Water news for a thirsty world…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) WaterSense program is kicking off its national “We’re for Water” campaign to encourage Americans to make simple choices that save water. The program, in collaboration with its partner, American Water, will spread the word about saving water by traveling cross-country, stopping at national landmarks and educating consumers about WaterSense labeled products. WaterSense products use about 20% less water than standard models.

“Whether by replacing an old, inefficient plumbing fixture with a WaterSense-labeled product or adopting more water-efficient behaviors, together we can help save water for future generations,” said Peter Silva, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water. “WaterSense offers consumers simple tips that can help the environment and keep money in their pockets.”

Consumers can start saving water with three steps: check, twist and replace
• Check toilets for silent leaks by putting a few drops of food coloring in the tank; if the color shows up in the bowl indicating a leak, fixing it may be as simple as replacing the toilet’s flapper;
• Twist on a WaterSense labeled bathroom faucet aerator to use 30% less water without a noticeable difference in flow; and
• Replace a showerhead with a WaterSense-labeled model that uses less water and energy, but still has all the power of a water-hogging model.

WaterSense, a partnership program sponsored by EPA, seeks to protect the future of our nation’s water supply by offering people a simple way to use less water with water-efficient products, new homes and services. In 2009, EPA’s WaterSense program helped consumers save more than 36 billion gal of water and $267 million on their water and sewer bills.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Smart water management technology is set to be a $16 billion industry over the next 10 years as companies and governments recognize that efficient water management is as important – if not more important – than smart electricity management. Of course, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, which is just why California is gearing up with smart water meters.

According to Green Inc, a forthcoming report from from the California Energy Commission reveals that smart meters are finding a foothold in California – and that’s no small matter. California has a water crisis on its hands, and just last summer a report showed how businesses could save enough water to supply San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles just by making a few tweaks to their water use habits.

Lon W. House, the report’s author, told Green Inc that around half of the state’s water utilities have some smart meters in their service areas and that the number is likely to be “significantly” higher now because the report’s data was now over a year old. That’s a good sign, considering a law passed last year calls for cities to cut their water use by 20% over the next ten years.

Smart water meters not only cut water consumption, but also save time and money for utilities, because even though a utility worker may have to drive to the meter locations, they can read the signal electronically from the vehicle, rather than needing to walk from meter to meter. The meters record water consumption on an hourly basis, which means habits and problems with the system can be detected and dealt with more quickly and effectively. Mr. House said that smart meters could cut water consumption by 5 to 15 percent – similar to the amount of energy a household saves immediately by paying attention to their electricity consumption.

So far, Sacramento and Fresno are beginning to install water meters, and San Diego is looking into requiring multi-family buildings to have meters for individual units. It’s just a start, but in a state that simultaneously has drought issues and uses a massive amount of water in the agricultural and business sectors, it’s an important step forward.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I was struck the other day by a comparison made on 5 Gyres, the blog site of scientists and activists who are working to draw attention to the growing concentration of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

According to the scientists’ and activists’ estimate, the amount of oil used to produce plastic every day is the same amount as the oil that is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day from the damaged Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And they point out that the plastic ends up in the same place – the ocean. So that means that we are the spill, or a spill of similar proportion to the uncontainable, disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last year my touring production company decided to eliminate plastic water bottles from the list of things we are provided in the venues we perform in. Now we carry two five-gallon coolers, and each of the band and crew carries a stainless-steel water bottle.

On our buses we use Brita filters. My production manager estimates we save between 200 and 250 bottles each show, and up to 96 bottles every day on the buses. We are one of several tours that we know of who are making these kinds of changes.

There are also some venues and festivals that are eliminating single-use plastics. Living in Los Angeles, I had long believed that having one’s own sealed water bottle was safer than trusting the municipal water supply.

My children grew up drinking from plastic water bottles. But not long ago I heard a radio programme that dispelled that myth, and a few others, including the viability of recycling all the plastic bottles produced every year.

Most of the bottled water sold as spring water in America is, in fact, tap water. There don’t seem to be any legal barriers to selling what comes out of a pipe in New Jersey or Los Angeles as spring water, or mountain water, or Arctic water, at least not in the United States.

There is far more quality control of American water supplies by municipalities than is exercised by the companies that bottle tap water and sell it to us for as much 200 times its value.

