Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 13, 2009
4. Water Quality –
Central Valley tribe gets federal funds for sewer plant
Central Valley Business Times
Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety
S.F. Chronicle
Public comment sought on landfill impact report
Santa Maria Times
Program aims to sample groundwater on the North Coast
The Times-Standard
New Mexico rescinds boil water alert
Tri-Valley Herald
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Central Valley tribe gets federal funds for sewer plant
Central Valley Business Times-7/9/09
The Tule River Indian Reservation east of Porterville in Tulare County will receive $6,371,470 in federal stimulus money to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant serving 268 homes, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Indian Health Service.
In all, seven tribes in California will have improved access to water services through funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
It’s part of $90 million nationwide going to “shovel ready” infrastructure projects designed to better protect human and environmental health in Indian Country.
“On tribal lands, 10 percent of homes lack access to safe drinking water compared to less than 1 percent of non-native homes. Together with the Indian Health Service, EPA is using Recovery Act funds to provide much-needed support for water and wastewater systems in Indian Country,” says Laura Yoshii, acting regional administrator for the U.S. EPA in the Pacific Southwest.
“This funding creates jobs for tribal members, addresses critical infrastructure needs and will increase access to drinking water and basic sanitation services. By 2010, over 4,400 tribal homes in the Pacific Southwest are expected to receive piped drinking water or basic sanitation services for the first time.”
The other grants:
• Round Valley Indian Tribes of Mendocino County will receive $474,380 to expand its wastewater treatment facility serving 132 homes
· Redwood Valley Rancheria of Pomo Indians in Mendocino County will receive $316,770 for improvements to its wastewater treatment plant serving 32 homes
• Grindstone Indian Rancheria of Wintun-Wailaki Indians in Glenn County will receive $205,310 to upgrade sewer connections serving 10 homes
• Redding Rancheria in Shasta County will receive $180,070 to expand sewer connections serving 13 homes
• Quechan Tribe in Imperial County will receive $340,630 to upgrade sewer lines serving 15 homes
• Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians in San Diego County will receive $753,100 for drinking water treatment serving 29 homes#
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=12484
Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety
S.F. Chronicle-7/13/09
By Carolyn Lochhead
Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides.
He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.
"I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop," he said. "On one field where a deer walked through, didn't eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop."
In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world's biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national.
Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.
In pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the bigger culprit.
"Sanitizing American agriculture, aside from being impossible, is foolhardy," said UC Berkeley food guru Michael Pollan, who most recently made his case for smaller-scale farming in the documentary film "Food, Inc." "You have to think about what's the logical end point of looking at food this way. It's food grown indoors hydroponically."
Scientists do not know how the killer E. coli pathogen, which dwells mainly in the guts of cattle, made its way to a spinach field near San Juan Bautista (San Benito County) in 2006, leaving four people dead, 35 with acute kidney failure and 103 hospitalized.
The deadly bug first appeared in hamburger meat in the early 1980s and migrated to certain kinds of produce, mainly lettuce and other leafy greens that are cut, mixed and bagged for the convenience of supermarket shoppers. Hundreds of thousands of the bug can fit on the head of a pin; as few as 10 can lodge in a salad and end in lifelong disability, including organ failure.
For many giant food retailers, the choice between a dead pond and a dead child is no choice at all. Industry has paid more than $100 million in court settlements and verdicts in spinach and lettuce lawsuits, a fraction of the lost sales involved.
Galvanized by the spinach disaster, large growers instituted a quasi-governmental program of new protocols for growing greens safely, called the "leafy greens marketing agreement." A proposal was submitted last month in Washington to take these rules nationwide.
A food safety bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, passed this month in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It would give new powers to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate all farms and produce in an attempt to fix the problem. The bill would require consideration of farm diversity and environmental rules, but would leave much to the FDA.
An Amish farmer in Ohio who uses horses to plow his fields could find himself caught in a net aimed 2,000 miles away at a feral pig in San Benito County. While he may pick, pack and sell his greens in one day because he does not refrigerate, the bagged lettuce trucked from Salinas with a 17-day shelf life may be considered safer.
