FILLMORE – Never has the Santa Clara River been filtered so vigorously, so urgently and at such great cost to tiny towns as it has in the last two years.
At least three brand-new, state-of-the-art water treatment plants, recycling plants and one pump house have been built or are in the planning stage along the river between the Santa Clarita Valley and the Pacific Ocean.
High energy-efficient plants in Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru all started purifying water along the Santa Clara River within the last couple of months.
What motivated each tiny town to spend millions of dollars on infrastructure when each community, like the rest of America, struggles to rebound from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression?
California beaches violated water quality standards fewer times than usual last year. That’s a key finding of a national report the Natural Resources Defense Council released this morning. The conclusion isn’t as good as it may sound.
Beaches in the Golden State tested dirty less often than before – particularly in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties – because testers sampled for bacteria at state beaches less often than before. “It’s really a case of ‘what you don’t look for, you don’t find,’” says Noah Garrison, a lawyer for the NRDC.
He adds that the culprit is a shrunken state budget. “We’re simply monitoring the beaches less. Often that’s in the wintertime, but that’s still a concern because people really visit the beaches year-round in California,” he says.
Ventura County cut sampling in the winter and spring; Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties saw around 60 percent drops in frequency. Some beaches Orange County used to test daily were tested weekly; overall Orange County’s testing dropped by a quarter. Los Angeles County recorded a 38% drop – not as bad as it could have been, Garrison said, mainly because regional water regulators have required sampling as a top priority.
In winter months, stormwater sends bacteria into the ocean as rainfall carries more pollutants into drains. But even in summer months, Garrison says water quality wasn’t necessarily improving. “During summer months the percent of samples that did not meet bacterial health standards for L.A. County and for Orange County remained about the same as it was in 2008, or in many cases actually was worse,” Garrison says.
The NRDC report points out that known sources of contamination at California beaches are a tiny fraction of the total. Unknown sources make up three-quarters of reported contamination; “no data” counts for 13 percent more. That could be stormwater, or sewage; nobody knows.
Some of the dirtiest beaches are the usual suspects: Surfrider Beach in Malibu, Santa Monica State Beach near the pier, Cabrillo Beach, Newport Bay. Garrison says beaches popular with tourists and locals are vital to the coastal and state economy. “To be allowing them to become a public health threat where not enough monitoring is done so people don’t know whether the beach they’re swimming at is safe for them to be in the water at, we really can’t continue that practice and hope that our economy will continue to thrive,” he says.
Federal stimulus money has followed this logic. In Hermosa Beach, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the city 1-and-a-third million dollars to reduce and clean stormwater runoff at Pier Street. The project includes a greywater component; wastewater will be recycled to feed plants in a pedestrian park at the area.
To learn more about the NRDC report, please join us on September 16 for a LABS luncheon with Senior Attorney David Beckman from the NRDC for a discussion of triple bottom line solutions that address regional stormwater from an inclusive perspective.
City Achieves 80% Reduction in Sewer Overflows and Aggressively Addresses Sewer Related Odors
LOS ANGELES (July 23, 2010)—The Bureau of Sanitation continues to be aggressive in implementing various projects and programs to manage effectively and renew the City’s 6,700 mile wastewater sewer system. As a result, the Bureau of Sanitation has reduced the number of sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) by 80% since the baseline fiscal year (FY) of 2000/2001, reaching yet another record low number of SSOs this year. The City of Los Angeles wastewater collection system is operated and maintained by the Department of Public Works, Bureau of Sanitation (BOS). There were 687 recorded SSOs in 2000/2001, 444 in 2003/2004, 200 in FY 2007/2008, 159 in FY 2008/2009, and just 139 in FY 2009/10. The number of SSOs during last fiscal year is 12 percent lower than the previous year’s record low. The wastewater collection industry measures excellent system performance by the number of SSOs per 100 miles each year. The City’s metric for last fiscal year was a record low 2.07 SSOs per 100 miles per year, one of the lowest in the nation.
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed daily pollution limits for lakes in nine urban and suburban parks in the Los Angeles area that have been identified as impaired due to nutrients, mercury, trash, pesticides, and polychlorinated biphenyls. EPA and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board are racing to beat a March 2012 deadline to establish total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for waterways in California’s Los Angeles and Ventura counties, a deadline set in a 1999 consent decree. Half of the over 90 TMDLs that must be established are in place, according to EPA documents. The latest proposed rule lists an additional 32 limits. The federal agency is stepping in because the regional board is short on resources and EPA can establish the TMDLs in less time, according to the EPA documents. The lakes and the pollutants contributing to their impairment are: Peck Road Park Lake – nitrogen, phosphorus, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, PCB’s, and trash; Lincoln Park Lake – nitrogen, phosphorus, trash; Echo Park Lake – nitrogen, phosphorus, chlordane, dieldrin, PCBs, trash; Lake Calabasas – nitrogen, phosphorus; El Dorado Park Lakes – nitrogen, phosphorus, mercury; Legg lakes (North, Center and Legg) – nitrogen, phosphorus; Puddingstone Reservoir – nitrogen, phosphorus, chlordane, DDT, PCBs, mercury; Santa Fe Dam Park – nitrogen, phosphorus; and Lake Sherwood – mercury.
Water and Wastewater Equipment Mfg Association
The victor of a water war over chloride levels in the Santa Clara River, pitting upstream suburbanites against downstream farmers, could be determined with the flourish of a pen on two emerging fronts this summer, The Signal has learned following a month-long investigation.
Snow melting atop mountains in Plumas County, some 480 miles from the Santa Clarita Valley, is as clean as state legislators demand in their Porter-Cologne Act of 1969, and it’s as clean as the Feds demand in their Clean Water Act of 1972.
Any part of the water that is not as pure as rainwater, according to both acts, is a contaminant. Read more
Stanford, CA — Faulty septic systems have long been blamed for polluting some of California’s most popular beaches. Yet few scientific studies have established a direct link between septic systems and coastal contamination.
Now, in the first study of its kind, Stanford University researchers have tracked a plume of polluted groundwater from a septic system to one of Northern California’s top recreational beaches. The researchers say their findings could be an important step toward improving wastewater management in coastal communities throughout the United States. Read more
The American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE) has teamed up with the New Jersey Water Environment Association to provide our members and theirs with a thought-provoking AAEE PreConference Workshop on Monday, May 10, at the New Jersey Annual Conference at Bally’s in Atlantic City followed by a Tuesday, May 11th AAEE Breakfast “Momentum for Change.”
AAEE’s Workshop and Seminars Work Group worked tirelessly with AAEE Past President Alan Vicory to create this event and lineup of expert panelists including:
- Alan Vicory, Jr., PE, BCEE, Executive Director and Chief Engineer Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (moderator),
- Richard Dewling, PE, BCEE, former Commissioner New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection,
- G. Tracey Mehan, Cadmus Group, former US EPA Assistant Administrator for Water,
- Mary Buzby, Global Water Lead, Merck & Co. Industrial,
- Jeffrey Eager, General Manager, Sanitation District No. 1 of Northern Kentucky Wastewater Utility
- Christopher Len, Staff Attorney, Hackensack Riverkeeper and NY/NJ Baykeeper -Environmental NGO.
Following discussion and Q&A, attendees will breakout into groups to discuss and report on critical elements such as identify changing needs, roles of engineers and scientists, and more that need to evolve for the Act to achieve fruition. CEUs/PDHs in Water/Wastewater will be available including New York P.E.s.
Please consider registering for this event and help to bring the Clean Water Act closer to reality!
For Registration please click here
State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.
