Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 11, 2007
4. Water Quality
MERCURY ISSUES:
Mercury mystery solved? Onus may be on refineries; Water board to ask for measurements of crude oil under penalty of fines - San Mateo County Times
Refineries will be told to report on mercury; Regional water panel first asked in 2005, but no response yet - San Francisco Chronicle
SEWAGE SPILL:
More sewage spills seen for lagoons; study sought - San Diego Union Tribune
MERCURY ISSUES:
Mercury mystery solved? Onus may be on refineries Water board to ask for measurements of crude oil under penalty of fines
By Paul Rogers,
Hundreds of pounds of mercury from Bay Area oil refineries are unaccounted for and could be flowing into
Until now, old mercury mines in the hills of
On Thursday, the staff of the regional water board plans to order all five Bay Area refineries to measure the mercury concentrations in their crude oil and account for where they go — in the air, in wastewater, and in solid waste sludge — or face fines of $1,000 a day.
"In our mind there still is a mystery. We're trying to connect the dots and understand where mercury in crude oil ends up," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the board.
Environmentalists think that much of the mercury may be escaping as air pollution up the refineries' smokestacks, then washing into the bay when it rains. If that's the case, scientific understanding of the source of mercury pollution — the most serious toxic contaminant in the bay — would be turned on its head.
"This is huge," said Sejal Choksi, program director for San Francisco Baykeeper, an environmental group. "We might be looking at the main cause of the mercury problem in the bay."
The 3,700 pounds of mercury that water board officials now estimate to be entering the refineries in crude oil every year is more than all other sources of mercury combined that flow annually in the bay. That totals about 2,698 pounds a year.
The 3,700 pounds represents more than 15 times the amount estimated to be leaching from the old Almaden Quicksilver Mines near
The five refineries affected are Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Tesoro and Valero in Contra Costa and Solano counties. Every day, they refine roughly 760,000 barrels of oil into gasoline.
In 2005, the regional water board, a state agency in
Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, said the refineries are working to learn how much — if any — of the mercury in crude oil ends up in the bay.
"We're going to know the answer to that when the air study is completed,"
Mercury is a naturally occurring metal that is harmful to fish, wildlife and people in high concentrations. It does not degrade in the environment.
Young children and pregnant women are most at risk from its effects, particularly for birth defects. For children, long-term exposure to mercury can impair physical coordination, decrease brain function and even cause mental retardation. In adults, it can impair hearing and speech, blur vision and damage the kidneys.
All around the Bay Area, government signs warn that it's unsafe to eat fish because of mercury poisoning. Health officials long have been concerned about immigrant communities and the lowest-income residents who eat fish from the bay as a staple of their diets.
Until now, the main sources of mercury in the bay are believed to have been long-closed mines in the
Along with the mines, other mercury sources include consumer products such as thermometers — and even smog coal burning in
"The bay is currently very polluted with mercury," Choksi said. "The mercury problem is so bad that fish in the bay are unsafe to eat. We really need to get to the bottom of figuring out what is causing the problem."
"We have worked collaboratively with the water board up to this point to fully understand mercury discharges from the refineries," he said. "Once this air study is completed, we will have a very good and clear picture of the refineries' discharges into the bay."
The board's new order this week will give the refineries until Oct. 31, 2008 to complete their studies. But it requires much more than the old order. It mandates that they test their oil for mercury, test air emissions, wastewater emissions and solid waste.
In a report that will be presented to the water board Wednesday, Wolfe and other water board staff note that the oil Bay Area refineries use has higher mercury concentrations than oil from other areas.
Most oil has mercury levels of 10 parts per billion. But oil from the San Joaquin Valley — where 40 percent of the crude oil used by the Bay Area refiners comes from — has mercury levels of 80 to 30,000 parts per billion, they concluded. Using a conservative number, 100 parts per billion, the water board concluded the oil contains 3,747 pounds of mercury.
The water board staff knows about 1,000 pounds of that goes to hazardous waste landfills out of the Bay Area as sludge when the refineries perform maintenance. The fate of the rest is a mystery.
