As Americans stockpile disinfecting wipes and paper towels to clean their homes more often to reduce the risk of coronavirus, California’s state water regulators on Tuesday urged them to keep one thing in mind: Don’t flush them down the toilet.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently released its National Water Reuse Action Plan to promote more water reuse in the U.S. William M. Alley, director of science and technology for the National Ground Water Association, says the plan focuses on low-hanging fruit and states and associations will likely remain the leaders and innovators in water reuse.
The week started with extreme snow in the Sierra Nevada, where a powerful high altitude storm system brought more than 60 inches of snow to California’s highest peaks. Winds over 100 mph battered the Sierra Ridge as fee of snow piled high, sparking avalanche concerns and forcing the closure of Interstate 80. Visibility at time plummeted to near zero.
Tap water is more strictly regulated than the bottled water being hoarded, officials say. Tap water is treated specifically to remove infectants like the new coronavirus, which “is a type of virus that is particularly susceptible to disinfection and standard treatment,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website.
Across the nation, the scenario repeats. Atlantic sturgeon, once a hallmark of the eastern seaboard, can reach only about half of their historic spawning grounds. Some 40 percent of the 800 or so varieties of freshwater fish in the US, and more than two-thirds of native mussels, are rare or endangered, in part because man-made barriers have altered their ecosystems. Reservoirs disrupt currents, altering water’s velocity and temperature. That can harm its quality and interrupt the reproductive cycles of aquatic creatures. Stanching a river stops the distribution of sediment and the formation of logjams, two things critical to creating healthy habitat. It also eliminates floodplains and natural meanders, both of which prevent the banks from overflowing.
In the rolling hills of Fallbrook, California, Joseph Rossi and his family have been growing avocados at Rossi Ranch for 23 years.
The fruit has become so popular they now rely on their farm alone to make a living.
“It’s 100 percent of our income for the past seven years now,” Rossi said.
San Luis Obispo’s water supply is safe and reliable, according to city officials, who note they’ve had several questions regarding water quality amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In a news release, city officials reassured customers their tap supply “continues to be of the highest quality and is completely safe to drink.”
“There is no threat to your public drinking water supply and no need to use bottled water,” San Luis Obispo officials said in the release.
Snow has finally diminished a bit after California’s Sierra Nevada picked up several feet of snow, part of a “Miracle March” weather pattern helping to replenish vital, water-providing snowpack after a record-dry February.
Heavy snow began in the Sierra last Saturday and continued through Monday night leading to major travel headaches.
Monday night, a section of Interstate 80 westbound near the California-Nevada state line was closed due to multiple spinouts.
One storm does not make a “Miracle March” but what an impact the last few days have had on the Sierra snowpack.
Continuous snow at Lake Tahoe since Saturday morning has added 13% to the snowpack, according to Jeff Anderson, water supply specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Nevada.
“To gain back that amount this time of year is really hard,” Anderson told the Tribune.
The economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic could cause widespread disruptions in the energy sector, tightening demand, jeopardizing supply chains, diverting regulatory attention and negating previous growth forecasts for solar and storage deployment, according to financial analysts and industry experts.
The novel coronavirus outbreak will be a “significant global crisis, triggering an economic slowdown” — which will likely affect the broader clean energy transition, including renewables, energy storage, and electric vehicles, analysts at BloombergNEF said in a report published last week.
