Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 11, 2008
4. Water Quality
Corps rethinks protection exemptions for Los Angeles River; EPA to help re-evaluate waterways not under Clean Water Act - Associated Press
Decision on L.A. River draws ire - Associated Press
POTENTIAL WATER CONTAMINATION:
Trace pharmaceuticals may be harmless to Bay, experts suggest - San Jose Mercury News
Corps rethinks protection exemptions for Los Angeles River; EPA to help re-evaluate waterways not under Clean Water Act
Associated Press – 4/11/08
By Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The Army Corps of Engineers is reconsidering a decision that would have exempted parts of the Los Angeles River from federal clean water protections following a chorus of objections from environmentalists and politicians.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Corps said they would rescind the draft decision and meet with officials at the Environmental Protection Agency in
David Beckman, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others said the decision had vast implications for streams throughout the watershed as well as rivers in other Western states.
"This determination never should have seen the light of day, but its withdrawal is a step in the right direction," Beckman said. "The Corps should devote its efforts to restoration of the LA River, not devising ways to deny it critical environmental protection."
The three-page determination was made at the request of retiree Wayne Fishback, who wanted to see if some land he was interested in buying in the Santa Susana Mountains fell under the agency's jurisdiction. Fishback said he was just trying to figure out if he could turn the land into a horse and cattle ranch, which may have been difficult if the nearby streams fell under the Clean Water Act.
Aaron Allen, the Corps official who signed the memo, said they were asked to make a call on five small ephemeral streams. The agency has a series of rules laying out what falls under federal clean water protections based on a 2006 Supreme Court decision and these tributaries did not meet those standards, he said.
The decision was sent to the EPA for comment. Alexis Straus, director of the EPA's water division in
"We asked the Corps not to finalize this so we could meet with the Corps and discuss it," she said.
The
River advocates are pushing plans to restore much of it to a more natural state. #
http://www.mercurynews.com//ci_8888771?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
Decision on
Associated Press – 4/11/08
Noaki Schwartz, staff writer
LOS ANGELES — The Army Corps of Engineers is reconsidering a decision that would have exempted parts of the
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Corps said they would rescind the draft decision and meet with officials at the Environmental Protection Agency in
David Beckman, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others said the decision had vast implications for streams throughout the watershed as well as rivers in other Western states.
"This determination never should have seen the light of day, but its withdrawal is a step in the right direction," Beckman said. "The Corps should devote its efforts to restoration of the LA River, not devising ways to deny it critical environmental protection."
The three-page determination was made at the request of retiree Wayne Fishback, who wanted to see if some land he was interested in buying in the Santa Susana Mountains fell under the agency's jurisdiction. Fishback said he was just trying to figure out if he could turn the land into a horse and cattle ranch, which may have been difficult if the nearby streams fell under the Clean Water Act.
Aaron Allen, the Corps official who signed the memo, said they were asked to make a call on five small ephemeral streams. The agency has a series of rules laying out what falls under federal clean water protections based on a 2006 Supreme Court decision and these tributaries did not meet those standards, he said.
The decision was sent to the EPA for comment. Alexis Straus, director of the EPA's water division in
"We asked the Corps not to finalize this so we could meet with the Corps and discuss it," she said.
The
Lined with concrete to prevent meandering and flooding, it flows at a trickle, if at all, during dry periods but can turn into a raging torrent during storms.
River advocates are pushing plans to restore much of it to a more natural state. #
http://www.mercurynews.com//ci_8888833?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
POTENTIAL WATER CONTAMINATION:
Trace pharmaceuticals may be harmless to Bay, experts suggest
By Julia Scott, staff writer
Headache remedies. Plasticizers. Insect repellents. Perfumes.
A laboratory list of man-made chemical compounds inhabits the murky waters of
Many of these chemicals, such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, phthalates, nonylphenols and musks, are a class of contaminants known as endocrine disrupters that were detected in all parts of the Bay in a study done in 2002. Wastewater treatment plants don't screen for them because the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't require them to, and they end up in the Bay after flowing down the drain or being ting flushed down the toilet.