As for the designer water that is shipped from Fiji or France or Sweden all over the world, using jet or diesel fuel – this only adds to the amount of oil that is used by the plastic bottled water industry.

It takes one third of a bottle of petroleum to manufacture a single plastic bottle. Add to that the cost in petro-miles of shipping it around the world and you have what is still accepted as a legitimate business expense, though it may eventually be seen as a crime.

Getting people to accept the premise that only the water from pristine and exotic locations is truly clean may be a marketing triumph, but it is a human health disaster.

The health issue with plastic bottles is that they are made with Bisphenol A or BPA, a known ‘endocrine disruptor’, which can mimic the body’s hormones and can have side effects.

BPA is used to make the plastic hard and clear, and it was developed originally as a sex hormone drug until that use was discontinued for reasons of human health and safety.

BPA leaches out of the bottles into the liquids they contain, in amounts that are claimed to be safe by the plastics industry. But last year experts from five universities – London, Plymouth, Reading, Stirling and Ulster – urged the British Government to review BPA.

In a letter to the then Health Secretary Andy Burnham, they wrote: ‘The major body of research and evidence presented over the last decade strengthens the growing consensus that low-level exposure to BPA has a significant impact on increasing the risks of developing conditions such as cancer, diabetes, impaired brain function, and behavioral problems in mammalian laboratory animals.’

Britain has not enacted any changes yet, but Japan has limited levels of BPA in tins and has removed it from plastic containers used by children.

Canada has listed BPA as a toxic chemical and banned it from baby bottles, and there are efforts in America, France and Australia to restrict or ban the use of BPA from children’s bottles, cups and plates.

But let’s go back to what is happening to the word’s oceans. Most of us have heard by now that there is a ‘floating island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas’, or some variation of that.

But it’s not an island, and it’s not something that can be cleaned up or somehow recycled. In fact, what is happening in the Pacific is happening in all five of the planet’s ocean gyres – as the systems of currents are called.

And it’s not really rubbish. It is plastic. It is breaking down into ever smaller pieces, but it can never biodegrade. In parts of the Pacific this plastic outweighs plankton seven to one.

Fish mistake it for food and eat it. And we eat the fish. We are poisoning ourselves, and destroying the ocean. This is done in the name of free enterprise, unregulated markets, the right to do business and the right to make a profit – and in the name of convenience, evidently the most precious freedom we have.

The plastics industry insists that all we have to do is recycle. But why should we bear the cost and responsibility of recycling it? Why should we buy the stuff and then pay to dispose of it? In the case of the oceans, we will never be able to clean them up faster than the rate plastic is going in.

The answer is to stop producing it, to stop buying it. A few years ago I was on a remote beach in Spain and spent the day cleaning it up with another guy there, a German. It was mostly plastic. He muttered that the locals didn’t appreciate the natural beauty of the place.

Both of us assumed it had been thrown away there carelessly, perhaps dumped there. But now I don’t think so. I can see now that it had all washed up there. Humans are slobs.

There’s no way around it. We are slobs. I know surfers who travel the world and ride the planet’s most remote waves. They say there are plastic bottles washing up in Antarctica, in Patagonia, and all of the most distant and pristine beaches in the world.

What are we doing? There are laws against defiling the public places in our cities. Where are the laws that protect our public planet, our commonly held wilderness, our oceans?

Our oceans without which we certainly will perish? I had occasion to remark at my show at the Royal Albert Hall in London that we are the oil spill, and it is up to us to provide a solution to the problem. And that the more I have become used to carrying a metal bottle, the easier it is to just fill my own bottle and take it with me.

On a night when I was singing my most personal reflections on life, I wanted to bring up the life of the planet. I wanted to ask us all to try to remember to do all we can in the face of all these disasters, and to continue doing things that make a difference.

One thing we can do is to exercise our power as consumers, and to make choices that serve the interests of our families and of future generations, and the health of the planet.

Please read the websites of 5 Gyres (5gyres.org), and Plastic Pollution Coalition (plasticpollutioncoalition.org), and go online and read Martin Hickman’s brilliant article Bad Chemistry: The Poison In The Plastic That Surrounds Us. And oppose single-use plastic!

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Los Angeles City Council will consider major changes to the city’s water conservation rules Tuesday morning.

