Road Trip to SoCal: the Imperial Valley

Written by admin on May 20th, 2010

the All-American Canal fifty feet from Mexico

The story of the Imperial Valley is not only the story of humans making a desert fertile, but also woven into my story. My great-grandparents met and fell in love there, in the tiny town of Brawley. And their story follows the development of this desert in the most south, most east part of California.

That was what it used to be called, the Colorado Desert. And that was what it was- ‘just’ a desert- the desert west of the great Colorado River. A few smart men saw the very dry, yet very fertile soil east of the river and decided to ‘civilize’ the place. In 1901, a large canal was opened from the Colorado into desert. From the desert, lettuces and grapefruit, melons and tomatoes came. An Imperial Press newspaper from 1901 proclaimed under its heading, “Water is King- here is its Kingdom!” A kingdom built on desert.

By 1902, Southern Pacific railroad laid tracks into the desert, now renamed, the Imperial Valley, by a very smart business man who knew the value of an enticing name. The town of Brawley was added to the map around then.

Vegetables and fruit piled up in bountiful baskets. And with so much abundance and a wealthy of opportunity, people came from all over. After all, not only were they growing food from what looked like wasteland, because of the climate, they were growing food ALL year long. Everyone wanted to be part of this great experiment, that sparked the imagination of every American mind.

Which is when she came onto the scene. In 1916, my pretty little great-grandmother, Delia Campbell, arrived in Brawley at the sweet age of sixteen. She came straight off the farm in Oklahoma- used to working hard, riding horses, and cooking up fried chicken and corn bread. Her father had gotten a job, unrelated to farming. And so the family came and settled.

Imperial lady (not of my blood)

Two years later my great-grandma met a young chap named Sam and became Delia Dotson when she was just 18 years old. The family moved away from the Valley for some time, to San Diego, to El Paso, Texas with the story of the Imperial Valley picking back up with my grandmother, Millie Delong.

Her family moved back to Brawley when she was ten years old in 1936. Growing up, I always remember my grandma mentioning how much she loved Brawley.

“It was a beautiful town. Everyone knew everyone,” she recalled recently.

She told the story of a small town- of just 10,000- a wealthy agricultural town. A town overflowing with giant heads of winter-grown lettuce. In fact, a point of pride, was that the Imperial Valley always sent the first cantaloupe, watermelon, and lettuce of the year to the White House. The desert climate made it possible to grow all year long. But without water, the Kingdom would have come crumbling down.

the Yuma Canal

My grandma remembers how a certain produce driver on the way to the market would stop at her house and give my great-grandmother loads of giant melons and heads of lettuce. She remembers the kitchen counter always full of produce.

She remembers going to the opening of the All American Canal- the lifeline of the Imperial Valley and the largest irrigation canal in the world- how the US Secretary of the Interior was there.

And she always recalls the story of the 1940 7.1 earthquake that nearly shook Brawley apart. That was when her family moved- picked up again and went to San Diego where the rest of history played out and led to a little baby named Me.

The Colorado River

the Colorado River near Yuma

I had to pay a visit. Being so close and all. When my mom and I finally found a small stretch of the Colorado, in an RV park, we found a modest river- not the raging Colorado you see crashing its way through the Grand Canyon. No, this river is an all but spent river. Most of what it carries is run-off from farm irrigation. Soon, it crosses the Mexican border, and before it gets to its old delta in the Gulf of Mexico, is pretty much used up.

I felt bad, but I didn’t really want to touch the water, muddy with fertilizer and farm soil. This river that helped sustain me as a child. As a San Diegan, about half the water I drank was from this river. This river, classified as a deficit river, because more people own water rights to it than there is water. I had to stop and pay homage- to this wild creature, wild and now tamed. But giving us ‘civilization.’ Producing over $1 billion in agriculture a year, and providing homes for many people.

So many times in southern California, you can look around you and see that the mirage around you is made of water. The gift of a loving mother, a particular river, created our economies of agriculture, industry, Hollywood, SoCal suburbia….all of it.

The Colorado continues to give. And give. And give.

 

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Roadtrip to SoCal: Coachella and the Salton Sea

Written by admin on May 13th, 2010

Coachella Valley

Driving from Palm Desert south along Highway 111, the palm trees swaying lusciously in the breeze, spouting fountains announcing the newest gated community, the green of golf courses stretching practically to the horizon, you’d never know that you were in a desert. Except, of course, for the heat.

