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Department of Water Resources California Water News: Water Quality 12/31/09
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Hetch Hetchy: Lighting the way to safer water S.F. Examiner EPA sets guidelines to clean up San Joaquin River Water supply Chico News & Review Saltwater intrusion effects could be far-reaching Santa Maria Times Port of Stockton to Clean-up Act California Farmer Temporary situation causes chlorine odor in water Thousand Oaks Acorn City water quality makes the naughty list: Leaves a bad taste with the SD water department San Diego News Room
Hetch Hetchy: Lighting the way to safer water
S.F. Examiner-12/31/09
By John Upton
The water 2.5 million Bay Area residents drink will be safer once a $112 million water treatment plant is open in 2012.
The multibillion-dollar Water System Improvement Project aims to protect The City’s drinking water supply from earthquakes and help the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission catch up on needed maintenance.
A portion of that project is a new water treatment site in San Joaquin County, where water will wash over ultraviolet light bulbs designed to kill stomach-infecting bugs before flowing through San Francisco taps.
A 14,000-square-foot building — where water will be treated and disinfected using chlorine, fluoride and other chemicals — is being built to replace the existing facility 8 miles south of Tracy at the Tesla Treatment Plant. The aging plant doesn’t meet modern earthquake, fire or building codes.
The new plant, which is expected to be fully operational by early 2012, will feature two consecutive treatment facilities.
After water is chemically treated, a neighboring 20,000-square-foot building will provide a new level of treatment that’s needed to meet guidelines updated recently by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help protect the public from cryptosporidium.
Cryptosporidium is a type of microscopic parasite that causes severe stomach illness in humans and other animals. The parasites are protected by a shell that helps them survive for prolonged periods outside of their victims’ bodies.
The shell also makes the single-celled bugs difficult to kill using normal concentrations of chlorine. Ultraviolet light will be used at the treatment plant to help ensure that any cryptosporidium in San Francisco’s water supply is killed before it reaches a customer.
Water will flow at Tesla Treatment Facility past 10 to 12 ultraviolet lamp arrays, each arranged inside a large pipe and comprising scores of individual bulbs.
With a processing capacity of 315 million gallons of water per day, Tesla will be the nation’s third-largest ultraviolet water treatment facility and the biggest in California.
Construction of the new facilities will require a weekslong shutdown of water pipelines from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to San Francisco.
To prepare for the shutdown, which was timed to coincide with a wintertime lull in water usage, Bay Area reservoirs are being filled up through an increased water flow from Hetch Hetchy.
Construction of the treatment plant is employing workers in the economically distressed San Joaquin Valley who lost jobs when a housing bubble-related construction boom ground to a halt last year.
“We’ve seen a real slowdown in construction,” San Joaquin County Supervisor Leroy Ornellas said. “There was so much construction going on that it started to create a life of its own.”
Construction of the plant began in May and work is expected to continue for two years.
The federal government requires less-intensive treatment of Hetch Hetchy water than water from most other sources because the Yosemite National Park snowmelt is considered pristine.
To comply with the EPA’s recently updated guidelines, most water agencies will filter water, chemically treat it and expose it to ultraviolet lights. San Francisco, on the other hand, secured a waiver allowing it to avoid filtration.
Groundwater will be treated and mixed into San Francisco’s drinking water to help supplement snowmelt that flows from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and water that’s tapped from creeks and rivers.
Up to six wells, each hundreds of feet deep, are planned in western San Francisco to extract 4 million gallons per day of water from the Westside Groundwater Basin.
The 45-square-mile basin is a series of aquifers extending from Golden Gate Park through San Bruno.
By 2013, the groundwater is planned to be disinfected and poured into the municipal drinking- water system.
“We are going to be blending very low quantities of groundwater,” Water System Improvement Project manager Julie Labonte said. “People are never going to see a difference.”
The blended water will be used mostly in the western part of San Francisco, where it could constitute up to 10 percent of the water that flows through taps.
Additionally, sewage is planned to be safely treated and used to irrigate golf courses that are presently watered using drinking-water
supplies.
The Water System Improvement Program is a $4.4 billion to $4.6 billion, 12-year effort to rehabilitate and protect the system of pipes, reservoirs and equipment from earthquakes. The entire system delivers water — largely from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park — to 2.5 million Bay Area customers.#
http://www.sfexaminer.com/hetchhetchy/Lighting-the-way-to-safer-water-80382617.html
EPA sets guidelines to clean up San Joaquin River Water supply
Chico News & Review-12/31/09
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached an agreement with the Port of Stockton that will correct deficiencies in the port’s storm-water program.