At issue: the city’s lawn-watering rules, which were cited in a recent report by an independent group of engineers as a factor in a series of water main bursts last year.

For more than a year, residents across the city have been barred from irrigating their yards and gardens on days other than Mondays and Thursdays. The new proposal, backed by the Department of Water and Power, would allow those who live at odd-numbered addresses to water on Mondays and Thursdays and residents at even-numbered addresses to water on Tuesday and Fridays.

The changes were recommended after a panel of experts concluded that the two-day-a-week irrigation rules helped trigger a series of pipe breaks by creating dramatic fluctuations in water pressure. Some water main breaks damaged homes and businesses. One created a sinkhole that swallowed part of a firetruck.

Under the new plan, those who live at street addresses that end in a fraction would use the last full digit of the address to determine when to water, according to a report on the plan.

The watering restrictions were approved in 2008 by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s appointees on the DWP board as part of a tiered system of conservation measures. The panel decided last year that Los Angeles should adopt Phase III conservation measures, which allow watering twice a week.

If city officials downgrade the seriousness of the drought to a Phase II situation, residents would be allowed to water three days a week. If they upgrade to a Phase IV emergency, residents would be permitted to irrigate only once a week, according to the proposal: Mondays for homes with odd-numbered addresses and Tuesdays for even-numbered addresses.

The council is scheduled to meet Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Popularity: 6% [?]

AN above-average rain year throughout California has prompted some very understandable questions about whether the dry cycle is over and whether much of our water problem has thus washed away. The healthier rain totals this season do mean that the short-term water management picture is not getting worse. But it will take more than snow in the Sierra to ensure a sustainable water future for Southern California. It will take decisive action and more regional self-sufficiency here at home.

Water supply management is similar to a three-legged stool for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and its six-county service area. There is the supply that Metropolitan imports from the Colorado River (about 20 percent of our overall dependence). There is the supply from Northern California that moves across the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (30 percent). And there are various local supplies, mostly groundwater, that meet the rest of our need.

The good news short-term is that the Southland and Northern California had close-to-average rain seasons. Yet on the troubling side, the Colorado River had another dry winter, moving this seven-state water system closer to a potential shortage situation in as soon as two years. Likewise, the Delta remains in ecological distress for many reasons. Pumping restrictions this winter and spring to protect endangered fish prevented Delta water projects from capturing a supply that would have been

sufficient to run the entire city of Los Angeles for more than a year. Metropolitan hopes to take modest steps to replenish water reserves that have been dramatically reduced in recent years, but not nearly the improvement that could have happened without the problems in the Delta.
In sum, the situation is more complicated than whether a hydrologic drought exists in any given watershed that this region depends upon. It is a challenge unlike any in Metropolitan’s 82-year history and will merit a historic response that is well under way.

In Northern California, bold action is necessary via the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to identify and implement a strategy to improve the ecosystem and the estuary’s water systems. Here at home, conservation has never been more important. Metropolitan is busy looking long-term through the updating its Integrated Resources Plan to further emphasize conservation and local/regional water supply measures to maintain reliability over the next 30 years. Looking beyond that horizon over the next half-century, Metropolitan has assembled a Blue Ribbon Committee to stimulate new ideas and innovation in the face of climate change, population grown and other water supply challenges.

Droughts have always been a cyclical part of California life, whenever they happen to begin or end. It is all the other emerging environmental, population and climate challenges that make this so different and so permanent. Living in this new water reality doesn’t mean that we won’t have enough water to sustain our lives and economy. It means there is never any to waste or to take for granted.

Popularity: 2% [?]

After an exhausting political fight to put an $11.1-billion plan for shoring up the state’s water supply before voters, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now wants to yank the measure from the November ballot.

The governor is working with legislative leaders to postpone the water bond proposal as its prospects appear increasingly dim. Polls suggest voters may not have the appetite for such borrowing at a time when the state budget is in continuing crisis.

And the governor’s vow to aggressively fight another measure on the November ballot, one that would roll back the landmark global warming bill he signed in 2006, threatens to distract from the effort to get the water bond passed.

Schwarzenegger said Tuesday in a statement that he would try to get the two-thirds vote of the Legislature needed to pull the bond measure, Proposition 18, from the ballot and take it to voters in 2012 instead.

