7/26/13

Officials with the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) are warning recreational users of the South Fork Eel, Van Duzen, Klamath and Mattole rivers, Big Lagoon, Freshwater Lagoon and all other freshwater bodies to avoid contact with algae this summer.

Low flows along the South Fork of the Eel River as well as the Van Duzen, coupled with sustained high temperatures in the inland areas, have created the ideal conditions for rapid blooming of blue-green algae.

DHHS is aware of 11 dog deaths that may have been caused by blue-green algae poisoning since 2001. The dogs died shortly after swimming in Big Lagoon, the South Fork Eel River and the Van Duzen River.

A nerve toxin associated with blue-green algae was found in the stomachs of the dogs that died on the South Fork Eel River in 2002. The same toxin was found in water samples from the South Fork Eel and Van Duzen rivers in 2009 just after two dogs died.

This poison is the most likely cause of the dog deaths on these rivers. Dogs are more vulnerable than people because they may swallow the toxin when they lick their fur. The onset of symptoms can be rapid; dogs have died within 30 minutes to one hour after leaving the water.

Blue-green algae blooms that produce a liver toxin have been documented in Klamath River reservoirs and the Klamath River this year. The current status of this river may be found at the Klamath Basin Monitoring Program website: http://www.kbmp.net/blue-green-algae-tracker.

Blue-green algae can be present in any freshwater body. It looks like green, blue-green, white or brown scum, foam or mats floating on the water. Usually, it does not affect animals or people. However, warm water and abundant nutrients can cause blue-green algae to grow more rapidly than usual. These floating algal masses, or “blooms,” can produce natural toxins that are very potent.

Dogs and children are most likely to be affected because of their smaller body size and tendency to stay in the water for longer periods.

Potential symptoms in dogs following exposure to blue-green algae toxins can include lethargy, difficulty breathing, salivation, excessive urination, vomiting, diarrhea or convulsions. People can experience eye irritation, skin rash, mouth ulcers, vomiting, diarrhea and cold- or flu-like symptoms.

DHHS officials recommend the following guidelines for recreational users of all freshwater areas in Humboldt County:

• Keep children, pets and livestock from swimming in or drinking water containing algal scums or mats.
• Adults should also avoid wading and swimming in water containing algal blooms. Try not to swallow or inhale water spray in an algal bloom area.
• If no algal scums or mats are visible, you should still carefully watch young children and warn them not to swallow any water.
• Fish should be consumed only after removing the guts and liver and rinsing fillets in tap water.
• Never drink, cook with or wash dishes with water from rivers, streams or lakes.
• Get medical attention immediately if you think that you, your pet or livestock might have been poisoned by blue-green algae toxins. Be sure to tell the doctor about possible contact with blue-green algae.
• Human activities can have a big effect on nutrient and water flows in rivers, streams or lakes. Phosphorous and nitrogen found in fertilizers, animal waste and human waste can stimulate blooms. Excessive water diversions can increase water temperatures and reduce flows. People can take the following measures to prevent algal blooms in local waters:
• Be very conservative with the use of water, fertilizers and pesticides on your lawn, garden or agricultural operation.
• Recycle any “spent” soil that has been used for intensive growing by tilling it back into gardens, or protect it from rainfall to avoid nutrient runoff.
• Plant or maintain native plants around banks. These plants help filter water and don't require fertilizers.
• Pump and maintain your septic system every three to four years.
• Prevent surface water runoff from agricultural and livestock areas.
• Prevent erosion around construction and logging operations.

For more information, contact the DHHS Division of Environmental Health at 707-445-6215 or 1-800-963-9241. People may report unusual blooms or conditions, including photographs, to Environmental Health by emailing envhealth@co.humboldt.ca.us. The California Department of Public Health website also has more details at www.cdph.ca.gov/healthinfo/environhealth/water/Pages/bluegreenalgae.aspx.

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7/10/13

Steve Blank made enough money from Silicon Valley startups that he could retire at 45, buy 660 acres south of Half Moon Bay and build a mansion above one of California's most pristine beaches.

He's also an environmentalist who until recently was one of 12 California Coastal Commission members and is struck by what hasn't happened to California's coast: It hasn't become the Jersey Shore.