Like much of our relationship with water in California, our relationship to this southern desert is no exception in its strangeness. For almost a century, we have been fascinated by the desert’s possibilities- a climate where, if you can get water to it, fruits, vegetables, and dates grow all year long, a climate where you can live in eternal summer (except in the real summer when you live in the Eternal Oven.)

Thanks to water piped in from the Colorado River and water from deep below the surface of the desert, the desert is a fantasy resort town and agricultural hot-spot, flaunting fountains, ponds, and verdant greenery. But around the small habitable island of our creation, is still the desert. A constant reminder of the fragility of life in these parts, of the constant struggle for water.

Driving through the Palm Desert, I was struck by my tendency to think of water more often. To make sure I knew where I’d be able to get a drink next. As if the mirage around me, with its gas stations and

desert irrigation

grocery stores, didn’t quite fool my body into trusting it. The dry heat bearing down, leaching my water away.

If you look at the native plants of the area, you understand that to survive in the desert, one has to be the Most water efficient. To take advantage of water when it comes, and to ration water as if you may never see it again.

We have changed all that. Outside of the resort town, the Coachella Valley stretched in front of us- lush, green agriculture sandwiched between parched rocky mountains and cracked tumble week desert.

The Salton Sea

As we approached the Salton Sea, rows of green crops stretched between the highway and the sea, bordered by  dust and small canals of irrigation water. By the time we were cruising the sea’s eastern border, we had again entered what seemed to be barren desert with the occasional sign of human settlement, skeletons of old trailers and armchairs.

The Salton Sea’s story is a very interesting one, one that would not have unrolled as it did without the help of humans. The Sea used to be an area called the Salton Sink, a low-lying desert basin with a high amount of salt in its soil, which would occasionally fill with freshwater from the Colorado River and then evaporate again as part of a natural process over hundreds of thousands of years. In 1905, settlers in the West had begun to try to tame the Colorado River by building canals and dikes to divert water for agriculture. That year, after heavy rain and snowmelt, the river breached the Alamo Canal and other dikes, creating two new rivers, and pouring all of itself into the Salton Sink, creating the Salton Sea within two years.

Now 376 square miles, its salinity higher than the ocean’s, the sea is fed only by agricultural run-off water. In a strange twist of fate, with the development on the Southern California coast displacing thousands of migrating birds, the Sea has become a bird sanctuary. Though with rising salinity levels as a result of not enough water coming into the sea to replace water evaporated, birds might not be able to use the Sea as a resting place for many more years. If you want to learn more about the effort to preserve the Salton Sea as a place for bird migration, read here.

In terms of human development, since its creation in 1905, the Sea has gone through a few waves of developers trying to market it as a resort spot, hence the remaining trailer parks and more often, the wreckage of past habitation. Funnily enough, my grandpa mistakenly bought two lots at the side of the Sea during one of the resort booms. Unfortunately for him, the Sea has never retained a large population, and he had to sell his lots.

two inch magical plant world

Our favorite thing

My favorite moment of the drive down the Salton Sea was stepping out of the truck to take a few pictures of an abandoned café, when my mom and I noticed thousands of little plants at our feet. It is easy for us humans to think, when we take a quick look at the desert, that it is empty. But at our feet, were thousands of plants, mostly two to four inches high- some flowering, some succulents, many with different colors- green, red, yellow. These are the plants that call the desert home.

Moving forward it would be wise to acknowledge the beauty of the desert and learn from its native inhabitants how to adapt to a given climate. To stop and look for a second more, using human know-how and technology to work with nature, rather than try to dominate it, to understand and learn, rather than continue our knee-jerk altering without seeing the desert’s many gifts to us.

 

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Road Trip to SoCal: Santa Margarita River

Written by admin on May 6th, 2010

It’s road trip season! For this four day escapade, I enlisted a research assistant, my momma, to travel with me deep into the heart of California’s water dreams, to the desert at the Southern end of the state. It is there that the vision of taming the vast desert, of creating a lush oasis out of sand and heat, came to pass.

It was pretty striking- the contrast between my last adventure in the upper reaches of Northern California’s emerald green river country, and the tumbleweed strewn desert that our ingenuity/hubris brought water to. Sometimes it baffles the mind how us humans could want so much to do the impossible, to test our wit and skill against the might of nature. An attitude that, while producing impressive monuments to our intelligence and pride, now begins to bear fruit of questionable flavor.

