News

Small non-profit works to reduce massive sewage spills into San Francisco Bay

1/23/12

Every year, winter rains like the recent storms that have soaked the Bay Area help fill reservoirs and perk up lawns. But they also carry an ugly downside, causing aging sewage systems to back up, overflow and malfunction, endangering human health and polluting San Francisco Bay.

Last year, a staggering 17.5 million gallons of raw or partially treated sewage spilled in the nine Bay Area counties -- enough to fill 26 Olympic-size swimming pools -- and 95 percent of it flowed to the bay, lakes or streams.

But with little fanfare, a small nonprofit group is steadily turning the tide.

Over the past five years, San Francisco Baykeeper, with a staff of eight people, has filed 10 lawsuits under the Clean Water Act, seeking to force dramatic reductions in sewage spills. The group has won every one, securing settlements that are forcing 20 cities from the East Bay to Silicon Valley to invest tens of millions of dollars replacing miles of cracked pipes, boosting inspections and cleaning up their operations.

"We have the worst polluters on a path to success," said Deb Self, executive director of the San Francisco-based group.

"It's a quality-of-life issue. There shouldn't be areas where there is sewage in the streets and playgrounds and flowing into the bay. These are not conditions we should have in this country."

Aging pipelines

The problem is fairly basic. There are 17,166 miles of sewer pipe in the Bay Area. That's nearly enough to stretch from San Francisco to New York City and back three times. But much of it is aging clay pipe that dates to the 1950s and earlier, with some sections under older suburbs more than a century old.

Earthquakes and shifts in the ground crack the pipes, allowing tree roots to grow through. Grease and other debris clog the pipes. Heavy rains pour into the cracks, overloading treatment plants and bubbling up through manhole covers.

"This is essentially untreated sewage. It is very significant," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the state's primary water pollution agency, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, in Oakland.

"It overflows into storm drains and goes into the bay," Wolfe said. "It's organic matter, heavy metals, bacteria and other things that are significant for human health and aquatic species."

But state budget cuts have forced Wolfe's agency to cut his staff from 145 people a decade ago to 100.

Seeking more enforcement, Baykeeper stepped in.

The group took advantage of a 2006 law passed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that requires every public agency running a sewer system in California to file monthly reports showing how many spills their systems suffered and how much was spilled. The reports are tallied up in a database and posted on the Internet.

Baykeeper began ranking the roughly 100 cities in the Bay Area by their rate of spills. It hired lawyers and began suing them under the Clean Water Act, one of the nation's most powerful environmental laws -- and one that gives regular citizens, rather than just government agencies, the authority to sue polluters.

Critics say the group goes too far.

The Pacific leatherback sea turtle population has declined 95 percent since the 1980s.

1/21/12

Federal regulators designated nearly 42,000 square miles of ocean along the West Coast as critical habitat for the Pacific leatherback turtle Friday, far less than originally proposed but still the largest protected area ever established in American waters.

The protected area is the first permanent safe haven in the waters of the continental United States for endangered leatherbacks, which swim 6,000 miles every year to eat jellyfish outside the Golden Gate.

The designation, by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, was a bittersweet victory for environmentalists, who have been fighting to protect the marine reptiles from extinction.

The 41,914 square miles that the NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service protected along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington did not include the migration routes the turtles take to get to the feeding grounds. That means 28,686 square miles of habitat originally proposed for the designation was left unprotected.

"It's a big step in the right direction, but we want protections for migratory pathways," said Ben Enticknap, the Pacific project manager for Oceana, an international nonprofit dedicated to protecting the world's oceans. "I guess we've got a lot more work to do to get there."

How protection works

The regulations will restrict projects that harm the turtles or the gelatinous delicacies they devour. The government will be required to review and, if necessary, regulate agricultural waste, pollution, oil spills, power plants, oil drilling, storm-water runoff and liquid natural gas projects along the California coast between Santa Barbara and Mendocino counties and off the Oregon and Washington coasts.

Aquaculture, tidal, wave turbine, desalination projects and nuclear power plants will have to consider impacts on jellyfish and sea turtles. For instance, the repermitting of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, in San Luis Obispo, will probably come under scrutiny.

The regulations are a response to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in 2009 by the nonprofit environmental groups Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and Oceana. The groups had been trying since 2007 to establish critical habitat for leatherbacks under the Endangered Species Act. They accused the government of failing to protect the reptiles from gill-net and longline fishing, oil drilling and a variety of other activities, including wave-energy projects.

California habitat

The new ruling covers 16,910 square miles along California's coast from Point Arena (Mendocino County) to Point Arguello (Santa Barbara County) to a depth of 9,000 feet. The remaining turtle habitat stretches from Cape Flattery, Wash., to Cape Blanco, Ore. seaward to a depth of a little more than 6,500 feet.

The only other critical habitat established for leatherbacks in U.S. waters is in a small area along the western end of St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands. There is also some critical habitat in Puerto Rico for green sea turtles and hawksbill sea turtles, but nothing as large as the new designation.

Turtle advocates are worried that the decision to leave out migratory routes will leave the giant sea creatures vulnerable to long lines and drift nets dragged by oceangoing vessels, which often mistakenly hook and entangle marine mammals and turtles.

Both longline and gill-net fishing are banned along the West Coast during leatherback migration, but Teri Shore, the program director for the Turtle Island Restoration Network, said the fisheries service is considering plans to expand gill-net fishing for swordfish.

More threats

"Threats to these turtles are increasing, not diminishing," said Shore, whose organization also goes by its Web name, SeaTurtles.org. "We don't want to see the leatherback turtles go the way of the grizzly bear and disappear."

