Blue Water Task Force: San Diego Chapter

A Vote to Allow City to Hasten Dirty Storm Water to the Ocean

2010-05-16T08:26:00.001-07:00

The San Diego Planning Commission Thursday approved a proposal by the city’s Storm Water Department to clear vegetation from creeks around the city, even though the plan acknowledges that it will cause storm water that reaches the coastal waters to be even more polluted.
The impetus for this project comes from flooding that causes problems in a few areas -- for example, some areas of the Tijuana River Valley, Alvarado and Grantsville areas in the San Diego River watershed.
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The problem is that the plan identifies about 170 areas in the city for vegetation clearing and new road building in open space, including creeks where flooding has never been a problem, such as in the Gilman Canyon section of Rose Canyon. When challenged by the Friends of Rose Canyon, the city quickly removed those areas from the plan, causing me to wonder. If the city admits that these specific areas are not necessary for the plan, how were all of the sites selected?
Strangely, the plan does not include any hydrologic models that would allow us to predict what the effect of vegetation removal from our creeks will be, whether vegetation removal will solve property loss from flooding, or even whether it will cause worse flooding problems downstream. But, we can be sure that removing vegetation will decrease water quality because wetland plants and soil microbes have been demonstrated to clean urban pollutants out of storm water. Instead, the city will continue to use a method that has fallen into disfavor in the last century because of environmental degradation that it causes.
Other cities approach storm water management in a new way. Instead of speeding storm water to the ocean as fast as possible, they find ways to keep our storm water on the land as long as possible. This can be achieved by increasing the infiltration where the rain falls, by intercepting it on the way downstream with basins and wetlands, and by repairing eroded creeks so that the water spreads out, slows down, and sinks in. (Read more about this process here.)
Sadly, none of these alternatives are part of the approved plan.
Seven San Diego environmental groups (San Diego Coastkeeper, Costal Environmental Rights Foundation, San Diego Audubon Society, Friends of Rose Canyon, Sierra Club San Diego Chapter, San Diego Canyonlands, and California Native Plant Society San Diego Chapter) have called for the city to reconsider its plan and come up with a solution that will reduce flood damage and also have beneficial effects on the rest of our environment. This call has been ignored so far, it remains to be seen whether the City Council will answer it.
-- CARRIE SCHNEIDER

County of San Diego seeking funding for Beach Water Quality monitoring

2010-05-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

Funding for County of San Diego Beach Water Quality Monitoring:
San Diego Surfrider's Stance

This article discusses how the County of San Diego is trying to find money for the beach water quality program that they have been running for the last few years. Before the County took over the program, the beach water quality monitoring had been conducted by local environmental activitsts from, you guessed it, the Blue Water Task Force! The County claims that they no longer have money to fund the program after this year, and that they have allocated all of the general funds to other programs. Although we question the counties funding ability and priorities, we at Surfrider are willing to support them in finding other funding sources- government accountability is important to us, but for now our priority is to ensure that the beach water quality monitoring program receives funding for next year. As a part of our agreement to support the county in finding external funding sources, we are asking that they work with us to find a long term solution to this problem. Though we recognize that this time is economically difficult, it is unacceptable for us to have to wonder if our beaches will be monitored or not next year. It is obvious that the quality of our coastal waters has an enormous impact on many aspects of San Diego life, ranging from coastal tourism to recreational opportunities for residents, and we must continue to emphasize how important this monitoring is to us.

Cox to seek money for water-quality monitoring

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/10/cox-seek-money-water-quality-monitoring/

Monday, May 10, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.
County Supervisor Greg Cox is launching a formal process to find money for monitoring the water quality at local beaches in 2011.
On Tuesday, he will propose to the full board of supervisors that county officials join the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board in that effort.
Environmentalists, public-health experts and others deem coastal pollution monitoring to be a critical service for residents and tourists.
Amid a budget crisis in 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used a line-item veto to remove $302,000 in annual funding for San Diego’s monitoring program, which had been among the largest in the state. He also vetoed spending in other coastal counties, creating a scramble for money statewide.
An emergency grant from the State Water Resources Control Board will pay for the pollution reporting in San Diego County through June, and the agency has pledged $123,200 in federal stimulus funds to continue the local program through 2010.
Mike Lee

The Rising Cost of Fixing Our Bad Habits

2010-04-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

Coastal watershed degradation and dirty beaches just don’t harm local ecosystems; polluted water harms swimmers and surfers, threatens tourism, and contaminates our ground water. Education is one of the primary goals of the Blue Water Task Force. As residents of Southern California, we each have a stake in protecting our local environment. Through education and outreach, we can teach citizens the basic tenants of watershed protection and pollution mitigation. A recent article at SignOnSanDiego.com highlights the rising costs of maintaining our current system of water runoff management. You can read the article here.