“After reviewing the agenda for this year, I believe our focus should be on the budget — solving the deficit, reforming out-of-control pension costs and fixing our broken budget system,” the statement said. “It’s critical that the water bond pass…. I will work with the Legislature to postpone the bond to 2012 and avoid jeopardizing its passage.”

The measure would pay for infrastructure to provide more clean and reliable water for the state. It was passed by the Legislature in November 2009, after months of difficult wrangling among farmers, environmentalists, water agencies and lawmakers.

The challenge of getting voters to support the package, which opponents said was filled with pork projects inserted by lawmakers, seems to grow with the state’s financial problems.

On Tuesday, the powerful California Teachers Assn., whose members could be hit hard by further budget cuts, announced that it was opposing the bond measure. The well-funded union could pour large amounts of cash into a campaign against the proposal.

“With an already outrageous budget deficit, California can’t afford” the cost of the borrowing, “taking even more money away from our students, our schools and other essential services,” said David Sanchez, president of the teachers union.

The last major poll of voters’ opinions on the bond package found it slipping. The Public Policy Institute of California survey, released May 18, showed that 42% of those surveyed considered it “very important” that the package pass, down from 47% in December.

In addition, backers face the daunting task of mounting a significant campaign for the bond while the governor is distracted by fighting Proposition 23, the measure that would suspend the global warming law.

Mario Santoyo, director of the California Latino Water Coalition, which is allied with Schwarzenegger and has worked for years to get the water bond to the ballot, said the group is “completely disappointed.”

He also said that with the governor and some legislative backers of the bond leaving office this year, it could complicate efforts to get the borrowing approved in two years.

Schwarzenegger’s move, however, is backed by legislative leaders, including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D- Sacramento), who helped craft the package and lobbied his colleagues hard to support it.

“Given the challenges currently facing California, I agree with the governor,” Steinberg said in a statement.

Some opponents of the package seized on the postponement as evidence of its inadequacy.

Sen. Lois Wolk (D- Davis), who said she voted against placing the measure on the ballot because it is “full of pork,” said she will now vote against moving it to 2012.

“This is a recognition that this is fiscally irresponsible, and it will not get any better with age,” she said.

Jim Metropulos, a lobbyist with Sierra Club California, called on lawmakers to abandon the package as written and start over.

“Even if it is delayed to a future ballot, it will continue to be a bad back-room deal, hatched in the dark of the night and loaded up with billions of dollars in pork projects to buy off votes,” he said.

Popularity: 3% [?]

BALDWIN PARK – A portable toilet business is causing a stink in Baldwin Park.

County officials say the 5 Star Sanitation has been illegally dumping human waste in the industrial business complex in which it’s located.

The owner of a neighboring skateboard shop who made the initial complaint says it has caused his toilet to overflow, spewing feces all over his business and leaving behind a lingering odor.

“It’s killing us,” said Kurtis Beckstrom, owner of Covert Skate Shop.

The owner of 5 Star Sanitation, Alejandro Trejo, denied any wrongdoing during his year at the site on Badillo Street just west of Puente Avenue. The company claims to do business all over the San Gabriel Valley and features pictures of its toilets outside the Rose Bowl on the company website.

He recently tried to clean out a pipe by extracting waste because the owners of the property had been having problems with a sewer line, even causing toilet overflows at his own business.

County health workers said there is evidence that the waste had also spread onto the parking lot near where the clean out pipe is located.

A hearing is scheduled for next week regarding the investigation, they said.

“We’ve got to talk to them about their procedures about how they’re cleaning out the waste from these (toilets) to see if they’re compliant with state law,” said Alfonso Medina, director of the County of Los Angeles Public Health – Environment Protection Bureau.
The county had no prior complaints against 5 Star, Medina said.

And Baldwin Park code enforcement officials responded to the complaint Thursday and immediately ordered 5 Star Sanitation to be shut down.

“First of all, they don’t have a business license, but even if they tried, it would not be granted,” said Marc Castagnola, Baldwin Park community development manager who oversees the code enforcement department. “That (type of) business is not permitted in the city.”
County officials suspect 5 Star was illegally dumping human waste.

“What we found is that they were attempting to remove the waste from the (portable toilets) and put it into a clean-out pipe,” Medina said.

A clean-out pipe provides access to a sewer in order to clear any blockages.

Trejo said the complaint was the result of a longstanding tension between him and the owner of the skate shop.