Leatherbacks, known scientifically as Dermochelys coriacea, are the largest sea turtles in the world, sometimes measuring 9 feet long and weighing as much as three refrigerators, or more than 1,200 pounds. Their life span is not fully known, but biologists believe they live at least 40 years and possibly as long as 100 years.

The worldwide population has declined by 95 percent since the 1980s because of commercial fishing, egg poaching, destruction of nesting habitat, degradation of foraging habitat and changing ocean conditions. Listed as endangered since 1970 under the Endangered Species Act, there are believed to be only 2,000 to 5,700 nesting females left in the world.

Pacific leatherbacks leave their nesting grounds in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea and swim across the Pacific Ocean to forage along the West Coast in the summer and fall. It is the longest known migration of any marine reptile.

Humboldt County is first public agency to use molecular testing

1/23/12

Humboldt's vibrant oyster farming industry and bioterrorism funds have allowed the county's public health laboratory to deploy a cutting-edge process to test for shellfish contamination.

The laboratory is now the only public facility in California to utilize a molecular process -- known as polymerase chain reaction -- for oyster testing. The only other laboratory to perform this type of work is a private lab in San Diego.

Laboratory manager Jeremy Corrigan said the new process, which started last week, allows the county to perform bacteria testing for Humboldt's oyster farmers as well as operations in Oregon and Washington.

”This is an opportunity for us to get more business from not only our county but other places,” he said.

Corrigan worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to get the molecular method in place at the lab. He said the agency recognized the county's established oyster testing program. The lab has been performing tests on and off since 1999, according to the public health department.

Corrigan adjusted the protocol to use the equipment required for oyster testing. The county purchased the equipment -- which can also be used to test for diseases such as whooping cough and influenza, or substances like anthrax --with bioterrorism funding.

For nearly 20 years, Coast Seafood Co. has contracted with the lab to run weekly tests on samples of Pacific and Kumamoto oysters for a type of bacteria that causes intestinal infection.

”It really aids in our ability to control the quality of our product and really monitor the quality of our product. We really have a high quality of seafood that comes out of Humboldt Bay,” Coast Seafood Co. Southwest Operations Manager Greg Dale said.

This bacteria, virbrio parahaemolyticus, is a naturally occurring organism commonly found in brackish saltwater along the coast in the United States and Canada where oysters are cultivated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Certain conditions can cause the bacteria to flourish in coastal waters, and shellfish can become contaminated.

According to public health, two cases of the intestinal infection caused by virbrio parahaemolyticus were reported in 2007, but it is unclear if they were linked to oyster consumption. No cases have been reported in the past four years.

Dale said the company has done quality control for oysters and water as a precaution. About 70 percent of California's oysters are grown in Humboldt Bay.

Although there has never been a positive result, a recent false positive illustrates the streamlined convenience of the new process, he said.

In the past, the lab performed a chemical test to see if the bacteria was present. If the test was positive, samples were sent to the San Diego lab to determine if pathogens that can make people sick were present. The entire process took about five to six days. According to public health, any contaminated oyster beds are shut down until the results are available.

Report highlights California's huge 'wave power' potential

1/19/12

A new report by the Department of Energy says that waves off California's 1,100-mile coastline could generate more than 140 terawatt hours of electricity a year -- enough to power 14 million homes -- if tidal and wave energy was developed to its maximum potential.

The United States uses about 4,000 terawatt hours of electricity a year; 1 terawatt hour powers about 100,000 American homes.

"California's wave and tidal current resources offer real opportunities to generate renewable energy using water-power technologies in the future," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.

Wave energy uses a variety of devices placed in the ocean to generate electricity, but the technology has not been widely used in the United States. The Department of Energy is sponsoring three demonstration projects off the coast of Oregon, in Washington's Puget Sound area and in Maine.

Currently, California has no wave energy project up and running, but the California Ocean Protection Council says one project off the coast of San Onofre has received a preliminary permit. The permitting process is complex and involves several federal and state agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

"Wave energy projects have a very low profile -- much lower than a wind turbine," Mike Reed, team leader for water-power technologies at the Department of Energy, said in an interview. "The devices are located two to three miles off shore -- you can't see them from the shore."

Pacific Gas & Electric last year suspended its Humboldt WaveConnect Project, a pilot project off the coast of Humboldt County, amid opposition from some environmentalists and concerns about the lengthy permitting process, escalating costs and feasibility. Many Humboldt County environmentalists opposed WaveConnect over concerns that it would damage local fisheries and marine ecology.

The Energy Department's Water Power Program is trying to quantify the nation's potential water-power resources so that investors, developers and policymakers can make decisions about where to place them.

Crab season starts Sunday

1/14/12

After waiting weeks for the season to begin, commercial crab fishermen were allowed to drop their traps into the water Friday at noon.

Dozens of boats loaded with crab pots headed out to sea on Friday morning, and crab is expected to show up on docks on Sunday.

Eureka crab fisherman Scott Creps said fishermen will be waiting on the water at midnight Sunday to pull up their catch.

”It's been a month and a half -- everybody's really anxious to get going,” he said “We've got a good price to get started with.”

DFG senior marine biologist Pete Kalvass said crab samples tested last weekend finally showed crabs from all ports on the North Coast -- including Eureka and Trinidad -- meeting the minimum standards for the season. Although the season normally starts Dec. 1, early results showed that the crabs weren't meaty enough, delaying the season. Crabs must be 25 percent meat to reach the threshold.

Creps said fishermen have been offered $3 a pound, a substantial increase from last year's price of $1.75 a pound.

The delayed market may have played a role in the price.

The season has already opened in the San Francisco Bay Area, where parties agreed to a price of $2.25 a pound in late November after a two-week bargaining delay.