That's because of what he proudly calls the uncompromising and unreasonable stands taken by the Coastal Commission.
Developers and property rights advocates denounce the commission, believing landowners should be able to do as they please with their precious slices of California. But over the decades, the commission has resisted becoming a captive of the businesses it regulates and the lobbyists who represent them.

Blank had commission stories to tell in 2007 when Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him. He had wanted to build his mansion on a bluff directly above Año Nuevo State Park, where elephant seals sun themselves, feast, mate and molt.
He found himself playing a game of "regulatory Twister" with the commission, winning approval only after spending an additional $3 million and agreeing to build his spread well back from the bluff, out of sight from the highway below.

Rather than becoming embittered, Blank became a believer. California, he said, has been conducting a grand experiment. By imposing strict coastal zoning and sticking to it, California has "preserved a huge economic engine."

However, Blank issued a warning two weeks ago when he resigned from the commission, first in a speech to the California League of Conservation Voters and later to me.

"You don't want lobbyists on the commission. You don't want commissioners who hate the commission. You don't want environmentalists who check out," he said – all of which he worries is happening.

"If you make a mistake on an insurance regulation or an air quality regulation, you can change that. Once you bulldoze a wetland, it's gone," Blank said.

Clearly, the commission is in a transition. Peter Douglas, who wrote the 1972 initiative that created the commission and was its director for 25 years, died last year. Eight members of the 12-seat commission have been appointed since 2011.

Gov. Jerry Brown, not a fan of the commission, has a vacancy to fill, as do Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez and the Senate Rules Committee chaired by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

In recent weeks, environmentalists have been campaigning for the reappointment of Commission Chairwoman Mary K. Shallenberger, first named by the Senate in 2004 and the only commissioner with any longevity.

On Tuesday, Steinberg told me he will recommend that Shallenberger be reappointed when the Rules Committee meets today, noting she is committed to the coast and is the one commissioner who has experience and institutional memory.

Steinberg called the commission one of "the pre-eminent land use agencies in the state and nation." But the commission also is insular, cliquish and given to internal feuds.

"They are full of drama," Steinberg said. That needs to end. The commission also "needs to work on better customer service, especially with people who own one parcel or one business on the coast," he said.

Blank, widely regarded as a Silicon Valley leader, is the son of a father who escaped Poland before the Holocaust and a mother who fled Russia. He grew up in an apartment in Queens, joined the Air Force where he learned electronics, and settled in the Silicon Valley in 1978. Eight startups later, he was wealthy beyond his dreams.

"You have a couple choices. Do you keep it all, or do you realize how lucky you are, and pay it forward," he said, making clear his choice.

He resigned from the commission to spend more time teaching. Although he never completed college, he teaches entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and Stanford, and is expanding his offerings at the request of the National Science Foundation.

Blank talks about the "tragedy of the commons," a reference to a time in England when space was set aside for the common good. If shepherds allowed their flocks to overgraze, the common space would cease to be of use. So it is with the coast, which is finite.
There always will be coastal development. But if voters hadn't taken matters into their own hands 40 years ago, and if the California Coastal Commission had become malleable, much more of the 1,100 miles of coastline would have become marred by condos, fancy resorts and perhaps oil derricks.

Rich people still can own beachfront homes, but they cannot stop the rest of us from using beaches, commons that belong to us all. In a state where the population has nearly doubled since 1972, you and I still can spend at the day at the ocean. That's worth preserving.

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7/12/13

Polluted stormwater runoff is the number one source of contamination to California's renowned waters. When it rains, water flows over streets, lawns, and parking lots, carrying a toxic soup of copper, lead, zinc and other heavy metals, oils and car fluids, bacteria, viruses and other harmful materials -- untreated -- to our rivers, lakes and coastal waters.



And when the beaches, rivers and lakes that we use and enjoy for swimming, fishing and drinking are polluted, we all pay the costs. Pervasive polluted runoff threatens California's $9 billion beach economy. Closed beaches and canceled fishing trips translate into lost tourism revenue. And there are significant public health costs when people get sick from swimming in or even coming into contact with contaminated water.