Sadly, many of the problems created by polluted storm drain water are preventable. Outlined in the article are some of the simple steps you can take to limit your impact on our local watersheds:

-Clean up pet waste and put it in the garbage.

-Cover trash cans to keep out rain, which can cause leaching.

-Eliminate runoff from irrigation systems by precisely setting sprinklers and irrigation times.

-Apply fertilizers and pesticides per manufacturer guidelines.

-Minimize erosion by using mulch or ground cover on landscapes.

-Dispose of vehicle fluids and yard chemicals at centers certified for accepting household hazardous waste.

-Repair vehicle leaks promptly.

-Wash vehicles on the lawn, where water and soap can sink in.

These simple changes in behavior could eventually save the City and taxpayers millions of dollars in sewage treatment and clean-up costs. But education doesn’t just stop with Main Street; law and policy makers also need to get the message. Case in point, from the article:

“(Cid) Tesoro and other local government officials agree that clean beaches are important, but they question whether regulators know enough about the pollution problems before toughening the standards.

‘If we don’t have all the science and all the monitoring that shows there is indeed a problem, it doesn’t make sense that we spend so much money to try to resolve it,’ Tesoro said.”

As someone who has been part of BWTF for over two years, I can definitively say that that the science and monitoring show that there is indeed a problem.

We are all guilty of wanting our cake and eating it too. But as our population continues to grow and stress an already overloaded system, the price of providing clean water and beaches is also going to increase. Whether we like it or not, maintaining paradise has its cost. But if each of us takes responsibility for controlling our impact on the environment, we can lower that shared cost and enjoy the benefits of nature’s beauty and bounty for generations to come.

Heal the Ocean Releases Groundbreaking Report on Wastewater Discharge Woes

2010-03-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

Here's an article about Heal the Bay's newly published report on wastewater discharges in California. The organization's report covers wastewater treatment facilities and other wastewater outfalls along the entire coastline.

Down the Drain:

Heal the Ocean Releases Groundbreaking Report on Wastewater Discharge Woes

Thursday, March 18, 2010
By Ethan Stewart

see the article here.

see the full report here

After more than five years of fact finding, the folks from Heal the Ocean (HTO) released a sweeping report this week on the good, the bad, and the ugly of wastewater discharge along the entire coast of California. What originally started as an effort to chart the compliance efforts and efficiency of the dozens of wastewater treatment facilities and outfall pipes along the coast of California that pump their treated product out into the Pacific Ocean morphed into something much bigger along the way. The final product is an unprecedented look at inherent and often overlooked shortcomings of our collective wastewater habits. “This is meant to be a source for the entire State of California,” explained Heal the Ocean Executive Director Hillary Hauser this week of the 128-page document and its accompanying interactive Google Earth and GIS maps, “A wastewater treatment plant is the most important environmental tool we have for the ocean, period. And we have to help them.”

At the root of HTO’s report is the reality that, in this day and age of water shortages and rising costs, Californians use 1.3 billion gallons of perfectly fine drinking water every day to flush down the 134 tons of waste they produce in the same time period. Complicating this is the fact that current wastewater standards and facilities rarely, if ever, monitor and treat for the types of emerging pollutants (i.e., common stuff found in your shampoo, toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, etc.) that do big time damage to our oceans. To that end, not only does the report explain what specific facilities are treating for, but it also lists the various things that they need to become more savvy about in the future. “Once you get into this and then you go look at the ingredients in your shampoo or soap at home, you won’t believe it. It is out of control,” said Hauser.
For the full report and for detailed explanations of the nefarious everyday ingredients compiled by HTO’s Katherine Engel, go to healtheocean.org/research.

Fertilization of phytoplankton with Iron to absorb CO2 could backfire...

2010-03-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

This article is pretty interesting. In an attempt to halt global warming, scienctists have been conducting experiments in which they would feltilize phytoplankton in the ocean in order to create large blooms that would absorb Carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, it appears as if some of these phytoplankton may produce harmful toxins, the levels of which would increase as well. Enjoy!

CO{-2} study: Plankton fertilization may backfire

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Tuesday, March 16, 2010

For more than a dozen years, researchers have been fertilizing small patches of the world's oceans with iron to see if they could make the floating plants called phytoplankton flourish into massive blooms that would absorb carbon dioxide, the worst planet-warming greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

The idea was that the absorbed carbon would sink to the ocean bottom and remain there essentially forever. Many experts have hailed the idea as one surefire solution to the problem of global warming.

