Robin Meadows
Download PDF: RMP-2013 Estuary News Insert
Two decades ago, our knowledge of San Francisco Bay’s health was as cloudy as the water in it. We suspected the water contained toxic heavy metals from industry, and the sediment contained mercury from historical gold mining and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from old electrical equipment. But we didn’t know if contaminant levels were high enough to harm wildlife and people, what else was in the Bay, or where it all came from, which is key to keeping pollutants out in the first place.
Today, that picture is much clearer — and the Bay is cleaner — thanks to a monitoring program that is as forward-thinking as the Bay Area itself.
Established in 1993, the Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in San Francisco Bay (RMP) united regulators and dischargers, turning water quality stakeholders who are at odds elsewhere into collaborators with the common goal of assessing and improving the Bay’s health. “The RMP is outside the regulatory box,” says Tom Mumley of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, which co-founded the Program. “We don’t have to force compliance through command-and-control permits — we’re all doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
The RMP, run by independent scientists at the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), made its debut along with the 1993 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP). The US EPA requires such plans to be developed for all national estuaries of concern under the Clean Water Act. CCMP framers hoped the RMP would help the region more collaboratively address not only those contaminants discharged directly into the Bay by local cities and industries, but also those washing down from the 60,000 square mile watershed that starts in the Sierra Nevada and drains 40% of the state.
At the time, the region had just gone through two decades of tremendous advances in the health of the Bay, as cities went from dumping raw sewage to building sewage treatment plants in the 1960s and 70s. But new contaminants soon rose to the forefront, including heavy metals like copper as well as PCBs and other organic chemicals that accumulate in living things. “The RMP came of age with these problems and we didn’t have a handle on them,” says David Sedlak, a UC Berkeley water quality scientist who, like many UC researchers, has worked with SFEI since the early days of the RMP.
The RMP had its origins in the late 1980s, when the Regional Water Board proposed to set standards for heavy metals in the Bay. Back then, monitoring was done piecemeal by individual dischargers, which include dredgers that stir up sediment at the bottom of the Bay as well as local governments that manage sewage treatment plants and the stormwater (also called urban runoff) that washes pesticides, flame retardants and other chemicals from the land into the water. “It was disjointed and inefficient,” recalls Dave Tucker, who heads San Jose’s water recycling program and helped set up the RMP.
Steve Ritchie, who led the Regional Water Board at the time, changed all that. “He got us all in the same room to talk to each other instead of at or over each other,” says Tucker. “Everyone has a say in the program. We all own it.”
The RMP works for dischargers because without good data, regulators are likely to err on the side of caution. This can mean setting standards that are more stringent — and more expensive to comply with — than needed for the health of the Bay. “Lack of information cuts against dischargers,” Jim McGrath, an engineer and current Regional Water Board member who was then with the Port of Oakland and, like Tucker, was an early proponent of the RMP. “The RMP was good for the Port. There had been 150 years of unregulated discharge, and people were worried that dredging would stir it all up.”
The Program also benefits regulators, clearly showing what is and what isn’t a problem. “Regulation is an easier sell when it’s founded on good
science,” Mumley says. Dischargers initially chipped in $1.5 million per year and have since bumped this up to $3.5 million. “It’s more cost-effective for dischargers to buy into the RMP than to monitor on their own,” says Jay Davis, an ecologist who manages the Program.
Pooling their resources to get solid information also assured dischargers that they were being regulated fairly, helped regulators identify and tackle the biggest problems, and gave the public the peace of mind that the Bay was in good hands. Under the RMP, monitoring went from looking just near discharge outlets to sites across the whole Bay, following the vision of UC Santa Cruz environmental toxicologist Russell Flegal.
“The RMP was one of the first to take state-ofthe- art monitoring from oceanographers and apply it to an estuary,” says Sedlak. “The data are
very high quality.”
At the outset, the RMP monitored water and sediment at fixed points in the Bay. “It was pretty bare bones in the beginning,” says Karen Taberski of the Regional Water Board, who helped set up the program. Over time, this monitoring produced the “status and trends” contaminant
data at the heart of the Program, telling regulators today how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, and what we have to watch out for.
Evolution came easily, built into the Program by design via regular stakeholder meetings and periodic reviews by outside scientists. “They’re
always adjusting to meet the next challenge,” Sedlak says. “I’m an admirer.” Monitoring grew more sophisticated, extending to the Bay’s
edges to track trends where contaminants settle first, for example, and adding biological indicators to document contaminant effects on wildlife and people.
Adaptation was also driven by more in-depth research, which rapidly became an integral part of the Program and continues to grow today. “Special studies help us address ever-changing information needs in a nimble way,” Davis says. Early studies explored fish contamination and episodic toxicity after rainstorms, leading to the incorporation of these indicators into the RMP near its 10th anniversary. Later studies teased out major pollutant sources and priority cleanup targets, and uncovered new contaminants. “They don’t wait for the EPA,” Sedlak says. “They adapt monitoring based on their own experience.”
Even as the RMP became more complex, however, it made information on the Bay’s health easier to absorb. “The annual report used to be heavy on data,” Davis says. “Now it includes more interpretation and application to management questions. It’s a more useful tool for managers.”
Local regulators use RMP data to focus on the most important pollutants and to develop federal cleanup plans called Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), which the EPA has required since 1979 for waters listed as impaired. These watershed-wide plans set progressive targets for restoring listed waters, and strive to meet these targets by identifying where contaminants come from and finding ways to reduce them.
