Water Pollution Archives

Opinion: We Need Binational Cooperation to Treat Drinking Water and Wastewater in San Diego-Tijuana

January 9, 2023/in Home Headline, Media Coverage, San Diego County /by Mike Lee /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Bernardo Saldaña

Hungarian writer and poet Sándor Márai published a description of the San Diego-Tijuana region in 1964. His chronicle provides details of the conditions that surround the U.S.-Mexico border. He compares the streets of California packed with automobiles and Tijuana’s dusty, cluttered, noisy avenues. The Tijuana pedestrians were everywhere and the difference caught his attention because seeing a person walking in California was “suspicious.” That’s how the poet makes an urban cross-border description, according to a fragment translated into Spanish by Rafael Muñoz.

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Environmental Study Released for Transborder Water Pollution Mitigation

November 23, 2022/in Home Headline, Media Coverage, San Diego County /by Mike Lee /WaterWorld

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) have released a final environmental impact statement for a set of proposed projects to mitigate transborder water pollution between San Diego and Tijuana.

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Pollution Still Flows Through Clean Water Act Loophole

October 19, 2022/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Gayle Falkenthal /E&E Newsby Hannnah Northey

Congressional staffers who helped craft the landmark Clean Water Act 50 years ago acknowledge they left a big hole in the law — one that’s now blamed for the single largest pollution source in streams, rivers and lakes.

Nonpoint-source pollution — a technocratic term describing pesticides, oil, fertilizers, toxins, sediment and grime that storms wash into waterways from land — still befuddles federal regulators to this day.

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Study Suggests Source for Salton Sea’s Rapid Decline

October 18, 2022/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Gayle Falkenthal /Fronteras by Nicholas Gerbia

In the past 25 years, California’s Salton Sea has grown more polluted and hazardous as it has lost one-third of its water. Shrinkage of similar lakes elsewhere mainly stems from warming trends and water diversion.

But a new paper in the journal Water Resources Research suggests that might not be the case with California’s most polluted inland lake.

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As California Begins Monitoring Microplastics in Water, Experts Brace for Health Impacts

September 21, 2022/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Gayle Falkenthal /San Francisco Examinerby Jessica Wolfram

Microplastics, or the small fragments of plastics and polymers from clothing, packaging and cosmetics, are now found virtually everywhere on Earth — from the highest peaks to the depths of the ocean.

At five millimeters long or less, these tiny specks are also cropping up in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Microplastics have been detected in commercially farmed shellfish and, recently, in beef and pork, with little known about how much plastic we’re ingesting — or the impacts of this material on our health or the health of the planet.

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Interior Department Approves $1B to Clean Up Abandoned Wells

February 2, 2022/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /US Newsby Drew Costley

The Department of Interior is spending $1.15 billion to cap abandoned oil and gas wells across the United States.

There are over 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And Interior officials say that wells have been exposing millions of people to air and water pollution for decades.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement Monday that the funding will help the country “confront the legacy pollution and long-standing environmental injustices that for too long have plagued underrepresented communities.” Much of the funding is focused on plugging wells in communities of color and in rural and tribal communities.

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Leaking California Oil Pipe’s Safeguards Not Fully Working

December 9, 2021/in Media Coverage, San Diego County /by Gayle Falkenthal /Associated Pressby Brian Melley, Matthew Brown

The ruptured offshore pipeline that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil off the Southern California coast this fall did not have a fully functioning leak detection system at the time, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The report was compiled by pipeline operator, Beta Offshore, a subsidiary of Houston-based Amplify Energy, and filed with federal regulators. It reveals Amplify is investigating whether personnel or control room issues contributed to the accident but does not explain what was wrong with the detection system.

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Climate Change is Acidifying and Contaminating Drinking Water and Alpine Ecosystems

November 5, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /Scientific Americanby Elizabeth Miller

Garrett Rue grew up fly fishing in central Colorado, often surrounded by mountains stained amber and maroon, and hiking along streams that seemed to borrow those colors. Sometimes he would cast for native trout and come back with nothing—because there was nothing to catch. Then he started hearing stories about people in nearby mountain communities who couldn’t drink their own water. He began to wonder: “These streams have problems supporting ecosystems, and they’re not usable for drinking. What’s going on here?”

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Toxins Long Buried May Surface as Groundwater Rises

November 5, 2021/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /NBC Bay Areaby Stephen Stock, Robert Campos, Mark Villarreal and Michael Horn

Water rising beneath the ground, pushed up by intruding salt water as sea levels rise, now impacts thousands of toxic waste sites throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. A six-month investigation by NBC Bay Area found that the threat from rising groundwater isn’t decades in the future but, in some cases, may be imminent. In many hot spots from the North Bay to the South Bay, UC Berkeley scientists told the Investigative Unit they’ve recorded groundwater already at or near the surface.

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Opinion: Clean Water in California is Overdue

October 19, 2021/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /CalMattersby Sean Bothwell

Forty-nine years ago this week, Congress passed the federal Clean Water Act, with the goal of restoring America’s waters. Yet today, 95% of California’s rivers, lakes, bays and wetlands are plagued by pesticides, metals, pathogens, trash and sediment, making it unsafe to swim, fish or drink. As we approach the 50^th anniversary of this landmark environmental legislation, it is time for the state to get on track toward ensuring swimmable, fishable and drinkable waters for all Californians.

Underserved communities of color shoulder far too much of the cost of unsafe water. But the state has increasingly treated these communities as water quality “sacrifice zones.”

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