1/6/11

Oregon is poised to adopt the strictest standard for toxic water pollution in the United States, driven by concerns about tribal members and others who eat large amounts of contaminated fish.

The Department of Environmental Quality proposed the new standard Thursday, nearly two decades after concerns about contamination in fish prompted studies that showed tribal members along the Columbia River eat far more fish than the general population.

The new rule, scheduled for approval in June, would dramatically tighten human health criteria for a host of pollutants, including mercury, flame retardants, PCBs, dioxins, plasticizers and pesticides.

Industry and cities worry about the costs of complying with the new rules and controlling pollution, likely to run in the millions.

"There are potentially a lot of manufacturing jobs being put at risk," said John Ledger, an Associated Oregon Industries vice president. "It could put (businesses) in a terrible position, where they can't locate here or expand."

Environmental groups say the change is long overdue, but exceptions built into the proposed rules and a lack of focus on pollution from farms, timberlands and urban stormwater mean they might not reduce pollution significantly.

"We can change standards on paper, but how it plays out on the ground and whether we're really ratcheting down pollution is what matters," said Brett VandenHeuvel, Columbia Riverkeeper's executive director.

The proposal presses some big hot buttons: regulating industry in a down economy; DEQ's authority over farms and forests; protecting tribal members who have seen their health compromised and their traditional diet degraded by pollution.

Oregon's current water quality standard is built on an assumption that people eat 17.5 grams of fish a day, about a cracker's worth. The proposed standard boosts that to 175 grams a day, just shy of an 8-ounce meal.

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1/16/11

Higher ocean levels force Ventura officials to move facilities inland, an action that is expected to recur along the coast as the ocean rises over the next century.

At Surfers Point in Ventura, California is beginning its retreat from the ocean.

Construction crews are removing a crumbling bike path, ripping out a 120-space parking lot and laying down sand and cobblestones. By pushing the asphalt 65 feet inland, the project is expected to give the wave-ravaged point 50 more years of life.

The effort by the city of Ventura is the most vivid example to date of what may lie ahead in California as coastal communities come to grips with rising sea levels and worsening coastal erosion. As the coastline creeps inland, scouring sand from beaches or eating away at coastal bluffs, landowners will increasingly be forced to decide whether to spend vast sums of money fortifying the shore or give up and step back.

State officials say the $4.5-million project in Ventura is the first of its kind in California and could serve as a model for threatened sites along the coast.

"Managed retreat, as it's called, is one of the things that we're going to have in our quiver to deal with sea-level rise and increasing storms," said Sam Schuchat, executive officer of the California Coastal Conservancy, which helped fund the Surfers Point project.

Sea levels have risen about 8 inches in the last century and are expected to swell at an increasing rate as climate change warms the ocean, experts say. In California, the sea is projected to rise as much as 55 inches by the end of the century and gobble up 41 square miles of coastal land, according to a 2009 state-commissioned report by the Pacific Institute.

For years, the preferred solution to an eroding shoreline has been to build sea walls or dump imported sand to serve as a buffer. About one-third of the Southern California coastline and about 10% of the shore statewide have been fortified with sea walls and other hard structures.

Although artificial barriers may protect property in the short term, they often intensify the effect of waves, leaving beaches stripped of sand until they narrow or disappear, permanently altering surf patterns.

As a result, beach-armoring projects are increasingly out of favor with environmentalists and coastal regulators.

At Surfers Point, Ventura officials first knew they had a problem about two decades ago, when storms started chewing away at the oceanfront bike path a few years after it was built.

When heavy storms hit, waves ate mounds of sand, washed away chunks of asphalt and exposed rebar, car parts and junk that had been underground for decades.

Officials at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, which is on a 62-acre site next to Surfers Point, initially suggested a buried sea wall. But environmentalists and surfers fiercely objected, saying that armoring the shore would protect a parking lot at the expense of the beach and destroy the point break near the Ventura River that generates the distinctive, surfer-friendly waves for which the site was named.

After extensive debate, the fairgrounds agreed to give up some of its property for a plan that would provide room for the sand to shift. It is based on the idea that beaches are constantly in flux, growing as the summer's gentle waves bring sand ashore and shrinking when winter storms scour it away.

"It was the right thing to do for all of the residents of the county," said fairgrounds Chief Executive Officer Barbara Quaid, who prefers not to view it as sacrificing land but as redirecting its use. "Coming down to the beach and seeing it beautified is a lot different than coming down and seeing a bike path that's falling into the ocean."

The "managed retreat" marks a reversal with profound implications for a state that has for more than a century crammed its most valuable homes and businesses on the edge of the ocean.