The leafy-green agreement is based on available science, but it is just a jumping-off point.
Large produce buyers have compiled secret "super metrics" that go much further. Farmers must follow them if they expect to sell their crops. These can include vast bare-dirt buffers, elimination of wildlife, and strict rules on water sources.
To enforce these rules, retail buyers have sent forth armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained in indoor processing plants, to inspect fields.
"They're used to working inside the factory walls," said Ken Kimes, owner of New Natives farms in Aptos (Santa Cruz County) and a board member of the Community Alliance With Family Farmers, a California group. "If they're not prepared for the farm landscape, it can come as quite a shock to them. Some of this stuff that they want, you just can't actually do."
Auditors have told Kimes that no children younger than 5 can be allowed on his farm for fear of diapers. He has been asked to issue identification badges to all visitors.
Not only do the rules conflict with organic and environmental standards; many are simply unscientific. Surprisingly little is known about how E. coli is transmitted from cow to table.
Scientists have created a vaccine to reduce E. coli in livestock, and a White House working group announced plans Tuesday to boost safety standards for eggs and meat. This month, the group is expected to issue draft guidelines for reducing E. coli contamination in leafy greens, tomatoes and melons.
Some science suggests that removing vegetation near field crops could make food less safe. Vegetation and wetlands are a landscape's lungs and kidneys, filtering out not just fertilizers, sediments and pesticides, but also pathogens. UC Davis scientists found that vegetation buffers can remove as much as 98 percent of E. coli from surface water. UC Davis advisers warn that some rodents prefer cleared areas.
Produce buyers compete to demand the most draconian standards, said Jo Ann Baumgartner, head of the Wild Farm Alliance in Watsonville, so that they can sell their products as the "safest."
State agencies responsible for California's water, air and wildlife have been unable to find out from buyers what they are demanding.
They do know that trees have been bulldozed along the riparian corridors of the Salinas Valley, while poison-filled tubes targeting rodents dot lettuce fields. Dying rodents have led to deaths of owls and hawks that naturally control rodents.
"It's all based on panic and fear, and the science is not there," said Dr. Andy Gordus, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game.
Preliminary results released in April from a two-year study by the state wildlife agency, UC Davis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that less than one-half of 1 percent of 866 wild animals tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 in Central California.
Frogs are unrelated to E. coli, but their remains in bags of mechanically harvested greens are unsightly, Gordus said, so "the industry has been using food safety as a premise to eliminate frogs."
Farmers are told that ponds used to recycle irrigation water are unsafe. So they bulldoze the ponds and pump more groundwater, opening more of the aquifer to saltwater intrusion, said Jill Wilson, an environmental scientist at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in San Luis Obispo.
Wilson said demands for 450-foot dirt buffers remove the agency's chief means of preventing pollution from entering streams and rivers. Jovita Pajarillo, associate director of the water division in the San Francisco office of the Environmental Protection Agency, said removal of vegetative buffers threatens Arroyo Seco, one of the last remaining stretches of habitat for steelhead trout.
"It's been a problem for us trying to balance the organic growing methods with the food safety requirements," Peixoto said. "At some point, we can't really meet their criteria. We just tell them that's all we can do, and we have to turn down that customer."
Large retailers did not respond to requests for comment. Food trade groups in Washington suggested calling other trade groups, which didn't comment.
Chiquita/Fresh Express, a large Salinas produce handler, told the advocacy group Food and Water Watch that the company has "developed extensive additional guidelines for the procurement of leafy greens and other produce, but we consider such guidelines to be our confidential and proprietary information."
Seattle trial lawyer Bill Marler, who represented many of the plaintiffs in the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach, said, "If we want to have bagged spinach and lettuce available 24/7, 12 months of the year, it comes with costs."
Still, he said, the industry rules won't stop lawsuits or eliminate the risk of processed greens cut in fields, mingled in large baths, put in bags that must be chilled from packing plant to kitchen, and shipped thousands of miles away.
"In 16 years of handling nearly every major food-borne illness outbreak in America, I can tell you I've never had a case where it's been linked to a farmers' market," Marler said.