Contamination from polluted runoff at Los Angeles and Orange County beaches alone sickens approximately one million swimmers every year, resulting in $21 to $51 million in health costs from doctor visits and lost time at work. And when waters eventually become so seriously polluted that we can no longer use them for swimming, fishing, drinking, or other uses, we pay for the costly cleanup of the mess we've made.

Taxpayer dollars already support public infrastructure to manage runoff, and regulations set requirements for new development or redevelopment projects to reduce their contribution to address this problem. Now is the time for those responsible for existing sources of pollution, the buildings, parking lots, and other structures that make up the vast majority of our urban and suburban landscapes, to do their fair share to prevent pollution.



Wednesday, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), California Coastkeeper Alliance, American Rivers, and Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), jointly filed a petition that calls on EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, to establish requirements to close loopholes that fail to control pollution from existing commercial, industrial, and institutional areas in western states, including California. NRDC also worked with partner groups to file petitions in EPA regions covering New England and the Mid-Atlantic.



Stronger water quality regulations have tangible benefits -- a new study demonstrated a relationship between installation of stormwater controls and increased beach attendance at 26 Los Angeles beaches. The study concluded that improving coastal water quality through stronger stormwater controls increased beach attendance by 350,000 to 860,000 people annually at each affected beach, with corresponding benefits to local economies.



Too often, discussions about water pollution problems are focused almost exclusively on the cost of regulations, ignoring the cost, largely borne by the public, of the pollution itself. We urge U.S. EPA to use its authority to reduce polluted runoff, protect clean water, and relieve the burden on taxpayers.

 And while we work to advance long-term solutions to reduce polluted runoff flows to California waters, NRDC, California Coastkeeper Alliance, and other local partners have tools to give you information about the health and safety of your local waters.

• Check to see how your favorite beach fared in NRDC's 23rd Annual Testing the Waters Report
• Download the Waterkeeper Swim Guide smartphone application for up-to-date water quality information about more than 400 California beaches, coves, rivers, and creeks.


Sara Aminzadeh is the Executive Director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance.


Noah Garrison is an attorney with the National Water Program at NRDC.

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Notorious banned chemicals appear in products: Toxic Substances Control Act's secret loophole

7/2/13

Regular readers of this blog are already outraged that chemical companies can dream up new chemicals and market them to Americans without first making sure that they are safe. What’s even more disturbing is that our current laws can’t even get rid of chemicals that we know are toxic, even long after they have been “banned.”

That’s the case with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. These notorious toxic compounds have been banned under our federal law on chemicals -- the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) -- since the 1970s.  But a little known fact is that TSCA has a big loophole: PCBs are allowed in consumer products as long as their production is unintentional. Oftentimes, PCBs are by-products of chemical processes.

One process that generates a lot of PCBs is the production of pigments, which are used in paints and printing inks. Researchers at the University of Iowa tested batches of paint pigments and found a wide range of PCBs in them. My students here at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, have been testing consumer products that have printing inks in them, including newspapers, magazines, napkins, plastic bags, and even clothing, and finding PCBs in them. That’s right, there are PCBs in your children’s clothing, food packaging, and napkins!

The TSCA rules say that if PCBs are present in a product inadvertently, then the product has to be tested, the PCB levels have to be less than 50 ppm (parts per million) at all times, and the average concentration can’t be greater than 25 ppm. The European Union has similar regulations. The problem is that the manufacturers don’t have to report the results of the tests, and in many cases it is not clear that the tests are even being performed. Clearly the current system is not working.

Like everything else these days, the market for pigments is global.  If you look at the Toxics Release Inventory, you find that the number of facilities making these pigments in the U.S. has dwindled from 14 in 1988 to only one in 2011.

The production has moved overseas, mostly to China and India. This makes it harder to enforce the regulations, even though the U.S. EPA applies exactly the same limits and requirements to imported substances as to things produced in the U.S. The government of Japan recently tested several batches of pigments and found concentrations of PCBs up to 2,000 ppm, or 40 times higher than the legal limit.

This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

Although the limit set by TSCA is 50 ppm, the federal water quality standard for PCBs is just 64 ppq (parts per quadrillion!), which is about 1,000,000,000 times lower that the TSCA standard. This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

The Clean Water Act says that water quality standards have to protect human health and the environment. The TSCA standards also have to consider economic impact, but where they got a number of 50 ppm is something of a mystery.