For our route, we chose a loop passing by one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California near Fallbrook, through Palm Desert and down the eastern side of the Salton Sea, into the Imperial Valley where my great-grandparents met and married, and finally, to pay our respects to the Colorado River.

This trip will be split into a few different segments over the next few weeks. Enjoy the stories and pictures!

The Santa Margarita River

The Santa Margarita River is one of Southern California’s last free-flowing rivers. Though Southern California isn’t known for its abundance of water, there are a good number of rivers native to the area. The San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers, the Santa Clara (also free-flowing), the Ventura, the Santa Ana, the San Luis Rey, the San Gabriel, the Colorado (which forms the border of California and Arizona), and of course the namesake of this project, the Sweetwater, almost all of which have been put into concrete channels and/or dammed.

On its journey to the ocean, the Santa Margarita flows 27 miles unimpeded, surrounded by lush riparian vegetation, providing a home for animals. Nestled in canyons behind the small avocado-growing town of Fallbrook, the Santa Margarita winds its way through the arid canyons of SoCal from its headwaters 15 miles east of Temecula to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean near Oceanside.

We visited part of the river near to its headwaters. Surrounded by arid, rocky hills checkered with avocado trees, the river meanders through a river gorge lined with white alder and oak woodlands. Its lushness contrasting with the dry hills surrounding it.

My lovely research assistant and I took a hike along the river. From a bank above the river, we spotted five-inch trout treading water, tadpoles hiding in the shallows, a momma duck and her ducklings making their way down small rapids- one of the babies catching a fish and gulping it down along the way. An abundance of life.

We found a trail right down to the river’s edge so that we could sit and listen to the stream’s murmuring. The Santa Margarita has a good feel to it- like you could see a river nymph at any moment dancing on the top of the water with bells on her ankles.

To understand water, rivers, and imagine the waterscape we want to see in California, there is nothing more important than experiencing live, flowing rivers. Dipping your toes in. The pleasure we take from their sight and sound. The abundance of life you can find if you sit still for just a moment and listen.

The Santa Margarita Trail is located off Sandia Road right outside of Fallbrook. Highly recommended for those of you who live in or near San Diego. Check out Friends of the Santa Margarita for more info about the river.

Next week, we shall journey to the strange and haunting lands of the Salton Sea. Join me.

I am ever grateful to my research assistant/momma/friend for her assistance and companionship on this trip! Here comes the chuckwagon!

 

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Journey to the Smith River

Written by admin on April 29th, 2010

“The river looked at him with a thousand eyes- green, white, crystal, sky blue…. It seemed to him that whoever understood this river and its secrets, would understand much more, many more, all secrets.”

– from Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

the primeval river

In the cold and rain, with thousand-year-old redwoods standing watch, the Smith River showed itself to me for a moment.

It was not gentle. Alone with trees as solid as mountains and the presence of  Taoist sages, serpentine liquid running its wild song across the rocks, both forces way larger than me, kindled a primal fear. You know those moments when you see the world in a different way than you ever have? How it can be disorienting. Shake your bones.

Staring at the river for so long, the rocks that line it begin to morph and change. What is this emerald flowing creature? Meandering through the land. Cutting its way through mountains. Sometimes only a trickle. Sometimes a roar.

How does it find its way together? From a raindrop on top of a mountain to a trickle down the side, to a stream, to this hundred-foot-wide river? And how is it that we got so lucky? We could have had turpentine running in streams over the earth. Or liquid nitrogen. Or chocolate milk. (whoops, daydreaming again)

But we have water, our life-giving elixir, coursing in veins across our world. Always changing and always the same.

Jed Smith Redwoods

the journey

Driving from San Francisco up through Petaluma, Ukiah, Willits, Eureka, and Crescent City to the bed of the Smith River, it was apparent that we were in river country. First the Russian River. From a land of grass hills and oak trees to deep green redwood forests. Then the Eel River criss-crossing back and forth under the 101. Then the Mad River. Then the mighty Klamath. From who’s waters we ate wild Chinook Salmon smoked for five days by Yurok Indians. And finally, the clear and green Smith River.

This is the land where California’s rain falls. The green and wet, sparsely populated North.

tracking the river

I had this notion that I was going to track the Smith River. So that I could understand it better. It turns out rivers can be challenging to track because of where they come from. Lone drops of water finding themselves sinking into the land to meet up with other drops, seeps, trickles, creeks, rivers. Most simply, the headwaters or the source of a river is the place from which water in the river originates- maybe a spring, marshland, or creek. A tributary is a stream or river that flows into the main river.