In a 2008 audit of the port’s storm-water management and control systems, the EPA and the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board found deficiencies with the port’s permit program relating to industrial oversight, standard development and toxicity monitoring, according to a press release. The port’s sewer system flows directly and indirectly into the San Joaquin River.
Under the agreement, the port is required to follow the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit program, and will be required to improve its toxicity testing program, pesticide storage and various other practices by July 1, 2010.
Ports contain a variety of facilities, including many that relate to the transportation of goods. Because ports are in close proximity to U.S. waterways, compliance with storm-water requirements has been identified as an emerging priority by federal water-control agencies.#
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=1346229
Saltwater intrusion effects could be far-reaching
Santa Maria Times-12/31/09
By Mike Hodgson
The possibility that saltwater is seeping into the Five Cities aquifer was raised when tests conducted in May and August showed rising levels of chlorides, sodium and potassium in a sentry well in Oceano.
If further tests show saltwater is invading the groundwater basin, it could have serious implications for not only the Five Cities area but also the Nipomo area.
Saltwater intrusion would mean more water is being pumped from the basin than is being replaced, causing seawater to flow in to fill the void.
Once saltwater infiltrates a groundwater basin, it is virtually impossible to remove, and when the dissolved chemicals reach a certain level, the water becomes undrinkable.
Officials cautioned that the tests only show the potential for saltwater intrusion, and more monitoring will be required to verify suspicions.
The well near the Oceano Campground is one of several drilled by the county as far back as the 1960s to keep an eye on the health of the aquifer.
However, it had not been regularly monitored until it was mandated by the settlement in a lawsuit over rights to water in the Santa Maria Valley Groundwater Basin.
The basin extends from Santa Maria to the Five Cities area, although it consists of subbasins — one underlying Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach, Pismo Beach and Oceano and another beneath the Nipomo Mesa.
With Grover Beach and Arroyo Grande already using nearly all of their allotted volume of groundwater, the Five Cities area could experience water shortages and severe restrictions if additional sources are not found.
Although Nipomo Mesa Management Area sentry wells have not shown any rising salt levels, Nipomo Community Services District officials have found pumping depressions in the groundwater basin and are concerned that saltwater intrusion could occur.
NCSD officials are planning to build a pipeline to bring supplemental water to the Mesa from Santa Maria to meet current and future demands.
In the meantime, Arroyo Grande has placed a six-month moratorium on approving new projects and, along with Grover Beach, instituted conservation measures to reduce water use.#
Port of Stockton to Clean-up Act
California Farmer-12/30/09
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached an agreement with California's Port of Stockton to correct deficiencies in the port's storm water program in an effort to bring it into compliance with the Clean Water Act and improve water quality in the San Joaquin River.
In a 2008 audit of the ports storm water management and control systems, the U.S. EPA and the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board found deficiencies with the port's permit program concerning construction and industrial oversight, municipal operations, standard development, and toxicity monitoring. Discharges from the port's sewer system flow directly or indirectly to the San Joaquin River.
"Discharge from municipal storm sewer systems is a significant source of water contamination in the San Joaquin River," says Alexis Strauss, Water Division director for the EPA's Pacific Southwest region. "The Port of Stockton's efforts under this agreement will greatly improve its storm water program and help minimize storm water pollution of an important water resource."
Under the agreement, the port is to improve its toxicity testing program, oversight of industrial tenants and construction sites, and management practices for pesticide storage, catch basins, sumps, storm water retention basins, and street sweeping by July 1, 2010.
Through its Ports Initiative, the EPA's Pacific Southwest regional office is evaluating storm water management at various ports. This effort involves both individual inspections of port tenants and audits of the municipal storm water programs implemented by the ports. The initiative aims to improve water quality by working with facilities to bring them into compliance and collaborating with states to improve storm water permits for ports.#
http://californiafarmer.com/story.aspx?s=34270&c=9
Temporary situation causes chlorine odor in water
Thousand Oaks Acorn-12/31/09
By Nancy Needham
Only a small number of Thousand Oaks residents notice a difference in the smell of their tap water when it doesn’t come from the usual supplier.
But many of those who do notice—a handful of sensitive water sniffers—call the city, the water company or the Thousand Oaks Acorn to find out what’s going on.
Recently a reader commented, “The water coming into our home has had a strong smell of bleach and/or chlorine. Even when we run the water through our filtration system, the smell is there. You can also smell the water in the shower.”
He was right. There was a different amount of chlorine in the water. From Dec. 6 through Dec. 13, the primary water supply pipeline used by Calleguas Municipal Water District through Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was shut down to make improvements.
During that service shutdown, water was delivered to Thousand Oaks by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power through a parallel pipeline that comes with a different disinfecting process.