“The person that reported it, he has something against us,” Trejo said. “We tried to do something good by trying to unclog something, but it backfired.”

Code enforcement officials began looking into the business after complaints from Beckstrom.

He arrived Tuesday to find his business flooded in waste and liquid a half-inch deep, he said. He said this is the third time this has happened.

He also complained about the barrels of human waste sitting behind a fenced area on the property.

It’s affecting his business, he said.

The owner of the industrial business complex, Chona Siapno, said the sewer issues began before 5 Star Sanitation moved in about a year ago.

“I want to find out what’s going on,” she said, adding that the two businessowners had been feuding for months.

Other neighboring business owners say they haven’t had problems with their toilets, but have noticed sewage overflow in the parking lot, which has also caused foul odors in the area.

“It’s only the smell, nothing else,” said Felipe Salvador, co-owner of Explore Custom Cabinets. “As far as inside, there’s been no problem.”

Human waste contains strains of the E. coli bacteria, which can cause diarrhea, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trejo said he’s been trying to move his business out since he discovered it was not permittited within city zoning codes.

“Obviously, I knew unfortunately that we couldn’t get a business license, but as far as illegally dumping, I know better, I’ve been in the industry for a long time.”

The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County provide locations to dispose of human waste, and some businesses that deal with recreation vehicles charge a small fee for dumping, officials from the Sanitation Districts said.

Popularity: 7% [?]

SACRAMENTO — California officials plan to increase the amount of water they supply to farms and cities after a series of late spring storms boosted the Sierra Nevada snowpack.

The Department of Water Resources said on Wednesday it would supply 50 percent of the water its customers are requesting. That’s up from 45 percent in late May and a 5 percent estimate earlier in the year.

In 2009, the agency delivered 40 percent of what was requested. The allotment followed several years of drought and restrictions on pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta over concerns about declining fish populations.

Water Resources Director Mark Cowin says the state still needs to improve its water conveyance system, increase storage and resolve problems in the Delta to avoid future water shortages.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Snow melting atop mountains in Plumas County, some 480 miles from the Santa Clarita Valley, is as clean as state legislators demand in their Porter-Cologne Act of 1969, and it’s as clean as the Feds demand in their Clean Water Act of 1972.

Any part of the water that is not as pure as rainwater, according to both acts, is a contaminant.

The Santa Clarita Valley receives that water downstream only after it has been sent through the California Aqueduct from the Orville dam, north of Sacramento, and after it has crossed more than 400 miles of fertilized farmland, through the sea water-infused San Joaquin Delta and past scores of tiny towns and industry.

Fill a glass with tap water in most of the Santa Clarita Valley and about half that water is from Northern California.
The Santa Clara River fills the other half of that glass.

The Castaic Lake Water Agency provides northern water, which is blended with water drawn from local wells along the banks of the Santa Clara River, dipped from two different aquifers.

The 116-mile Santa Clara River passes by our homes on its way to Ventura County, where farmers of strawberries and avocados expect it to arrive uncontaminated.

“It’s the obligation of the upstream dischargers to comply with (the standard) and protect their downstream neighbors from the consequences of their contamination,” said John Krist, spokesman for the Farm Bureau of Ventura County.

Up-streamer discharge
That’s us — “up-streamers.”

Even though we’re considered downstream users by those sending us Northern California water via the State Water Project, we’re “up-streamers” to Ventura County farmers who expect us to send them uncontaminated water in accordance with the Clean Water Act.

We in the Santa Clarita Valley are both up-streamers and down-streamers, which — as some local officials say — puts us between a rock and a hard place.

Northern California water already arrives contaminated by the time it reaches the Santa Clarita Valley, says Dan Masnada, general manager of the Castaic Lake Water Agency.

“There’s a lot of constituents in state water, and chloride is one of them,” he said.

How much chloride — that offensive chemical that threatens to raise SCV sewer rates some 50 percent to pay for its removal — is already in the water we receive from Northern California?

Masnada says on average about 80 milligrams for every liter of state water — about two-thirds of the maximum allowed limit — before it’s even touched by anyone in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Although the aqueduct is lined like a swimming pool, water exposed to industry and massive agriculture as it moves through the San Joaquin Delta picks up chloride and other salts.

Seawater intrusion plagues the delta, despite levees that have stood for more than a century.