In the Smith’s case, three decent size rivers, the North, Middle and South Forks of the Smith have their own headwaters and meet up to create the main Smith River. From around the town Gasquet, the Smith River winds its way through redwoods and into wetlands until it makes it to its final destination, the mother of all bodies of water, the Ocean, about five miles South of the Oregon border.

the river’s work

Watching the Smith, you get an idea of how much work a river does. Moving water, nutrients and material from one place to another, providing a myriad of different homes for the plants and animals that live next to and in it- salmon, red alder, steelhead trout, big leaf maple, frogs. They are also a source of food for all us animals and of course, contain the liquid that sustains every form of life we share the planet with. Rivers sculpt and form our landscape.

the last of its kind

The Smith River has the distinction of being the last undammed river system in California. That means that every other major river has dams on it.

Dams hold our water, and save it up for when there is no rain in the summer or in dry years. But I wanted to understand what a river that has no dams on it acts like. Turns out the Smith is a wild creature.

Talking to a ranger who’d lived around the river all of his life, we found out that the Smith’s water level goes up and down dramatically between the summer and winter, and also from day to day. Flooding is a natural part of a river’s cycle, one that humans who like building their houses on floodplains like to control, but a part of the river’s lifecycle that is essential. We saw giant redwoods whose bases had been covered by silt and nutrient rich material from the Smith’s past flooding. Flooding brings nutrients and materials to the thriving eco-systems alongside it.

I was also pleased to hear that the Smith River had an absolutely amazing run of Chinook salmon this year. Coming from the Bay Area, where news of the local salmon runs is increasingly depressing, I was happy to hear it. To get an idea of numbers, the Rowdy Creek Hatchery on the Smith counted a total of 687 Chinook in the last three years. This year, in one year, the hatchery counted 2,775 Chinook just in Rowdy Creek! The ranger we spoke with said he was at a fishing hole, during the run, as 20 large Chinook fought their way up the current. He said, at up to 75 pounds, they looked “like little whales cresting.”

In rivers with dams, the chances of a large run being able to happen are a lot less as migrating salmon needs miles of streams and healthy stream beds on the river they were born in, in order to reproduce. In the Central Valley and Sierra Nevadas, only ten percent of suitable spawning habitat remains. (Intro to Water in CA)

Makes you think. Is there a way we can store water and allow the river to do its many jobs at the same time?

our water is a river

Stony Creek

I reminded myself a million times watching the Smith that this river, or rivers like it, are (unless you drink groundwater) what comes out of my tap. So many times when I drink water, I forget that I am in direct connection with a living thing- a river- which changes its mind, has a job, provides homes, and nourishment and beauty for our eyes and ears, and is constantly changing and shaping the way the world looks to us. The Tuolumne, the Colorado, the Russian, the Feather River. No matter where you live, you have a connection with a wild river that has its story to tell.

me and the Smith

I sat by the river most everyday and listened. The Smith had much to tell. Like every river I have sat by, the Smith told me a story of change. Looking at its whirls and eddies and flows I couldn’t not notice that every second was something new, that the only constant in a river, and in the world for that matter, is change.

Before I got to the Smith, I felt like I’d been holding on a bit too tight- to the way I think of myself and the world. I kept having visions of submerging myself in the water, letting the river wash all the extra away.

And so I did. Lowered myself into the startlingly cold Smith and let go. Of all the brown stick debris, wondering leaves, the silt of the city. Bringing me into the main channel of movement, surrender, flow.

Thank you to James for being a sweet traveling companion! (and for the great pictures). Stay tuned as I journey next week to the dry South of California, to the Salton Sea and the great (very thirsty desert) at our southern end.

 

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Greywater: Where to go from here?

Written by admin on April 15th, 2010

“Viewed from any single, narrow perspective, greywater systems don’t look that important…But when you look at the whole picture, how everything connects- the keystone importance of greywater is revealed.”

– Art Ludwig, Create an Oasis with Greywater

As I have thought about it, the genius of greywater has, indeed, been revealed. It may not be the solution that saves the most quantity of water, but it is a revolutionary way to relate to water. In terms of my goals for the Sweetwater Project, that is my biggest, to understand how I (and we, my dear readers) can relate to water and rivers in a way that makes us feel like we are part of a bigger system instead of isolated islands, where we are aware and in conversation with the web we are apart of, instead of mindlessly using and unconscious of where our resources are going. Greywater, then, is a piece to this puzzle.

