Chemical manufacturer 3M will begin payments starting in the third quarter to many U.S. public drinking water systems as part of a multi-billion-dollar settlement over contamination with potentially harmful compounds used in firefighting foam and several consumer products, the company said.
Years ago, in a moment of despair over the utter dead-end that solving the Tijuana River sewage crisis seemed to be, I asked U.S. officials why we don’t just cross the border and start fixing broken pipes in Mexico.
Joel Acedo goes surfing in Imperial Beach almost every day. He knows the water is contaminated from cross-border sewage — the warning signs are posted all over the beach. But he’s willing to take his chances. When his grandchildren are in town, however, he won’t let them in the ocean.
In the Records Room of the CalEPA building in Sacramento are some of the most important documents in the entire state of California. Some date back to 1914. “Our files are organized in ascending order,” explained Matthew Jay, an analyst with the State Water Resources Control Board. “The oldest documents are at the bottom and so you can see that some of the stuff is all typewritten and in a lot of cases, handwritten.”
Southern California’s Imperial Irrigation District, which supplies water to farmers who grow most of the nation’s winter vegetables, planned to start a conservation program in April to scale back what it draws from the critical Colorado River.
