Dirty Beaches

NRDC's annual Testing the Waters report is out, detailing the numbers and causes for beach closures in 2007 (aqui en Espanol). Great Lakes, you're not looking so great.

I first encountered this report back in 1998, when I was looking at the data for the Heinz Center's national ecosystem report. When I started at NRDC, TTW was one of my earliest press duties; I'd get the summaries about 48 hours before they hit the streets and spend that time crunching numbers on Bay Area beaches. You can get as little or as much information as you want at the report site, by searching for your favorite beach or looking county by county at beach monitoring frequency, but the data resolution still leaves much to be desired.

That's because TTW suffers from the same problems as many long term environmental data sets. Beach monitoring and closure data isn't all collected in one central location, like at the EPA. Some of it requires calling counties and cities, each of which may have their own rules for what they monitor and how often. And those rules have certainly changed over the 18 years of TTW. While those policy changes can make long term trends difficult to tease out, a general trend is that the closer you look at water quality, the more fecal coliform you find. Water quality testing isn't necessarily expensive or difficult -- you can do it yourself as a Surfrider volunteer -- but it is one of those programs that tends to get cut when budgets are tight.

Keep that in mind the next time your municipality asks to upgrade its sewage system, because it's likely that those aging overflows and septic tanks are degrading your beach. Nothing ruins a "staycation" more than stomach flu.

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Do you want plastic in your drinking water?

Who wants to mix plastic balls in your drinking water and then let the whole mess sit and percolate in the hot sun for weeks or months?

You do? Really? Well you can have this to drink every day if you move to LA. And...this plastic cocktail is touted as a solution to a chemical problem, sunlight reacting with water treatment chemicals to form bromate.

Is there a toxic contamination concern from this plastic soaking in drinking water and in the sunlight. There's a fascinating exchange at an LA Times blog on this, and the answers range from "yes" to "no." Read the comments to get the exchange.

Some commenters favor faith in government and others mention the high-density polyethylene and possible chemical problems from trace contaminants and sunlight-caused breakdown. Since HDPE seems to be a fairly safe plastic, my biggest question is what makes those balls black? That, and were they made in China?

Strange brew indeed. I'd prefer not to have plastic in my drinking water. Just for fun, check out the surreal video of 400,000 shade balls being dumped into the drinking water reservoir, thank goodness the workers are wearing hard hats, those balls look dangerous!

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Nitrogen waste cleaned up by healthy streams

The best way to fight disease is robust good health, and that applies to rivers and bays as well as people. Healthy rivers can shrug off nitrogen pollution, and avoid the dread of eutrophication and resulting dead zones.

Nitrogen runoff kills rivers and bays, creating dead zones by over-fertilizing and using up oxygen. But now there's a new option on the table for solving the problem, healthy rivers. A big new study says healthy rivers can suck up nitrogen and use it as fertilizer for healthy growth of plants and animals, instead of the unhealthy overgrowth of eutrophication. Go healthy rivers!!

This isn't to say that healthy rivers can use up any amount of nitrogen we throw at them. There are limits to how much nitrogen can be consumed even by healthy rivers. But this new finding is important because the value of healthy rivers is largely ignored in efforts to control eutrophication and eliminate dead zones. Instead, the dominant emphasis is on controlling nitrogen runoff, which is important but so far hasn't solved the problem.

Nitrogen waste from fertilizers and sewage is a big problem. The famous Gulf of Mexico dead zone comes from excess fertilizer runoff in the farm belt. The nitrogen fertilizes algae blooms and the algae rot and use up oxygen, killing oysters, fish and most underwater animals.

A gigantic study of rivers and streams from around the US has brought clear consensus on an urgent message: We need healthy stream ecosystems to clean up nitrogen waste.

Healthy stream and river ecosystems consume nitrogen and convert some to animal bodies, while some goes into the atmosphere in bacterial magic called denitrification.

It would be interesting to do a cost/benefit analysis, and I assume that'll be a next step for these scientists. How much does it cost to stop nitrogen runoff at the source, compared to maintaining healthy rivers and consuming the nitrogen in streams and rivers?