When you have a greywater system, you can tangibly see the results of what you put down your drain in your garden.

“(Greywater) makes people think about what they’re using and putting down the drain because you might kill your plants’”  Laura Allen, from Greywater Action said, referring to all the things we dump down our drain into the sewer without thinking about it. As our water systems are set up currently, “the impacts on the environment are hidden.” Greywater changes that, bringing our relationship to water to our attention.

Greywater is also just plain smart. Turning a waste to a resource. “It’s a logical, simple thing that everyone should do,” Allen said, “There is no reason to irrigate plants with potable water. No reason to send barely dirty water through the costly wastewater treatment process.”

And there are so many ways to go about it. After reading much Ludwig’s book, I have realized how many types of greywater systems there are. From the most complex and professionally built system, to a 40 minute do-it-yourself install, there are numerous ways you can go about creating your own system. A good middle ground seems to be as Ludwig says, “a carefully considered and optimized, do-it-yourself, residential, retrofit system for gravity flow irrigation.” A system such as this will be affordable and take a minimum amount of maintenance once it is installed (if you’ve done good planning.)

To review:

Why use greywater?

– to save freshwater

– to lengthen the life of your septic system (see Ludwig’s book)

– to purify wastewater without energy or chemicals (through the biological action in the top 6 inches of the soil.)

If greywater sounds daunting, but you’d like to be a steward of the water cycle and create more green beauty, consider simply capturing more rainfall in your yard. Think about making swales or mulch basins, both of which are super simple, involving digging a small hole and filling it with mulch. Also, consider adding more organic material to your soil, or better yet, reclaiming cement areas back to soil. The more organic matter in your soil, the better to catch and naturally filter water with. And the more water captured and filtered, the cleaner and larger our water supply is. We can all do our small part!

And for All of Us, including us apartment-dwellers, it is time to consider how we can lessen our share of freshwater use. That includes me! Stay tuned as I retrofit my apartment with affordable water-saving devices soon!

For more information:

Greywater Action– For greywater installation courses or for a list of qualified greywater installers. www.greywateraction.org

Art Ludwig and Oasis Design– Ludwig’s book, the bible of greywater, Create an Oasis with Greywater, is amazing for the planning and building how-tos of greywater systems. For great greywater information and to buy the book, go to Ludwig’s website for Oasis Design. www.oasisdesign.net.

Press here for a YouTube video that shows a legal greywater system.

Dig Co-op– For greywater installation, and other eco-design projects in the Bay Area. www.dig.coop

One of the many beauties of greywater is that it is accessible and affordable for most people. As Art Ludwig says, “Greywater reuse enables you personally to do more with the same amount of water and to increase your water security. At the same, your greywater reuse reduces the problems of supply and pollution for everyone.”

Next week, I will be immersed in the last undammed river system in California, the watershed of the Smith River. Stay tuned for Sweetwater Project updates in two weeks!

artwork by me.

 

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Greywater: a chat with Tondre from Dig Co-op

Written by admin on April 8th, 2010

The Dig Co-op is a worker-owned ecological design firm based out of Oakland. www.dig.coop

Imagine your city with lush, green backyards, frontyards teeming with robins and hummingbirds, bees buzzing each purple and white flower. A city where life flourishes. Where medicine can be found growing in your garden, and bamboo for building in your backyard. Greywater could make this vision possible.

“Greywater is great. It deals with waste and turns it into food or medicine,” Tondre said, “You get something from nothing.”

What would have gone down your drain now connects, by pipe, to your garden. As it seeps into the earth, greywater, which has small amounts of soap, food, grease, and pathogens in it, is effectively filtered by the biological action in healthy soil.

“It’s like villains vs. heroes. Pathogens vs. the dark, moist environment of the soil,” Tondre said.

Once naturally filtered, greywater can nourish the roots of plants and fill what was empty space, with green- recycling water that would have gone straight to the sewer.

California has a particularly important role to play in water conservation and recycling. Our state’s economic wealth depends on the water that feeds our cities and food crops. At the same time, our environment’s health depends on enough water in our rivers. With a growing population, ever higher demands on our water supply, and highly fluctuating weather, our water security depends on conservation and innovative methods of recycling.

To highlight greywater as one of those solutions, California passed a law in August 2009 making it much easier to install a legal greywater system. Although, greywater is not a solution for everyone and everything.

