A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 22, 2007
3. Watersheds
Brawley council behind SSA plan - Imperial Valley Press
BAY AREA WATERSHED ISSUES:
Editorial: Stop trashing the Bay - Contra Costa Times
Brawley council behind SSA plan
By Jonathan Athens, staff writer
BRAWLEY — After years of hand-wringing, debates and discussions, this may be the year
At least that’s what Salton Sea Authority Executive Director Rick Daniels is hoping.
“We want to start getting this thing done and quit fighting about it,” Daniels said.
His comments came the day before the Brawley City Council on Tuesday night passed a resolution joining 50 separate agencies and 5,000 individuals in support of the authority’s plan.
The council passed the resolution by a 3-2 vote with council members
“This is a huge project. I’m not confident our government is going to have the money,” Benson said before casting a no vote.
He and Shields said they think the authority’s plan favors the northern portion of the sea in
Various stakeholders have come up with 10 different proposals ranging in cost from $4 billion to $14 billion to halt the degradation of the largest manmade body of water in the state.
The authority’s plan, estimated to cost $5 billion, is to separate the sea into two bodies of water, create 17,000 acres of shallow water wetlands, install water treatment facilities and add measures to better protect wildlife. The objective is to reduce the salinity that has been on the rise over the years. The degradation, caused by agricultural water drainage and neglect, threatens area wildlife and the sea itself — massive fish die-offs have become more common and a foul odor permeates the air. Scientists estimate if nothing is done, the sea will lose 300,000 acre feet of water within 15 years.
And so the clock is ticking for stakeholders to decide upon one of those proposed solutions.
The authority’s state advisory committee March 27 is slated to make its recommendation on a proposed fix. Come late April, California Resource Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman is slated to make his recommendation to the Legislature.
Although state lawmakers are not facing a deadline for appropriating money for restoration efforts, Daniels is hoping efforts to show strong public and private backing will pay off.
“We’re hoping if we can show a consensus, they’ll move forward,” Daniels said Monday. #
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/03/22/news/news12.txt
Tahoe Daily Tribune – 3/22/07
By Andrew Pridgen, staff writer
Runoff from streams, which researchers have pinpointed as the major cause of the decrease in the lake's clarity, should be among the lowest in a decade if the short and dry winter should stay status quo, researchers said.
Currently the
"Most of the variation in annual clarity is dependent on stream flow and how much snow and rain there was in the winter," said
Unless April storms mirror the "Miracle March" activity of the last two years, or the area is bombarded by summer thunderstorms, summer 2008 may reveal some of the deepest clarity depths in years.
"Of course it's all very speculative at this point," said TRPA communications director Julie Regan. "Clarity is all very much runoff related. We would expect this to be a better (clarity) year than the year's previous, but it's too hard to say at this point.
"A lot (of clarity can be lost) due to summer thundershowers."
Both TRPA officials and researchers from UC Davis warned that a one-year-surge in clarity, or a severe drop, does not necessarily mean the lake is trending in one direction or another.
"One of our (least-clear) years was 1997 and that was because of the New Year's flood and later storms," Regan said. "The last two years have been wet with late-winter storms and that may show up - if you ask researchers they'll tell you that we're looking at 10-20 year trends, not just a single year."
According to the most recently released number by UC Davis scientists, the waters of
Last year's lake clarity numbers won't be released until July or August.
"
When researchers started measuring in 1968 by lowering a white secchi disk into the lake, the disk was visible at an average depth of 102.4 feet.
TRPA officials defend the overall loss of clarity with 10 years of stabilization.
"We were in a major nose-dive trend," TRPA spokeswoman Regan said. "But we've stabilized over the last 10 years and now we're making a positive impact."
Researchers believe the runoff of fine particles and nutrients fuels algae growth which results in the loss of clarity in
Clarity is directly affected by the scattering of light by fine particles and by the absorption of light by algae. #
http://td.us.publicus.com/article/20070322/NEWS/103220059
BAY AREA WATERSHED ISSUES:
Editorial: Stop trashing the Bay
Contra Costa Times – 3/22/07
IT IS TIME FOR RESIDENTS of the environmentally conscious Bay Area to get serious about curbing -- no, halting -- our dumping of cans, plastic bottles and other nonbiodegradable debris that end up befouling the San Francisco Bay and coastal waters.
A beginning is Save the Bay's quest to get local and regional governments to stop flushing a staggering amount of trash into our waterways, where it threatens aquatic life, animals' habitats and water supplies.
Plastic bags and bottles, Styrofoam cups, soccer balls, oil cans, buckets and other man-made flotsam that wends its way into the Bay will survive a long time.
Regulators have started to notice. The Regional Water Quality Control Board is considering the steps local agencies should take to control such trash. Ultimately, that dialogue could result in new rules controlling municipal water discharges.
The Bay Area is already five years behind
The Bay Area restricts copper, mercury, sediment and other forms of trash, but not plastics and other substances that take a long time to disintegrate.
Cities understandably fear the cost of such ventures but must begin addressing the problem because the best way to control disposal of such trash is at its origin.
A recent article by MediaNews reporter Douglas Fischer used debris collected at
Expand that to include all communities along our coast and it amounts to hundreds of thousands of tons of trash per annum being swept into coastal waterways.
We must stop trashing the Bay and start the long-overdue process of removing garbage from waterways. Cities and government agencies must enact new regulations where needed and enforce existing ones.
We also need strong public information campaigns informing citizens of the problem and what must be done to curb it. This is, after all, everyone's problem. If we want to truly protect our planet, stopping the flow of trash into waterways is a good place to start. #
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/editorial/16951901.htm
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