Fertilizers containing salty nitrates, and in some cases even chlorides, leach from farmland into the water.

Masnada, however, says that even though fertilizers add some chloride to the mix, it’s not a significant amount.

The problem is that many small amounts create a big amount.

Spoil the broth
Picture the route taken by northern water as a long, skinny bowl of soup, hundreds of miles long, to which scores of cooks add a pinch of salt daily.

There’s a limit to how much daily salty chloride can be found in a liter of Santa Clarita Valley water; that limit is 117 milligrams per liter.

On Oct. 10, 2008, Ventura-area strawberry farmers, through their representatives, told local water officials that any amount
of chloride higher than that in the Santa Clara River would harm their plants.

What’s good for strawberries and their farmers downstream, however, may not be good for upstream homeowners in the Santa Clarita Valley — if they’re to pay, as expected, $210 million to rid the river of salt.

“It has to do with the impact on strawberries and avocados,” Masnada said. “It wasn’t like they actually empirically determined that the water in the river at 120 parts per million had a detrimental impact on, specifically, strawberry and/or avocado crops at the lower Santa Clara River basin.

“There’s other areas throughout the state where they’re watering crops of the same sort with water that has chloride higher — much higher than a hundred parts per million.”

Dr. David Kimbrough, laboratory supervisor for the Castaic Lake Water Agency, cited avocado farmers in Irvine as one group growing sensitive crops with levels of chloride higher than 117 milligrams per liter.

“It’s all about leaf burn,” he said. “But so much goes into it. It depends on how you water, when you water, how you irrigate — by flood irrigation or drip irrigation.

“It’s not like you hit 117 and, magically, the plants die.”

Regardless, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board expects Santa Clara River water to leave our valley containing less than 117 milligrams of chloride per liter.

That’s the immovable rock.

The challenge for up-streamers — the Castaic Lake Water Agency, the city of Santa Clarita, the local Sanitation District, developers and residents — is to come up with a plan that meets that goal without costing a fortune.

That’s the hard place.

Salt-free river
In an office on the banks of the Santa Clara River, decoys of painted mallard ducks sit on shelves over Ron Kettle’s shoulder as he shuffles through a deluge of technical papers on his desk.

Kettle is superintendent of desert facilities operations for the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County.

Outside the door of his office on The Old Road is the gathering point for the contents of every Santa Clarita Valley shower drain, sink sluice and toilet flush.

On a tour explaining the alchemy of what he does — turning sewage into water fit to re-enter the Santa Clara River — he climbs a small scaffolding of iron and concrete.

His footsteps make deep hollow sounds as he walks across closed metal lids atop empty tanks. Finally, he stops — his toes over a bubbling, scum-covered tank of brown water — and points over a series of wells deep enough to sink a house trailer.

“The rule around here is, ‘If you fall in, we’re not coming to get you,’” he said, joking.

Kettle has a long list of treatment chores he and his team are expected to carry out daily.

Still, water discharged from his care that goes back into the river is not the pure, melted snow from Plumas County mountains upstate, nor is it of rainwater purity as seen atop the San Gabriel Mountains.

In four to five years, the Regional Board will pay a visit to ensure that water is free enough of chloride to meet the 117 milligrams-per-liter level.

It’ll take more than the current system to avoid hefty fines if the water fails the test, he noted.

Those fines could reach $10,000 for every day of noncompliance.

Two years ago, when Santa Clarita residents voted to get rid of salt-based water softeners in their homes that released salt into the river, they shaved an estimated $70 million off the cost of a chloride-removing reverse-osmosis plant that the district expects to build on the river.

Small comfort for homeowners, however, who say they cope daily with hard water and a potential four years of rate hikes.

Stiff hair
Brett and Sandy Rateaver, of Valencia, have two teenage daughters, a golden retriever and, recently, a brand new — legal — water-softening device.

They took advantage of the rebate offered during the get-rid-of-your-salt-discharging-softener period, and like the responsible upstream neighbors they’re expected to be, replaced their salt-producing softener.

“I never want to put hard water on my body,” said Sandy, a teacher. “It’s very drying on the skin. We also felt that if we coped with hard water, we would have to pay more in the long run buying products for dry skin.”

Hard water tastes bad, makes your hair stiff and ages pipes and appliances, she said.