Unlike a high-efficiency toilet or a low-flow showerhead, greywater systems have some degree of maintenance involved and are very site and situation specific. The size of your yard compared to the water you use in your house, and therefore send into the greywater system; the type of soil in your yard; and your desired use of the greywater are some of the factors that can determine what design to use and if greywater is a good fit for your needs.

“(Greywater) is not a fix-all solution,” Tondre emphasized. “It’s going to take a lot of approaches to solve the water crisis.”

After years of experience designing and building these systems, Tondre has come to believe that retrofitting your house or apartment with water-saving devices such as faucet aerators and high-efficiency toilets is a more effective first step towards water conservation for most people.

“More people need to save water across the board,” he said, stressing how much water could be saved if just 30 percent of the population installed water-saving devices in their homes. “Your house was a water SUV. Now it is a hybrid.”

Also, in the bigger picture, greywater is just a fraction of the water Americans use.

“The average household uses 30,000 gallons of water a year. That sounds like a lot. But its nothing compared to big agriculture, industrial, and commercial uses,” Tondre said.

Though, he stressed how important it is to do everything we can to conserve water. Greywater can be a small part of the solution to our water woes.

“We’ve got to do everything we can to prepare for the next 20 years’ population boom.”

Tondre also emphasized thinking about greywater in a different way other than as an overarching solution to our water problems.

“Greywater is less of a water crisis solution and more of a green jobs creator,” he said, referring to the creation of jobs for eco-designers and plumbers.

It is also an amazing way to change our relationship to water and to ecology. Getting out of the mindset of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ and feeding our once-used water to the landscape, actively adds beauty, habitat, food, and oxygen to our world.

While greywater may be only a small slice of our overall water use, “that sliver of a fraction is food security, green space, green jobs, and habitat.”

 

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Greywater: an intro.

Written by admin on April 1st, 2010

One of the visions I have for California’s future waterscape is that every drop of water that travels from its trickle down the Sierra Nevadas into a river, and from a river into the maze of pipes that connect us to our water, will be recycled and appreciated before it makes its way to the ocean. Of course most of the water that is in our rivers must be left for the river, for the plants and animals that depend on the river, for our own survival and enjoyment. But for those drops that make it to our homes and business, to public buildings and parks, may each of those drops be put to good use, be recycled.

the greywater bible

Greywater is a step towards that vision. Greywater is water that comes from your sink, shower, washing mashine, or bath tub. (It is NOT water from your toilet!) While it is non-potable water, with a simple change in plumbing, it can be directed to landscapes to feed flowers, ornamental plants and trees, and berry bushes.  What went to the sewer prematurely can be used again to feed our plants and gardens! Its one of those things that’s been around forever, that is common sense. But since the advent of modern plumbing and sanitation, general acceptance of it has been low. Now, that is all changing.

Ordinary people have been installing guerilla (ie: illegal) greywater systems forever. But now, as we realize that the amount of freshwater we have in California is not enough for our spendthrift uses and for the environment’s, state and local governments are beginning to support simple solutions like greywater recycling. Last August, California passed a law making it much easier to build a legal greywater system. Now, you do not need a permit to install a simple laundry to landscape system.

Over the next few weeks, the Sweetwater Project will be exploring greywater: how safe it is to use in your garden, how easy it is to build your own greywater system, challenges of using greywater, and greywater for public buildings.

If you’re excited to jump on the greywater train sooner than later, read up on it at Greywater Action’s site and also an incredible resource, Art Ludwig’s site for Oasis Design.

 

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Miller Creek Restoration

Written by admin on March 25th, 2010

Miller Creek hidden in English Ivy

On a sunny morning this week, we pulled up to a thin walkway, between suburban houses, that entered the cool shade of Miller Creek. Located just off the 101 off Lucas Valley Road in Marin County, at this reach in its meanderings, Miller Creek and its riparian corridor pass just behind a school. Soon, sixth graders from Miller Creek Middle School would pour out of class and into the trees behind their school to continue a tradition of restoring and taking care of their local creek.

A collaboration between Marin County Stormwater Pollution Program (MCSTOPP) and Students and Teachers Restoring A Watershed (STRAW), these creek restoration days are the hands-on part of an educational effort to connect “riparian restoration concepts to stormwater pollution prevention and to creek habitat protection.” After in-class learning, the students come to the creek to remove invasive plants, non-native plants that aggressively take-over other plants’ habitats, to plant native plants that will provide habitat for animals and prevent erosion, and to stabilize creek walls.