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Did you know you're drinking recycled water?

That's right, the water you drink has been used by someone else, and it's not all cleaned up.

So those hormones and blood pressure drugs and everything else that people take is coming atcha in your water. And if you're a man's man, it might just turn you into David Beckham. Except without the Spice Girl wife. And without the wicked kick.

What happens with the drugs we use to stay well, be happy, and avoid pregnancy? More and more, we're finding them in rivers and fish, and they create unique and unpleasant problems like "intersex" fish," with male AND female traits).

The latest news is that those drugs and hormones are in our drinking water, not just our rivers. It ain't just fish that gotta worry, it's us too.

Don't think that bottled water will save you, by now you should know that it's not necessarily any safer. It's often just tap water with an attitude.

All water is recycled, because we all live downstream from somebody. (Well, actually not me, but I did that on purpose.) That means you're drinking used water, and if you're really unlucky it's been used many times. Do you trust their sewage and septic systems?

Now there's a new concern in reusing water, our medicines, drugs, and yes, hormone pills.

The water cleanup we use is only designed to get rid of the major risks, and it works pretty well. Bugs that cause disease are mostly cleared from waste, and we mostly don't get sick. At least that's true in the wealthy world. But our cleanup doesn't get rid of everything.

So drink up! And drop me a comment if you're a manly man who's turning female, I might be able to tell you why.

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Oily mess in San Francisco Bay could have been prevented

What do you do when you make a mess? Ignore it and hope for the best? That doesn't work when your mess is 58,000 gallons of highly toxic fuel oil spilled from a cargo ship, all within spitting distance of more than 7 million people. Even worse, some of the oil washed up on the Berkeley shore, where people make pollution outrage into a lifestyle.



This YouTube video shows the San Francisco Bay oil spill from above, and shows how we missed the boat on containing it. The mess could have been contained if proper procedures were followed, and floating containment booms were in place in 2 hours.

Oil spills happen, and a quick move to contain the mess can prevent most of the harm. This point was made years ago, but nobody paid attention. Argh, why do we wait until after the mess to learn our lessons?

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Shampoo in the Columbia River

Wanna know where to find clean fish? Try the lower Columbia River, where a recent study found plenty of household products like coffee, antibiotics, and yes, shampoo.

We've heard some similar news before, but this is the first time I've heard of shampoo in a river. And the especially bad news is that these chemicals were found at levels that might harm fish in a river as big as the Columbia. With so much water flowing, that's a lot of shampoo.

Are peole in the northwest just a lot more particular about being clean? Maybe we can launch a "share a shower" campaign, inviting people to shower with a friend to conserve shampoo.

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Do you want to swim in sewage?

I didn't think so. Thanks to a new bipartisan bill in Congress, you might just be able to find out when you're swimming in sewage.

The Sewage Right to Know Act would require monitoring, reporting, and public notification of sewage dumping into rivers, lakes, and ocean beaches.

It's about time that we find out when we're swimming in sewage...without having to wait for the symptoms.

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Ocean bubble bath in Australia

You won't believe it unless you see the pictures. Foam in the ocean and on beaches in Australia covered mile after mile and piled up into mountains. It was enough to cover beaches and partially cover some buildings.

Thanks to Deep-Sea News for the story. Yamba in New South Wales was, for a while, the Cappuccino Coast. According to the Daily Mail:

Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed.

All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles.

These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the surface by the current towards the shore.

As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become foam.

The foam "surfs" towards shore until the wave "crashes", tossing the foam into the air.

"It's the same effect you get when you whip up a milk shake in a blender," explains a marine expert.

"The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the surface and the lighter it becomes."

Something similar happened 30 years ago, so this is not unique.

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You can't escape drug testing

A teaspoon of sewage is all that's needed to test an entire city for drug use.

Imagine how this could be used...do we need Constitutional protection for the sanctity of our excretions? Will overzealous prosecutors "tap" your sewage line?