Think about this from the point of view of a recycled paper mill. The ink in the paper they want to recycle can have up to 1,000,000,000 times higher PCB levels than the concentrations the Clean Water Act allows them to emit to our rivers and streams.
How can they possibly comply? Some recycled paper mills may be forced to go out of business if they can’t meet their effluent standards. That means we lose jobs here in the U.S. because of pigments produced overseas. Why not just eliminate the pollution at the source by using only pigments that don’t contain PCBs?

Right now, EPA has put out an Advance Notice of Public Rule Making regarding the use authorizations for PCBs.  The Environmental Council of States has issued a resolution saying that EPA should work with industries to find safer alternatives to the PCB-laden pigments. At the very least, EPA should enforce the rules on the books and make sure that importers test all of their pigments and report the results before these pigments can come into the country!

At the end of the day there is no simple solution to addressing PCBs, but a good place to start is to reform the out-of-date TSCA. You can make a difference and take action today.

Regular readers of this blog are already outraged that chemical companies can dream up new chemicals and market them to Americans without first making sure that they are safe. What’s even more disturbing is that our current laws can’t even get rid of chemicals that we know are toxic, even long after they have been “banned.”

That’s the case with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. These notorious toxic compounds have been banned under our federal law on chemicals -- the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) -- since the 1970s.  But a little known fact is that TSCA has a big loophole: PCBs are allowed in consumer products as long as their production is unintentional. Oftentimes, PCBs are by-products of chemical processes.

One process that generates a lot of PCBs is the production of pigments, which are used in paints and printing inks. Researchers at the University of Iowa tested batches of paint pigments and found a wide range of PCBs in them. My students here at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, have been testing consumer products that have printing inks in them, including newspapers, magazines, napkins, plastic bags, and even clothing, and finding PCBs in them. That’s right, there are PCBs in your children’s clothing, food packaging, and napkins!

The TSCA rules say that if PCBs are present in a product inadvertently, then the product has to be tested, the PCB levels have to be less than 50 ppm (parts per million) at all times, and the average concentration can’t be greater than 25 ppm. The European Union has similar regulations. The problem is that the manufacturers don’t have to report the results of the tests, and in many cases it is not clear that the tests are even being performed. Clearly the current system is not working.

Like everything else these days, the market for pigments is global.  If you look at the Toxics Release Inventory, you find that the number of facilities making these pigments in the U.S. has dwindled from 14 in 1988 to only one in 2011.

The production has moved overseas, mostly to China and India. This makes it harder to enforce the regulations, even though the U.S. EPA applies exactly the same limits and requirements to imported substances as to things produced in the U.S. The government of Japan recently tested several batches of pigments and found concentrations of PCBs up to 2,000 ppm, or 40 times higher than the legal limit.

This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

Although the limit set by TSCA is 50 ppm, the federal water quality standard for PCBs is just 64 ppq (parts per quadrillion!), which is about 1,000,000,000 times lower that the TSCA standard. This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

The Clean Water Act says that water quality standards have to protect human health and the environment. The TSCA standards also have to consider economic impact, but where they got a number of 50 ppm is something of a mystery.

Think about this from the point of view of a recycled paper mill. The ink in the paper they want to recycle can have up to 1,000,000,000 times higher PCB levels than the concentrations the Clean Water Act allows them to emit to our rivers and streams.
How can they possibly comply? Some recycled paper mills may be forced to go out of business if they can’t meet their effluent standards. That means we lose jobs here in the U.S. because of pigments produced overseas. Why not just eliminate the pollution at the source by using only pigments that don’t contain PCBs?

Right now, EPA has put out an Advance Notice of Public Rule Making regarding the use authorizations for PCBs.  The Environmental Council of States has issued a resolution saying that EPA should work with industries to find safer alternatives to the PCB-laden pigments. At the very least, EPA should enforce the rules on the books and make sure that importers test all of their pigments and report the results before these pigments can come into the country!

At the end of the day there is no simple solution to addressing PCBs, but a good place to start is to reform the out-of-date TSCA. You can make a difference and take action today.

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