal and state
agencies. The main point source dischargers are factories and
sewage treatment plants, which release treated
wastewater.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
As the state’s population continues to grow and traditional water
supplies grow tighter, there is increased interest in reusing
treated wastewater for a variety of activities, including
irrigation of crops, parks and golf courses, groundwater recharge
and industrial uses.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to California
Wastewater is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the history of wastewater
treatment and how wastewater is collected, conveyed, treated and
disposed of today. The guide also offers case studies of
different treatment plants and their treatment processes.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
Wastewater management in California centers on the collection,
conveyance,
treatment, reuse and disposal of wastewater. This process is
conducted largely by public agencies, though there are also
private systems in places where a publicly owned treatment plant
is not feasible.
In California, wastewater treatment takes place through 100,000
miles of sanitary sewer lines and at more than 900 wastewater
treatment plants that manage the roughly 4 billion gallons of
wastewater generated in the state each day.