And...what does this mean for the animals on the receiving end of our sewage, since most of the drugs survive sewage treatment? Perhaps this explains poor performance of fish on most standardized achievement tests, and the lackadaisical attitude to authority figures that seems to prevail among sea lions?

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The death of toxicology

We buried it at Donner summit last week, in a wine-drenched consensus. In its place we're ready to build green chemistry.

My toxicologist wife started it, and was joined by our friend the cell biologist. I offered the environmentalist view and one thing lead to another until we buried toxicology.

It's too late to follow the path of testing chemicals for harm, identifying the mechanism of toxicity, and then entering the regulatory dance to limit harm from the offending molecule. There are simply too many chemicals used, too little testing, and toxicity pathways are too complex. Doing toxicology these days is like scratching fleas bites on an elephant with a toothpick.

We need a new approach, focused on eliminating the use of toxic chemicals rather than cleaning up messes.

Now this leads to other thoughts, like the death of fishery management...but that's another story.

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Please don't pee in our pool (ocean)?

Is this what corals are saying? Should divers hold it until they're back on dry land? Is it better to pee on shore than in the ocean?

Believe it or not, enquiring minds want to know. Google "ok to pee in the ocean" and you'll get a lot of debate, mostly ending with the view that it's natural, it's not much, so it's ok. Even the venerable Umbra Fisk at Grist takes this blithe attitude. But Rick over at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets has some concerns over pee and sunscreen effects on corals in popular dives spots like MPAs.

I'm with Rick on this one, it might be time to worry about peeing in the ocean, at least in heavily used and sensitive sites. Remeber that people once thought it was ok to dump sewage in the ocean, because it's natural and it's not too much on the scale of an ocean. Now we know better, and few places still dump untreated sewage into the ocean. Read the justifications of peeing in the ocean, and you'll see the very last frontier of the thoroughly discredited slogan: "dilution is the solution to pollution." Maybe it's not even ok for pee.

Stop by Rick's terrific blog Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets and tell him it's ok that I stole his great picture (above)!

Photo: Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets

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Oysters to the rescue

Puget Sound needs oysters like a car in Seattle needs windshield wipers. Once upon a time, oysters filled the Sound and filtered and cleaned the water.

Too bad we ate most of our oysters and killed the rest with water pollution. But wait, maybe it's not too late. The Nature Conservancy, the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, and volunteers are trying to restore our native Olympia oyster by building them new homes.

It's a great example of ocean restoration done right, because the new homes are nothing more than old oyster shells put back into the Sound. Baby oysters grow best on old oyster shells, making huge oyster reefs a normal part of a healthy bay.

The program will rely on natural reproduction to reseed the bays, so there are no worries of planting the wrong oysters from hatcheries. The Sound seems clean enough for oysters to thrive now, so it's worth a try.

Some people say the small native Olympia oysters taste better than the exotic imports now common in oyster farms. Maybe someday the world will know about Puget Sound's famous Olympia oysters.

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Sewage to fertilizer

A large sewage treatment plant in Oregon is testing a process to make fertilizer from sewage. The process, from a Canadian company, is advertised as a win-win process that saves money and turns waste into a useful product.

The process uses Magnesium to capture phosphorus and ammonia and turn it into BB-sized pellets that can be spread as fertilizer. So long as there are no problems with toxics in the sewage, it ought to work.

Now about their proposal to put some of the fertilizer in streams to fertilize salmon production. Nice try, mimicking the natural nutrient delivery of dead salmon carcases, but I've seen this idea misused in the past. Most of our streams need fewer nutrients, not more. And pellets are not the same as salmon carcases, which are eaten directly instead of just fertilizing plant growth.

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New effort to restore Puget Sound, MudUp!

I attended a meeting last night where Kathy Fletcher of People for Puget Sound explained the new Puget Sound Partnership formed by our Governor and legislature.

And she mentioned an exciting new campaign that went live yesterday, MudUp Check it out, and get dirty for Puget Sound. You can do it even if you don't live here, we're going to need all the help we can get.