The night before coming to Miller Creek, I read up on stormwater pollution and riparian restoration and learned some interesting facts. The most enlightening was that preventing stormwater pollution is especially important because almost all stormwater leads directly to creeks, the Bay, and the ocean. Water that goes down a drain in your house goes to a treatment plant before entering a natural body of water. Not stormwater. In other words, any litter, chemicals, or soap that go into the gutter, go into your local creeks and the ocean. So, it is super important to prevent anything but pure stormwater from flowing into storm drains.

As the first classes poured into the trees, the sixth graders were split up to work on different projects. My colleague Vivien, who works with MCSTOPP, and I led our first group of eight students to a clearing upstream of the other groups. English Ivy, an invasive plant that is home only to rats, and is so noxious that no animals eat it, covered the area. Vivien instructed the students to kneel on the ground and slowly and carefully pull the Ivy from the ground, trying to get as much of the root as possible so that it wouldn’t return. He then demonstrated how to use two tools, a weed-puller and a mattock, a small pick, that would help yank the roots of any stronger plants up. And then he set us loose.

Sounds easy enough right? During that first group I got an idea of why English Ivy is an invasive plant. An interconnected tangle of plants that roots its branches wherever it can and can have its main root yards away from the ends of its vines, I could see why they instruct the kids to be slow and careful about work. My first instinct was to attack and rip at the tangled monstrosity of plants in front of me. Just trying to find where a branch went into the ground was challenging. But reigning in my impatience and wanting to be a good roll-model, I figured out a method of pulling that seemed to be most effective. Patience. Working with what’s right in front of you. Being content with removing one small root at a time.

Throughout the day, Vivien and I worked with five different groups of sixth-graders, watching as the Ivy’s borders retreated. At the end of the day, the truck was filled with around three cubic yards of Himalayan blackberry and Ivy from everyone’s effort. It was rewarding work.  And especially rewarding to watch different students work together to get massive trunks of Ivy from the ground. My personal favorite was watching as a group of girls, a few of them in pretty slip-on shoes and pink flip-flops hunkered down in the dirt, using their collective strength to pull out branches of Ivy we’d been having trouble with all day long. It was a joy to watch a small group of humans band together to take care of the environment, to be connected to it.

As I watched five different groups of kids approach the mass of Ivy in the same way I had (wanting to rip through the tangle impatiently and play tug-of-war with long vines that would break without giving their roots up), I began to see Ivy as the perfect metaphor for humans’ relationship with the environment at the moment. An interconnected tangle of problems that will not take a quick fix, the Ivy, like our ecosystem problems, requires patience, working with what is right in front of us, satisfaction with small victories, and a commitment to removing the root of the problem, not ripping at branches haphazardly and mindlessly. One Ivy root at a time.

Thank you to MCSTOPP and STRAW for your amazing work! And thank you to Ericka from the California Water Quality Control Board for letting me tag along!

 

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Drinking Water: Filters or Bottled?

Written by admin on March 18th, 2010

To finish up our discussion on drinking water, I wanted to explore what actions we can take, if any, now that we have a better idea about what’s in our drinking water. To frame this discussion, I want to put our drinking water supply into perspective. We are insanely lucky. About one out of six people on the planet do not have access to safe drinking water. Overall, we do. You don’t hear of people getting infectious diseases from our water. Many times after traveling internationally I have come home astonished that I can turn on my tap and drink what comes out without getting sick immediately. You can’t even say that in some western European cities!

As we thank water quality people for helping us avoid cases of typhoid and cholera, it is also wise to be aware of some of the pitfalls of drinking water in our industrial, chlorinated society. Our progress financially in the US, as most of us know, has come at the cost of much environmental pollution. Instead of thinking long-term and safe, many industries have opted to get rich quick and dump their waste into our streams without another thought of it. To be clear, our water is tested for many of these harmful chemicals and waste products. And if there is an elevated level of a dangerous substance, by law, you have to be told. And at the very least, it should be in your local water quality report. That said, things happen, and even a simple water filter isn’t a bad idea.

Marshes act as natural filters. (though not for everything)

The other thing is this: we don’t have infectious diseases in our water supply because of chlorine and chloramine. Both of which create by-products through their reactions that aren’t good for us.  And until we insist upon changing the method we use to disinfect our water (see blog on chloramine and fluoride), we have to deal with those by-products. Which brings us to what actions we can take knowing all this?