"Could it happen? Absolutely. But the big problem has been the mass-produced product. What you're seeing is this rub between trying to make it as clean as possible so they don't poison anybody, but still not wanting to come to the reality that it may be the industrialized process that's making it all so risky."
Some major recent outbreaks of food-borne illness:
The Food and Drug Administration lists 40 food-borne pathogens. Among the more common: E-coli O157:H7, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, botulism and hepatitis A.
June 2009: E. coli O157:H7 found in Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough manufactured in Danville, Va., resulted in the recall of 3.6 million packages. Seventy-two people in 30 states were sickened. No traces found on equipment or workers; investigators are looking at flour and other ingredients.
October 2008: Salmonella found in peanut butter from a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Georgia. Nine people died, and an estimated 22,500 were sickened. Criminal negligence was alleged after the product tested positive and was shipped.
June 2008: Salmonella Saintpaul traced to serrano peppers grown in Mexico. More than 1,000 people were sickened in 41 states, with 203 reported hospitalizations and at least one death. Tomatoes were suspected, devastating growers.
April 2007: E. coli O157:H7 found in beef, sickening 14 people. United Food Group recalled 5.7 million pounds of meat.
December 2006: E. coli O157:H7 traced to Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y. Green onions suspected, then lettuce. Thirty-nine people were sickened, some with acute kidney failure.
September 2006: E. coli O157:H7 found in Dole bagged spinach processed at Earthbound Farms in San Juan Bautista (San Benito County). The outbreak killed four people, sent 103 to hospitals, and devastated the spinach industry.#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/07/13/MN0218DVJ8.DTL
Public comment sought on landfill impact report
Santa Maria Times-7/13/09
By Julian J. Ramos
The release of a draft environmental impact report on a proposed landfill in the Solomon Hills has raised questions about the project’s impacts on groundwater and surrounding properties.
Owned by the city of Santa Maria for three years, the Los Flores Ranch property sits on 1,774 acres, of which 286 acres are planned as a regional landfill and the remainder for recreation, about eight miles south of Santa Maria, between Orcutt and Los Alamos on the east side of Highway 101.
The new Santa Maria Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) is meant to replace the existing 290-acre Santa Maria Regional Landfill on East Main Street.
At the moment, Los Flores Ranch is open as a regional park with eight miles of trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding.
City officials have said the landfill project is a necessary step to phase out and close the existing landfill, which is expected to reach capacity in 2012, and replace it with a modern, lined landfill.
Copies of the draft EIR are available for review and comment through Aug. 3 at the Santa Maria Public Library, the Santa Maria Utilities Department and on the city Web site, www.ci.santa-maria.ca.us.
A public workshop was held June 25 and another is set for July 23.
One point of concern is groundwater under the proposed landfill area and the chance of contamination seeping into the water supply from rubbish piled on top.
However, impacts on water supply and groundwater recharge would be “less than significant,” according to the document.
Steve Kahn, city utilities engineer, said various mitigation measures such as an impervious composite layer and other systems, would lead to “no contamination” of groundwater and would be in accordance with regulatory requirements.
According to the hydrology and water quality section of the draft EIR, an area of the vast Santa Maria groundwater basin known as the Paso Robles Formation, one of three groundwater occurrences on the property, lies directly underneath 90 percent of the proposed landfill site.
Groundwater was encountered at depths ranging from 500 to 712 feet below the ground surface during the water analysis.
The water type is comparable with the quality of runoff in the Cuyama and the Sisquoc Rivers, the principal sources of groundwater recharge to the Santa Maria Valley, according to the DEIR.
A pair of wells on the property will be used to supply water for landfill operations and fire response. Bottled water will provided to about 18 employees for drinking water, the DEIR said.
Water rights for the Santa Maria groundwater basin are split into a trio of management areas: the Northern Cities Area, Nipomo Mesa Area and the Santa Maria Valley Area, of which Santa Maria is entitled to groundwater rights for 12,795 acre-feet — one acre-foot is equal to 326,000 gallons — per year.
Another worry is the dumping of hazardous waste at the landfill.
Kahn said “no hazardous waste” would be accepted at the dump.