Now a vexing new issue has risen to challenge the whole concept: A major species of plankton that produces an environmental poison known to threaten fish life as well as humans would pose a greater environmental threat when fertilized with iron, according to a team of American and Canadian scientists.

Their findings, published Monday in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that any massive effort to fertilize the oceans should be done with extreme caution, the researchers say.

"It is an indication that we are not masters of nature when it comes to large-scale ecological manipulations," said Charles G. Trick, a microbial biologist at the University of Western Ontario Medical School, who led the research. "Any positive carbon sequestration must be balanced against the evident and unforeseen environmental consequences."

The first experiment

The international effort at fertilizing ocean plankton with iron to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere began nearly 20 years ago with seagoing experiments led by Kenneth Coale, director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and Kenneth Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The marine biologists and an international team of researchers sailed to the northwestern Pacific and spread 1,000 pounds of a liquid iron compound over phytoplankton growing across 30 square miles of the open ocean. The iron quickly created a thick mat of one-celled diatoms that spread widely and absorbed 4 million pounds of carbon from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, their calculations showed.

The experiment's success, reported at the time in four articles in the journal Nature, has been followed with a dozen more large-scale experiments by international teams of researchers who also reported similar success.

Industries also started supporting experiments in what some critics term "geoengineering." By supporting the concept, industries that emit carbon dioxide in massive quantities through the burning of fossil fuels believe they could earn "carbon credits" under the rules of many nations.

The scientists raising the new issue sailed their research ship into the northeastern Pacific where the ocean is rich in nutrients but poor in iron, and pumped gallons of the ocean water into shipboard laboratory tanks containing a widespread species of the phytoplankton variety called Pseudonizschia. The species is known to produce domoic acid, a toxin that can cause fatal nerve damage to seabirds and marine mammals. It is also a major cause of human shellfish poisoning in coastal waters.

Increased hazard

Adding an iron compound to the plankton caused the one-celled diatoms to bloom heavily, but also greatly increased the amount of the toxin produced in every single plant cell, the researchers found. And that, in turn, means the toxin would spread more widely through the food web of the ocean, the scientists maintained.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

"This possibility of producing a widespread toxin into the plankton of the open ocean needs to be looked at very carefully before any large-scale iron enrichment starts," said William P. Cochlan, a biological oceanographer and marine ecologist at San Francisco State University's Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies, who was on the research team.

In interviews Monday, both Coale and Johnson, who led the first experiment two decades ago, agreed that the new findings were valid and important.

The problem of a toxin that threatens marine life must indeed be weighed before any major plankton fertilization projects are launched, the two scientists said.

"It's a great paper, but I remain a proponent of iron fertilization - if it does indeed work on a very large scale - because it's the only process that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere," Johnson said.

Coale said that "in some cases" his colleagues had also seen large increases in the domoic acid toxin during their own earlier iron fertilization experiments.

But he added: "I'm with Ken (Johnson) on this. We do need to explore all the options and their consequences. My feeling is that iron fertilization is no magic bullet, but it may need to be considered among a large portfolio of carbon sequestration efforts."
E-mail David Perlman at dperlman@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/03/16/MN2C1CE0E4.DTL#ixzz0jLc4A2H4

What is Our Task?

2010-03-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

To take action. For many of our activities as Surfrider activists, the positive results are not immediately obvious and at times it is difficult to feel like we are making a difference. The Blue Water Task Force was born when Surfrider Foundation activists decided that they wanted to take a hands-on approach to solving local water quality problems. We now have the benefit of regularly seeing the results of our actions and we are creating a valuable source of information that is being used to protect our oceans, waves, and beaches. Plus, there’s nothing quite like getting your hands dirty!

The program has spread throughout the country and activists from many chapters are now going out to their local beaches and watersheds regularly to sample and test the quality of the water. We personally take the steps necessary to protect ourselves and our ocean environment when our government fails to.

At the San Diego Chapter, we partner with San Diego Coastkeeper to monitor water quality in 11 watersheds in the San Diego Region. BWTF is extremely proud of our monthly water quality monitoring (WQM) volunteers and also our dedicated watershed captains, who will be recognized in the near future at our local chapter meetings. We also have volunteers work in the Coastkeeper lab to actually test the samples collected. We test for many different indicators, and the results of the monthly monitoring events are posted on the Coastkeeper wiki.

The water quality of the beaches is currently monitored by the County of San Diego, and the County is responsible for issuing beach advisories. We hope soon to contribute to these efforts and to make the results of this testing readily available to our members. Additionally, Heal the Bay issues beach report cards for all of the coastal counties in California, including San Diego.