Early RMP priorities included mercury and PCBs, which cling to sediment and have been building up in the Bay for decades. These contaminants are particularly worrisome because they bioaccumulate, with concentrations rising up the food web, which means trouble for top predators from birds and seals to people.
These legacy contaminants mostly reflect the past: mercury that was used to extract gold in the 1800s continues to wash down with sediments from the Sierra Nevada today. This pollutant also enters the Bay in stormwater from the South Bay, which once had one of the biggest mercury mines in the world. Likewise, while PCBs were banned in 1979, these widely-used chemicals poured into the Bay for 50 years.
Once in, pollutants linger because turnover in the Bay is slow. “It’s hard when you have a contaminant that went into the estuary 100 years ago — there’s not much you can do,” Taberski says. Natural processes will eventually bury sediment-bound contaminants or carry them through the Bay’s narrow mouth and out to sea, but this can take decades or longer.
In the meantime, the RMP has eased the sting of legacy contaminants. Monitoring identified hotspots that were then cleaned up and also pointed toward safer ways to dredge, allaying concerns about stirring up contaminated sediments and enabling the use of dredged material to restore wetlands.
More importantly, the Program now monitors mercury and PCBs in sport fish to protect people’s health, informing the state advisory about fish consumption that has been in effect since 1994. “The advisory is based on levels in fish instead of water because that’s how people are exposed to contamination,” Davis says. “We’re still concerned about mercury and PCBs but we have better indicators of them now.”
In addition, RMP data inform TMDLs that address ongoing inputs for legacy contaminants. For example, urban runoff continues to be high in PCBs despite the ban, leading the Program to search for and clean up sites where these toxicants were used historically. Another possible fix includes configuring storm drains to catch the PCB-contaminated sediment, before they get into the Bay.
Looking back, several early RMP priorities had happy outcomes. Initial monitoring showed, for example, that copper and nickel were too high in the Bay, leading Silicon Valley industries to focus on pollution prevention. But RMP data eventually suggested that copper levels were less dangerous than had been thought. “Copper was a big concern in the ‘90s because concentrations exceeded federal criteria,” Davis says. “We showed that copper could be higher than national standards without harming creatures in the Bay, which meant we didn’t have to mandate costly restrictions.” This is because the organic matter floating in the water binds copper, keeping much of it out of the food web.
Just when heavy metal fears were put to rest, a new scare emerged: flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which are ubiquitous in products from electronics to building materials to foam padding in furniture and carpets. “The Bay was a hot spot for PBDEs 10 years ago, with world record concentrations,” Davis says, adding that PBDEs were also high in women’s breast milk locally. But two of the three commercial PBDE mixtures were banned in 2006 and are dropping off nicely, and the last one is being phased out this year.
In contrast to the positive outcomes with heavy metals and PBDEs, pesticides have been an ongoing problem. Stormwater monitoring showed the need to manage organophosphate pesticides such as diazinon that replaced DDT. “Diazinon is less persistent than DDT but is very toxic,” Taberski says. Now regulated by the EPA, diazinon is still allowed for agricultural use but was banned for residential use in 2004.
Pyrethroid pesticides have since replaced organophosphate pesticides for residential use, showcasing another happy outcome of the RMP: the ability of the Program to detect a problem it’s not looking for. In this case, monitoring by the RMP and others showed unusual toxic effects on the aquatic invertebrates that fish eat in urban streams, which were eventually traced to the new pyrethroids. “Regulated contaminants couldn’t explain these effects,” water scientist Sedlak says. “This raised awareness that not all toxicants are monitored or regulated.” Instead of getting caught up in the cycle of endlessly regulating replacement pesticides, the Regional Water Board’s urban creek TMDL now covers all pesticides that are toxic in water.
Keeping an eye out for new contaminants is a major focus of the RMP today. “We’re trying to nip problems in the bud with early detection and management,” Davis says. “We’re looking hard but none are rising to the high concern category that would require regulation.”
The Program is keeping a particular watch on excess nutrients or eutrophication, which elsewhere causes algal blooms that use up all the oxygen, killing fish. The Bay, while high in nutrients, has so far escaped the downsides of eutrophication partly because suspended sediments are also high, blocking the light algae need to grow. But long-term monitoring by the US Geological Survey, done in partnership with the RMP, shows that suspended sediment is dropping and algae is rising. The water is likely to keep getting clearer because the excess sediment from rocks crushed during the Gold Rush may finally be washing away. “We have a window to figure out the best way to manage nutrients and hopefully head off eutrophication,” Taberski says.
These days, the RMP also starts collecting data well before regulators need it. “We’ve become more and more forward looking,” Davis says. “Just as a great hockey player plays to where the puck will be, we provide information managers will need five years down the road so they’ll be able to make informed decisions when the time comes.”
In anticipation of upcoming requirements for a regional approach to managing urban runoff, for example, the RMP recently began monitoring small tributaries that feed into the estuary. “There are more than 100 and we selected the best for modeling loads for the whole Bay Area,” Davis says. “We’re setting the stage for updating the municipal stormwater permit.”
The RMP has come a long way since it was originally brokered between regulators and dischargers to track pollutants. Today, the Program is a leader in estuarine management, asking key questions about the Bay’s health and initiating studies to answer them. The RMP’s success has inspired others to follow suit. Says the Water Board’s Mumley, “We’re cited as a model effort that other parts of the state, country and world are now trying to emulate — and we’ve been doing this for 20 years.”
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Suess and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.