"We're saying it looks like this might be more significant than we thought before," Wolfe said. "We want a better understanding." #
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_5640519
Refineries will be told to report on mercury; Regional water panel first asked in 2005, but no response yet
San Francisco Chronicle – 4/11/07
By Jane Kay, staff writer
A state water regulator said Tuesday that he will order five refineries around
"We want to know the levels of mercury in the crude oil coming into the plant and we want them to complete a year's worth of air monitoring for mercury," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. "We're looking for the fate of mercury and whether it has the potential to reach the bay."
Members of the water board will be informed at today's meeting and letters will be sent to refineries Thursday, Wolfe said.
This will be the second time that the regional board has requested the information from Chevron Products Co., ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil Products US, Tesoro Corp. and Valero Refining Co.
The companies were told to supply the information in 2005 as part of the agency's attempt to quantify the amount of mercury contaminating fish and other wildlife. In February, the refineries told the board that they would not meet the May 2007 deadline.
Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry group, said the monitoring "was more technically challenging'' than first thought.
The refineries have reported that they send 1,000 pounds of mercury to hazardous waste sites. But they probably import crude oil that has more three times that amount of mercury, according to the regional board.
Sajel Choksi, program director of San Francisco Baykeeper, said her group is eager to learn the results of the refineries' study.
For the past two years, she has asked the regional water board to require the refineries to provide the public with firm numbers on how much mercury is discharged to the environment.
Mercury from old mining operations, sewage treatment plants, factories and street runoff all contribute to bay pollution. #
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/BAGCUP6CRS1.DTL
SEWAGE SPILL:
More sewage spills seen for lagoons; study sought
By Mike Lee, staff writer
Even before
Regulators say that may be prudent after they figure out how about 7.3 million gallons of wastewater contaminated
It was one of the largest such spills ever in North County, but only the latest in a long series of sewage leaks in the region's six major seaside wetlands. For the past several days, officials had put the spill at about 5 million gallons, but last night said it was much larger.
At least 17 spills – including some that were just a few hundred gallons – have polluted those waterways or the creeks leading into them since October 2004.
The
The insides of pressurized pipes are more difficult to inspect than pipes that use gravity, because pressurized pipes generally must be taken out of service to scan with a remote TV camera.
In addition, the outsides of pipes that are under water or buried in sensitive environmental areas are tough to inspect, even though they are susceptible to corrosion.
The resulting problem – potential environmental harm to tidal basins – wasn't widely considered decades ago when many of the lines were laid. Because of their proximity to water, it's hard for managers to contain spills quickly enough to avoid ecological impacts.
“When you put these lines next to creeks and lagoons, that is where sewage can do the most damage,” said Mike Kelly, conservation chairman for the Friends of Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve.
Several wastewater agency leaders say they diligently try to avoid problems in their pipes. But critics say they often aren't aggressive enough.
“They are willing to take the risk of the fines from the regulatory agencies because those fines are very rarely enforced to the maximum extent,” said Doug Gibson, executive director of the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy. “It's very difficult these days to get municipalities to think proactively with aging . . . sewage lines.”
The bill for cleanup and repairs at
Glenn Pruim,
About 1,700 fish and four birds have been reported dead as a result of the spill.
As cleanup work winds down,
“We don't want to wait for that to happen,” he said.
Still, the bigger pipe picture remains fuzzy. Wastewater officials said there's no one place to find a comprehensive inventory of the location, age and condition of pipes that border or cross the county's lagoons. At the San Elijo conservancy, Gibson said such a document would be “a first step in the right direction” toward cutting spills.
What is clear is that “just about every lagoon has a pump station and a pressurized-force main going under or past it,” said Tim Dillingham, wildlife biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game.
“The reality is that we may end up – and probably will end up – with continued breakages (near lagoons). We can hope that maintenance on the lines in the future will be sufficient to detect these problems . . . before they occur,” he said.
Sewage-agency leaders are watching the
“In light of the recent spill, . . . any agency that is looking at replacing lines (near lagoons) is going to look carefully at what is the best technology,” said David Scherer, Del Mar's public works director.
At the regional water board, engineer Eric Becker said the
“It sounds like everyone has some kind of line going through the lagoons,” he said. “Maybe we can look at other collection systems, too, and make sure everyone is doing what they need to be doing.” #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070411/news_1mi11sewage.html
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