I'm optimistic that this new effort will actually learn from past mistakes and make good progress on the big issues facing us, like shoreline protection, non-point source runoff, sewage systems and leaky septic tanks, etc. Will it make headway on our transportation system? That's a real weak point for Seattle and the Puget Sound area, so we'll have to wait and see. Or...better yet...get active and help push that boulder uphill.

Thanks to Kathy, People for Puget Sound, Governor Gregoire, State Senator Rockefeller, and the countless others involved.

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Ocean returns our foul gifts

In a foul turnabout, people are complaining about the ocean polluting their environment. Rotting sea lettuce, gorged on sewage and nutrient runoff, is piling up on beaches and angering beach-front residents.

It's an ironic reversal to see the results of human pollution create a nuisance for the owners of prime beachfront property. Since people have more votes than fish, maybe this will get things moving in a way that never happens when fish are the only victims.

Finally, the ocean is learning to communicate effectively. I wonder what's coming next?

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Toxic algae killing birds, mammals in California

Toxic algae are killing birds and mammals in record numbers in Southern California this year. Scientists wonder at the cause.

The toxin is naturally-occurring but this year's event is anything but normal. Effects on mammals and birds seem to be worse than anyone has ever seen. Scientists suspect the upsurge has been caused by such things as overfishing, destruction of wetlands and pollution, all of which have harmed fisheries and allowed algae to flourish, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The toxin, domoic acid, is produced by microscopic algae, gets concentrated in fish and shellfish, and can poison birds and mammals who eat the fish and shellfish.

Algae blooms such as "red tides" have long been known, but recently seem to be causing more trouble. A particularly scary version, pfiesteria, caused a near-panic in the late 1990s on the US East Coast.

Another in a long list of reasons to work for healthy oceans...probably fewer toxic algae blooms

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More girlie-men fish in Seattle

Metrosexuals? Or maybe just the unfortunate victims of industrial disease? Either way, the boys are not alright if you're talking about male fish that live around Seattle.

Male English sole are producing egg proteins in their bodies, and the problem is worse than we thought when Blogfish first brought you the news. It's not just the guys having trouble, females are producing eggs in the offseason and becomming sexually mature at younger ages.

It's not just happening in Seattle, and it's not just happening to fish. One doctor goes so far to suggest that some widespread changes in our culture may be caused by the same feminizing process that is affecting Seattle's fish. Now that's a big idea.

Birth control pills, detergent, plastic bottles, and yes, makeup all contribute to the problem, which is at it's worst where a sewage outfall dumps into Elliot Bay.

King County is planning to sell treated wastewater to a golf course, I wonder if the golfers are keen on the idea? Maybe cosmetic sales will go up in the pro shop.

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More on seafood mercury risks

Just when you thought it was safe to eat seafood...pregnant women who eat more seafood have elevated mercury in their blood, putting their babies at risk.

Most women who ate seafood 3 times per week or more had unsafe mercury levels, according to a study of women in Taipei. Few details were offered in the Taipei Times news article, but the details are likely to be very important. What kind of fish? Caught where? Etc.

The mercury struggle goes on.

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Christmas in the ocean

How can you tell when it's Christmas in the ocean? By the cinnamon & vanilla flavoring the water. Holiday cookie baking shows up in Puget Sound, after the cookies are eaten and...well...processed.

Digging deeper, researchers estimate that Seattle desert lovers ate about 200,000 cookies per day containing cinnamon & vanilla.

It's incredible how our habits influence oceans, even our cookie habits. Previously, we've heard about caffeine, antidepressants, birth control hormones, and antibiotics showing up in Seattle-area streams, with possible effects on fish and other animals.

Do the cookies matter? Smell is important to some fish, and spices are used because of their pungency, so who knows? Fish probably appreciate the end of the season and the seasoning.

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Kenai River fouled by anglers' engines

Small impacts matter--the Kenai River is officially "polluted" by the motors of fishermen chasing salmon.

This is a barbecue of a couple of sacred cows. Salmon swimming through a soup of oil, gas, and exhaust, in "pristine" Alaska? All because good people like you and me are driving boats, fishing, and having a good time?

Note that wild Alaska salmon deserve "organic" status, according to some Alaska politicians.

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