To learn and educate. By participating in hands-on monthly field monitoring and lab testing, we learn about what it takes to determine the health of our coastal waters and what needs to be done to improve local water quality. By spreading the word about what we do, the results of our efforts, and local water pollution problems we can educate each other and the public about what is being done and what needs to be done to keep our coastal waters clean and safe for everyone. Several chapters partner with schools or other non-profit organizations to allow the BWTF program to reach its fullest Potential.

The San Diego chapter regularly hosts speakers to come to our chapter meetings and discuss water quality topics. Although we don’t currently participate in any school education programs, we have the potential to begin these. Additionally, we have a BWTF page on our chapter website where people can learn about the program and report ocean related illnesses, and this blog where local activists can post information about water pollution and local water quality related events.

To support each other and the cause. Water Monitoring is fun! And through recognition of our dedicated volunteers and participation in engaging program activities we aim to keep people motivated and excited about a task can at times be quite daunting. We will also soon be coming out with BWTF T-shirts and hats which will be given to certified WQ monitors and will be for sale at Surfrider events.

Why I Volunteer: Adrian Macias, San Elijo Lagoon Watershed Captain

2010-03-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

My name is Adrian and I’ve been a citizen water monitor for over two years. Each month I collect samples at the San Elijo Lagoon sites, which are part of our region’s Carlsbad Watershed. I first joined Surf Rider as a Cardiff resident who was concerned about regional pollution and litter.

San Elijo Lagoon, looking north

Water monitoring has always been a favorite volunteer activity of mine because it affords me the opportunity to get my hands dirty (figuratively speaking – we always wear gloves!) and spend a morning marveling at the remarkable biodiversity of the San Elijo Lagoon. Ducks, egrets, herons, mullets (a jumping fish!), dragonflies, and crabs are just some of the wildlife you can witness while wandering through the estuary. Unfortunately, trash in the form of plastics, balloons, straws, six-pack rings, and various unidentifiable debris can be found with regularity.

Plastic particles, a straw, and other pieces of trash settling on a bank

This is the pollution that we can see with our eyes. Our goal as water monitors is to find the contaminants that can’t be seen. This is what motivates me return each and every month as a citizen water monitor. The strength of the water monitoring program is dependent upon dedicated, reliable volunteers who care about the beautiful watersheds that we all share. For more information on becoming a citizen water monitor, please contact mysel f or Rachel and help us protect our waterways.

Water Quality Monitoring and Training Schedule:

2010-02-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

Below are this year’s dates for Water Quality Monitoring. The dates with a * are when there will be monitoring and also training.

March 13 *
April 17
May15 *
June12
July17 *
August 21
September 11 *
October 16
November 20 *
December 18

BWTF 2010 Goals

2010-02-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some of our goals for the 2010 year. Feel free to add comments and suggestions!

List on the BWTF section of the SFSD website all Watershed Captains, Vice-Captains, Laboratory Technicians and trained Watershed team members, and other key individuals.
Submit list of BWTF Watershed Team members committed to next water monitoring to CK Coordinator at least 1 week before Monitoring.
Establish a list of all trained Surfrider water quality monitors with:
a) contact information
b) How long they have been involved in the program
Conduct an assessment of how the information being gathered is currently being used, and how it could potentially be used
At least 2 BWTF members complete BWTF website and blog training
Establish system of recognition awards for BWTF members:

a) recognize long- serving members and their contribution via chapter meetings, emails, and annual dinner
b) Give BTWF members a T-shirt after they complete their training and 1st monitoring expedition.
c) Define and provide electronic certificates for all those who complete BWTF 'training'
Plan at least 1 dinner for BWTF members and CK members who are closely involved to discuss the status of the program, and to recognize leaders. Pass around comment cards to attendees for comments and suggestions.
Completion of GPS mapping of all Surfrider BWTF test sites, with “mouse over” functionality on web site. Include links to results.
Maintenance of BWTF Internet Blog. Add pics of BWTF Teams in action at each watershed with SFSD Watershed Captains.
Work on obtaining funding to expand program
Meet various Water Monitoring needs: additional equipment, expanded test sites, expanded scopr of testing.

Next Water Quality Monitor Training: March 13th, 2010...sign up soon!

2010-02-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) will continue to occur every month, however, starting in 2010, WQM Training will be occuring every other month. In the month when the WQM training is not happening, there will be lab training. More information on both of these opportunities will be posted soon. If you are interested in signing up for the March 13th, 2010 training at San Diego Coastkeeper (9-4pm), please email me at rachel@surfridersd.org. There will be free bagels and coffee, and the chance to apply your new expertise by conducting monitoring with a team immediately after the training. We will likely only have about 10 spots, so sign up soon! The Deadline for signing up will be March 5th.