Even less is known about the effects pharmaceuticals are having on the Bay. Acetaminophen was the only pharmaceutical compound detected in the water in the 2002 report by the San Francisco Estuary Institute, but wastewater agencies now say they fully expect that future Bay water tests will reveal a much wider range of drugs humans have flushed into the Bay, either in unused pill form or as something they've taken and excreted.
A recent Associated Press investigation revealed growing concern among scientists that more research is needed to assess the health effects of this accumulating body of pharmaceuticals, 100 different varieties of which have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas. The cities all receive water from rivers and reservoirs containing treated wastewater, and therein lies the problem.
From Las Vegas' Lake Mead to the Potomac River outside Washington, D.C., researchers have found strange effects in fish and toads exposed to treated water containing pesticides, hormones such as estrogen from birth control pills, and drugs in soaps and shampoos: male carp suddenly producing egg yolk proteins, kidney failure in vultures, algae with stunted growth.
Many of these drugs are endocrine disrupters, which interrupt the normal distribution of hormones into the bloodstream to promote growth and reproduction. In all cases, however, the drugs were detected at concentrations so minute that scientists say it's hard to say what effects, if any, they are having on consumers.
Mike Connor, executive director of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, believes many of those chemicals are already in the Bay, although they are too diluted here to cause concern for the health of fish and ocean mammals.
Estrogen, steroids, chemotherapy medications — these are among the most common pharmaceuticals found in waterways that receive wastewater, and a forthcoming Estuary Institute survey of water-borne pharmaceuticals entering and leaving wastewater treatment plants around San Francisco Bay will reveal it is no different.
"In general the pharmaceuticals in influent (sewage water) looked very typical for the rest of the country, and the amounts in the Bay are generally far below levels that are considered to show effects on marine life," Connor said.
Unlike the cities surveyed in the AP investigation, Bay Area residents don't drink treated water — they get it fresh from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the Sierra. The water is pristine from its origins to its resting point in Crystal Springs Reservoir, according to Tony Winnicker, a spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utility Commission.
Winnicker said the AP mistakenly reported that
This was confirmed by Shane Snyder, research and development project manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Snyder oversaw the American Water Works Association study of pharmaceuticals in drinking water that the AP used to reach its conclusions.
When it comes to pharmaceuticals, the day-to-day content of Bay water will remain a mystery for some time. No Bay Area wastewater treatment plant is required to screen for a single drug compound or treat sewage to prevent their discharge, although existing treatment methods already minimize the presence of many drugs. The EPA is developing new methods to test for pharmaceuticals in wastewater, but will not ask regional water regulators to impose limits on any of them until it also begins to study their effects.
That leaves agencies such as the San Francisco Bay Water Quality Control Board with little incentive to do their own research, said John Madigan, a water resources control engineer with the water board.
"It's drawing attention as an emerging contaminate. It's coming but we don't have a lot of data on what the health effects are," he said.
Many wastewater agency officials believe pharmaceutical testing and restrictions are inevitable, although they're not looking forward to the burden it will impose.
"These are special tests, and they're expensive. When that happens it's going to be very costly," predicts Dave Gromm, who manages
Part of the problem is there are no reliable ways of testing for the hundreds of drug compounds on the market, and more are being developed every day, said Richard Luthy, chair of
"We don't really have standard, approved methods to detect these compounds. We can do it for certain compounds, but the fact is that these are a challenge to analyze for," said Luthy.
Some say responsibility lies not just with regulators, but with consumers and, ultimately, the pharmaceutical companies that design the pills to last long after leaving the body.
"We're not thinking about, as we manufacture pharmaceuticals, where they go when they get excreted. They depend on wastewater treatment to remove them. At this point it seems more like luck than anything (that it works), because wastewater treatment plants were constructed with that in mind," said Luthy.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District has faced problems in trying to keep pills out of the Bay. The agency holds occasional take-back events in public places but they are hard to organize, as volunteer pharmacists and police must both be present.
"We would like to be able to do more. We wanted to put mailers in nursing homes and other places so people could mail their drugs, and we were stymied," said Jennifer Jackson, director of pollution prevention at EBMUD.
"It's an interesting position to be in because here we are, trying to protect San Francisco Bay, and we know these things are getting into it." #
http://www.mercurynews.com//ci_8888815?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
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