“My mom lives with hard water in Redlands; and every time we visit, (we) can tell the difference,” she said. “The kids don’t like it.”

Brett Rateaver, senior advertising account manager for KFI AM 640 Radio, is skeptical of the whole chloride debate.

“I don’t think it’s a real problem,” he said. “I have to get some proof.”

For the Rateavers, living between a rock and a hard place means living with a more costly water softener and hard financial future paying proposed sewage rate increases.

State Sen. George Runner, who drafted the 2008 Measure S legislation to eliminate salt-discharging softeners in the Santa Clarita Valley, says SCV homeowners shouldn’t be punished for doing something good for the environment.

“The citizens of Santa Clarita have done more than what could be expected. So we shouldn’t be going back to them with an incredibly punitive measure,” he told The Signal.

Senator support
The Santa Clara River runs the across the entire breadth of state Senate District 17 and includes strawberry and avocado farmers in Ventura, Santa Clarita homeowners and independent-minded Acton horse enthusiasts.

Runner is caught in the middle of the water war trying to satisfy both his upstream and downstream constituents.

He said he understands strawberry farmers wanting a low chloride level, but said he would rather it wasn’t a level set for drought conditions.

Rain on strawberry crops in normal years flushes chloride out of the soil, enabling farmers to tolerate a higher chloride level in water, a water-agency scientist told The Signal.

“The (maximum daily allowance for chloride in river water) right now is based on a nontypical water year,” Runner said. “We’re still technically in a drought year.”

So why should up-streamers bail out farmers for what is really a drought problem and not a chloride problem?

Two-year droughts plagued Ventura farmers more than half a dozen times for most of the 20th century, with protracted droughts endured in the Depression, the late ’40s and the early 1990s.

But, that was before 2001, when strawberries replaced citrus crops as the No. 1 moneymaker in Ventura County.

Runner acknowledged for The Signal this week that upstate water “at the front end” supplied to Southern California communities arrives with a significant amount of chloride.

“We’re basically shifting that amount of chloride around rather than getting the state to be responsible for lowering it,” he said.

“What we don’t want to see now is those Santa Clarita voters (of Measure S) not see their benefits and still get stuck with a higher bill.”

Worry about expenses
Travis Lange is the Environmental Services Manager for the city of Santa Clarita.

He describes the water-quality expectations of our neighbors downstream as: “Basically, anything that’s not rainwater is not allowed to be there.

“The Clean Water Act says you have to protect the most sensitive beneficial use.”

Public health and environmental watchdog groups, both the state and federal, allow “up in the 200s for protecting humans and even endangered species,” he said.

“So it’s really the (agricultural community),” he said. “The 117 milligrams per liter is very low and is going to cost a lot of money. The city is very concerned about what that impact is going to be to the citizens.”

He adds: “And there wasn’t a whole lot of science done.”

Others are less diplomatic.

Allan Cameron, a developer lobbyist, calls the proposed rate hikes a “salt fraud tax.”

Placerita Canyon resident Valerie Thomas wrote to The Signal: “Please ask Mr. Krist and the others involved in this interesting and punitive decision why the SCV has to mitigate its salty water, much of the salinity coming from water delivered to us from the State Water Project, while Ventura County residents do not have to mitigate Lake Piru water coming from the same source.”

Rateaver, still tinkering with the nuances of his new water softener, said: “Ten years ago, I spent hundreds of dollars on water conditioner, only to toss it out 10 years later and then take the hit again buying another product.”

Homeowners will get a chance to voice their concerns at an upcoming public hearing over the proposed Sanitation District rate hikes.

Myth busting
Steve Maguin, general manager for the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District, is anxious to bust some myths about chloride at the upcoming public hearing, called in accordance with a legislated order under Proposition 218.

“There’s some myths out there that I want to clear up,” he said. “One, people thought that removing their water softeners was all they had to do. No.

“Clearly, it was very good for the environment. It (got) the price for reverse-osmosis reduced by $70 million.”

The chloride-ridding machine was initially slated to cost between $500 million to $600 million, as opposed to the current estimated price tag of $210 million.

Other “myths” slated for dismantling, he said, include: Different segments will pay different rates, such as store owners paying less than residents; and the claim that certain sectors are to receive subsidies. Neither is true, he said.

“Everyone pays the same rate and no one is getting a subsidy,” Maguin said.