"There's the old-school mentality that when nature threatens you, you fight back," said Paul Jenkin, Ventura campaign manager for the Surfrider Foundation and a longtime advocate for the project. "So this idea of retreating and moving back was really quite a radical proposition."

In the near term, there are a number of publicly owned sites, from a weathered parking lot hugging a narrow strand at Cardiff State Beach in San Diego County to a lifeguard station within a few steps of the surf in San Clemente, where planners might soon have to consider moving structures out of harm's way.

Such a decision would be far tougher for private property owners, but they too could eventually be in the position of giving up billions of dollars of desirable real estate.

"The challenge is we have built most of our civilization within a few feet of sea level or right at the edge," said Gary Griggs, a coastal geologist at UC Santa Cruz who co-wrote the book "Living With the Changing California Coast." "It's either going to be managed or unmanaged, but it's going to be retreat."

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1/12/11

Congressman Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, reintroduced legislation that would permanently prohibit oil and gas drilling off the coasts of Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

According to a press release from Thompson's office, the congressman introduced the Northern California Ocean and Coastal Protection Act, which would protect the unique and dynamic marine environment along the Northern Coast of California's outer continental shelf (OCS) from offshore drilling. Thompson also introduced this legislation in the 111th Congress.

”It is critical that we permanently protect our coast and its vital marine life from the environmental hazards of offshore drilling,” Thompson said. “In past Congresses, this important issue has become a political dispute rather than a debate on legitimate policy. This legislation will steer the debate back to sensible, science based policy, and ensure the well-being of our oceans for future generations.”

During the 110th Congress, the ban on OCS drilling expired, which leaves the North Coast susceptible to drilling. The moratorium on OCS drilling had been a bipartisan agreement in Congress since 1982, but came under regular attack, and was not renewed in 2008.

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“Get the Lead Out” federal law signed by President Obama

Four years ago, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) Board of Directors boldly launched a campaign to persuade California lawmakers to require manufacturers to remove lead from faucets and other water fixtures. It was given little chance of success in the face of strong opposition.

EBMUD’s Board of Directors, led by the relentless efforts of Board members John A. Coleman, Doug Linney and William B. Patterson, worked closely with Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Oakland, who sponsored California legislation AB 1953.

The federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which determines the national lead content standard, currently allows up to 8 percent lead content for faucets and other plumbing fixtures, and limits the amount of lead that can leach from plumbing into drinking water. But health studies show that much smaller amounts of lead exposure can have serious impacts on children and adults, including kidney disease, hypertension, hearing loss and brain damage.

The new laws began with some disturbing observations by EBMUD staff in Oakland in 2004. As the District replaced plumbing fixtures in its system, engineers realized outdated state and federal laws permitted excessively high levels of lead in plumbing parts, information they shared with the Board.

This landmark public health legislation received the support of countless children’s health and public health organizations, hospitals, environmental and consumer protection advocates, in addition to state and national drinking water associations.

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New U.S. lead ban has roots in East Bay

Written by Mike Taugher for the Contra Costa Times, 1/7/11

A new federal law that bans lead in new faucets within three years is patterned after a 2006 California law that was sponsored by the East Bay's largest water district.

For the past year, California has required that new faucets have no more than trace amounts of lead -- no more than 0.25 percent, a standard 32 times tougher than the old one.

President Barack Obama this week signed a similar bill for the nation, which was carried by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto. The new law gives manufacturers three years to comply.

California enacted its standard in 2006 after workers at the East Bay Municipal Utility District realized that despite water districts' insistence on lead-free fittings and valves for its water systems, home plumbing fixtures were permitted to contain up to 8 percent lead.

"When we learned you could have up to 8 percent lead in your faucet and we knew you could make a faucet without lead, it was a no-brainer," said EBMUD lobbyist Randy Kanouse.

Lead is a health threat, especially to children. Water districts such as EBMUD are required to test drinking water for lead at both treatment plants at the tap, so the district faced the possibility that its efforts to remove lead could be reversed by lead in household plumbing.

The bill was strongly opposed and only had limited support within former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's circle of advisers, Kanouse said.

"Everyone else ... hated the bill and said veto, veto, veto," Kanouse said.

But he got a one-word e-mail shortly before the governor's deadline to act on bills in 2006. "Signed," it read.

Vermont and Maryland followed California's initiative and the faucet-making industry saw the potential for a patchwork of different standards developing.

An industry official said that while faucet makers saw the initial state legislation as unnecessary -- since they had to test to ensure lead did not leach from faucets into tap water -- it supported federal legislation.

"Once it passed in California, our goal was to harmonize the rest of the country for the sake of efficiency," said Barbara Higgens, executive director of the Plumbing Manufacturers International near Chicago.