“It’s unlikely that water users will notice any change in the quality of their tap water; however, as Metropolitan (Water District of Southern California) and (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) utilize different methods of disinfection, there may be a slight change in taste and odor,” said Dr. Don Kendall, Calleguas general manager.
Such a switch happens at least once a year, sometimes more often, and when it does, the city gets fewer than five calls asking, “What’s going on?” said Mark Watkins, Thousand Oaks public works director.
Calleguas’ water supply from Los Angeles was safe and reliable and met all federal and state water quality standards, Kendall said.
Calleguas is one of 26 member agencies of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the primary water supplier for Thousand Oaks and much of Ventura County, providing water service to a population exceeding 550,000. Through 22 retail water agencies and companies, Calleguas provides water to the cities of Oxnard, Camarillo, Moorpark, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Port Hueneme, as well as surrounding unincorporated areas.
There’s no difference in the water other than the disinfectant process.
“One comes from snowpack from the east side of the Sierra Mountains and the other from snow pack from the west side,” Watkins said.#
City water quality makes the naughty list: Leaves a bad taste with the SD water department
San Diego News Room-12/30/09
By Ron James
San Diego has been tapped as having the ninth-worst big city tap water in the nation, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization.
But the city’s Public Utilities Department is crying foul, dismissing the data and proclaiming its water is safe and meets all EPA guidelines.
On Dec. 12, EWG, which works to protect public health and the environment, released the results of a three-year investigation of municipal water supplies across the U.S. San Diego ranked 92nd out of 100, near the bottom of the list. According to EWG, the contaminant data from water samples gathered by the San Diego Water Department showed unsafe levels of a number of chemicals over a four-year span since — chemicals that over a long period of time could cause cancer and liver disease.
The study examined the water quality of 100 cities with a population of 250,000 or more. The findings were based on water quality tests conducted over a four-year period by 47,667 utilities from 45 states and the District of Columbia.
The conflict between EWG’s conclusions and the city’s emphatic rejection of the findings seems to be centered on the exact source of the data. The city also rejected the methodology used in the study.
In San Diego’s case, EWG’s findings were based on water test results that were sent from the San Diego Water Department to the California Department of Public Health. EWG’s ratings were based on the total number of harmful chemicals detected since 2004, the percentage of chemicals found, and the highest average level for each pollutant compared with the legal limits and national averages.
The EWG report was completely misleading, said the city’s Public Utilities Department spokesman, Arian Collins, in an e-mail responding to a request for comment from the Uptown News. He was unsure of where EWG got its data, but said it didn’t reflect the official results of the city’s yearly water quality reports.
“We believe testing untreated water is how EWG reached its findings,” Collins said. “It seems the most logical explanation, but we don’t know for sure since all we have to go by is the same information you have. I would suggest you contact the EWG for more info on how it gathered its samples and why its findings are at odds with ours.”
“Our treated water meets all state and EPA guidelines, and we do not detect the contaminants that the group lists in its report in our treated water,” Collins said. “We continuously monitor the drinking water to assure that it meets the high standards of the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. In short, if our water did not meet EPA and state guidelines, we could not distribute it to our customers.”
EWG said it got the tap water monitoring data from the California Department of Public Health, which received it from the San Diego water utility. That report showed San Diego’s water contained 17 chemicals in amounts that exceeded health guidelines — the national average is four. The San Diego data also showed the presence of six chemicals in amounts exceeding the legal limit, with the national average being .5. Among the chemicals in San Diego’s water that exceeded the legal limit most frequently were tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene — both suspected carcinogens. The city of San Diego’s official 2008 water quality report showed neither of those chemicals.
EWG said it reviewed the data for inconsistencies and systematically looked for test results outside the expected range which would indicate potential errors. They contacted state water agencies to discuss and correct data that was inaccurate. EWG briefed major water utility trade associations and provided their members with a three-week window to review the state agency data they had compiled. More than 200 water utilities reviewed the work and either verified the statistics or provided corrections.
It is unclear whether the San Diego Water Department reviewed the EWG data.
“San Diego data shows spikes of contaminates,” said EWG analyst Mmeka Leiba. “Because of the water quality reporting protocols, the (city’s) yearly report may not show levels of contaminants that exceed health guidelines because they use the net average over the year to produce their test results. The problem is that if there are people drinking a lot of water during those spikes there could be long-term consequences.”
EWG spokesperson Lee Ann Brown suggested that the report shouldn’t alarm people, but should make them aware of potential health risks if they don’t modify their drinking habits or force the government to clean up the source of contamination.
“We definitely do not advocate people switching to bottled water — it costs 1,900 times as much as tap water and there’s no regulation for bottled water,” Brown said. “We suggest that people get a simple filter that matches up with the particular chemicals in your city water. We have a list of filters that are specific to water problems on our Web site.”#
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