The public hearing is slated for July 27 at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.

On a circulation memo mailed to the public about the meeting, up-streamers are urged to read the section titled: “How to Protest the Proposed Rates.”

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For years, bottled water companies have advertised their water as being collected from springs high atop mountains or from crystal clear rivers that meander through secluded meadows. This water is often seen in the hands of movie stars and politicians. This water is socially acceptable. This water is not “disgusting.” Imagine the shock that would appear on the faces of those drinking this water, however, if they were to be told that the water they are drinking is of lower quality than purified poop water.

In the past, San Diego has relied on receiving approximately 40 percent of its water from the Colorado River and another 40 percent from the Sacramento Delta. These numbers, however, have decreased due to a federal court decision to protect the endangered Delta Smelt fish in the Sacramento Delta and a heavy influx of people fighting for the continually decreasing amount of water in the Colorado River.

Due to decreased water allocations from these vital import sources, San Diego “could need 25 percent more water in 2030.” San Diego must find an affordable, environmentally friendly and socially acceptable solution to fill this void. Failure to do so will lead to decreased water allocation rates and increased price rates on water.

A viable solution to this problem is the introduction of a toilet to top of the line purification system to tap water distribution system — otherwise known as the indirect potable reuse of water. The purification of wastewater can be a large part of the solution to the problem of supplying ample quantities of reasonably priced water to the entire San Diego population.
When San Diego residents are first informed of the indirect potable reuse of water, the common first reactions are facial cringes. They imagine human waste particulates floating in their water glasses and massive E. coli outbreaks.

What these people must first understand, however, is that the purification standards of wastewater have no fewer or less harsh restrictions than the purification of water from the Colorado River or the Sacramento Delta. The proposed indirect potable reuse treatment system “ensures that not even the tiniest bacterium, virus, chemical or hormone can survive.” The final product of purified wastewater, therefore, is no more polluted than the water that San Diego imports and purifies.

Secondly, it should be noted that water imported from the Sacramento Delta and the Colorado River are also infiltrated with waste. In fact, “400 million gallons of treated sewage are discharged into the Colorado River before it becomes our drinking water” along with all of the freshwater marine life’s waste and large amounts of chemical runoff that end up in sources from which San Diego imports its water. A San Diego resident that has drank tap water has, without a doubt, drank water that was once contaminated by fecal waste, urine or other harmful chemicals. The purification of human wastewater is no more dangerous or disgusting than the purified water that San Diegans are currently drinking.

Another option being considered to help fix San Diego’s water crisis is the introduction of a desalination plant in Carlsbad, CA. This plan would avoid importing additional water and dampen the effects of the “disgusting” factor.

There are drawbacks, however, to the desalination option. In addition to the fact that ocean water contains a plethora of waste and chemicals, it is “economically and environmentally far more expensive than [the indirect potable reuse method].” The freshwater produced by the desalination plant would cost “between $800 and $2,000 per acre-foot to produce”; whereas the water produced from a sewage recycling plant would cost “$525 per acre-foot.” The desalination plant would also use more energy than the indirect potable reuse system, kill certain marine organisms, and produce a chemical byproduct that is placed back in the ocean and can harm marine ecosystems.

The desalination plant is economically and environmentally inferior to the indirect potable reuse system. While a desalination plant, however, does present a facade that avoids the “disgusting” factor, it has already been demonstrated that recycled sewage water is no more harmful than water that would come from a desalination plant.

The indirect potable reuse of water has unjustifiably been slandered with the title “toilet to tap.” If it were appropriate, however, to deem water purification systems with misleading names, then the purification systems that San Diego is currently using could be called “fish excrement to tap” or “toxic chemicals to tap.”

The fact of the matter is that no matter the source from which the water comes, it is all purified under the same quality standards and it is all equally safe to drink. Not only is the indirect potable reuse system safe, but it would also be economically cheaper and more environmentally friendly than a desalination option.

What is preventing San Diego from adopting this indirect potable reuse system appears to be the social repercussions associated with drinking purified wastewater. With declining amounts of water coming from vital import sources, however, the time is now for San Diego to get serious about local freshwater sustainability.

The indirect potable reuse of water is the most viable option to provide local, safe drinking water while ensuring that San Diego saves money and reduces its carbon footprint.

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