However, acceptable materials for disposal would include non-hazardous solid waste and non-hazardous hydrocarbon impacted soil (NHIS). The most common NHIS taken to Santa Maria’s current landfill is oil-tainted sand from the Unocal spill in the Guadalupe-Nipomo dunes.
Whether neighboring properties in the area of the landfill would be devalued is unknown, as most of the land where operations would take place is on city property, Kahn said.
The entrance to the landfill would be off Highway 101 and the area around the landfill, to the north, south and west, will be city-owned. Portions of the property to the east are leased for oil exploration and production, and have historically been used for those purposes.
Further, two active oil transmission pipelines cross the property.
Each jurisdiction in the area, the city, Caltrans and the county, will have the responsibility for maintenance of their roads, he said.
Most of the project’s impacts, such as odor and grading and erosion, can be mitigated to less than significant levels, according to the environmental study. However, impacts such as increased greenhouse gases and the loss of 3,200 mature coast live oak trees are unavoidable, although two replacement oaks will be planted for each tree lost.
Built over the course of 90 years in eight phases, the project, based on preliminary plans, would cost nearly $200 million to complete, according to a 2006 estimate.#
http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2009/07/13/news/news02.txt
Program aims to sample groundwater on the North Coast
The Times-Standard-7/12/09
By John Driscoll
Beginning in June, the U.S. Geological Survey began to sample some 60 wells around the North Coast, scouting for contaminants and hoping to learn more about the groundwater in the region.
The state started the effort, but funds ran dry like they did for so many other programs as the budget crisis deepened. In May, USGS provided the funding and started the study on the North Coast, looking to tap domestic and public wells, and irrigation and stock wells.
The samples will be analyzed for even small levels of volatile organic compounds, pesticides, microorganisms and radioactivity. The study also aims to put an age on the water withdrawn from the ground, in an effort to figure out how aquifers are recharged, said USGS hydrologist Jennifer Shelton.
”We want to be able to know where that water is coming from,” Shelton said.
The state's program, the Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment program, is now being funded by the USGS's National Water Quality Assessment program. The federal program tracks water quality in streams and aquifers across the country in an effort to understand how human use affects those sources.
There is virtually no regulation of groundwater pumping in California, and that can have dramatic effects. For example, the state Department of Water Resources recently voiced grave concerns over the sinking of parts of the California Aqueduct -- which supplies water to millions in Southern California -- due to excessive agricultural groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.
Local river advocate Denver Nelson said groundwater problems are also emerging on the Mattole, South Fork of the Eel and Upper Klamath rivers. Groundwater is essential to surface flows, drinking water and water for salmon and other fish, Nelson said, and even in a temperate rain forest like the Humboldt County region shortages occur.
”I think it's the most important aspect of California's water problems,” Nelson said.
Nelson said a groundwater ordinance needs to be considered to prevent withdrawal of more groundwater than can be replenished by rain.
The Humboldt County General Plan update touches on the importance of groundwater. It points out that some 80 percent of the area's river flows occur from November to March and totals 23 million acre feet.
But the county's total potential groundwater yield, it reads, is only about 100,000 acre feet, enough to supply roughly 100,000 homes in a year.
”Potential concerns are saltwater intrusion in coastal areas and the effects of groundwater withdrawal on streams that rely on groundwater recharge to sustain flows during the dry season,” the plan reads.
The data from the USGS study may help manage groundwater resources in the future, Shelton said.#
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_12816310?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com
New Mexico rescinds boil water alert
Tri-Valley Herald-7/13/09
The state has lifted a boil water alert it issued for nearly 6,000 customers of the Morningstar Water Users Association in northwestern New Mexico's San Juan County.
The New Mexico Environment Department's Drinking Water Bureau had issued the advisory last week after levels in a water sample exceeded the maximum contaminant level for E. coli in drinking water.
The contamination had been found in the Anasazi Estates subdivision.
A water quality technician, Karla Wages-Keck, says subsequent tests were negative for E. coli and total coliform.
The presence of E. coli indicates water may have been in contact with sewage or animal wastes, and could contain disease-causing organisms.#
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