One option, and a valid one, is to drink your tap water happily. It is tested and tested and tested and is deemed safe by many different agencies. So drink. And enjoy!

Second option, bottled water. This option is pretty much the worst idea anyone ever had. If I could hit the WRONG ANSWER buzzer right now, I would. Why not bottled water? The first reason is, for your own safety. When the Natural Resources Defense Council tested 103 different brands of bottled water, they found that one third of the water was more contaminated than our tap water (Intro to Water in CA). Bottled water standards are different than tap water standards, many times lower. Get this one: “Current standards for bottled water allow for some (minute) contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform, although no such contamination is allowable in tap water.” Uh. Hell no!

Second reason, if that one wasn’t enough and you care more about the environment’s health than your own, is PLASTIC. Made of petroleum products and known for never decomposing, one-use plastic water bottles are a sustainable Earth’s worst enemy. No further ranting needed I hope?

Third option, filter your tap water. Though I’m not into spending money on Things in general, a simple water filter is

"The system of water filtration using PVC pipe. The ingredients inside the pipe are consist of pebble, palm fiber, alum, activated carbon, gravel, chlorine, smooth sand, palm fiber, and gravel (from bottom to top). Each ingredient is separated with sponge filtration and gauze to keep it at fixed place."

not a bad idea. Those Brita pitchers you refill as you go are actually pretty good it turns out. Tests have shown that they remove lead (from residential water pipes) and copper substantially, that they remove some water “hardness,” pesticide residue, and chlorine as well(brita.net).

If you’re feeling extra dedicated like my partner-in-crime James did, you could get a filter that attaches to your faucet (what we have) or an under the sink variety. Looking at the stats for our Shaklee filter, I was pretty impressed. It reduced lead and the by-products of chlorination and chloramination by 99 percent. That’s pretty good.

The next step up would be reverse osmosis which truthfully seemed not so good- very expensive and wasteful of water. Using five gallons of water for every one gallon filtered doesn’t sound like a good plan for your average household.

Fourth option, contact your local representative and insist on alternatives to chlorination and chloramination,  higher accountability for industrial water users, and anything other standard you believe our water supply should be held to.

Chew on that folks. If you’re feeling extra grassroots-y, take a look at the diagrams for homemade water filters. And next week, I will report back to you from the frontlines of a creek restoration project in Marin County!

PVC pipe filter diagram by Ivan Akira, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Thank you to the Blue Planet Run Foundation for the 1 out of 6 people drinking water stat!

 

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Drinking water: The Wonders of Chloramine and Fluoride

Written by admin on March 11th, 2010

After another bout of research into our drinking water, I have a few key pieces of info for you.

To see exactly what’s in your area’s drinking water..

Last week, I compared drinking water with food, upset that there’s no label telling me what’s in the water I drink. Well, there is. You just have to go digging for it. And when you find it, interpret its hieroglyphic encoding. For all of you who want access to that info go here, to the EPA website, to link to your city or area’s water system. Your local water system’s webpage will have water quality reports. For instance, for SF’s water is handled by the SF Public Utilities Commission. Click here for the most recent water quality report for SF. For San Diegans, your water comes from the City of San Diego Water Department.

Personally, it was more helpful for me (since I have no idea, for instance, what level of lead is ok in drinking water) to look in the water quality section and read fact sheets than it was to read the actual report. The most controversial issues, such as fluoridation and chloramination, were discussed on those sheets, though they’re written to allay public fears, not necessarily offer a complete picture.

Chlorine and Chloramine

After water is filtered, bacteria and infectious diseases still remain. Chlorine and Chloramine are used to disinfect our water. While we have to thank these chemicals for protecting us from deadly cholera, typhoid, and other waterborne diseases, chlorine and chloramine both have their down sides. Chlorine, which has been used for the longest, is great at its job because of its reactivity, but this reactivity also creates by-products that have been shown to be carcinogenic in high levels.

Chloramine, a more expensive alternative, has been used more recently in many cities (SF and San Diego included). The good thing about chloramine is that it much more stable as a molecule and does not create many by-products. It is this stability, its inability to break down, that critics cite as their problem with chloramine. Last year, I went to a permaculture class where the teacher ranted on and on about chloramine. Because it does not break down easily, chloramine is not very good for plants, and must be removed from water before adding tap water to fish tanks.

Long story short: we need to use other technologies to disinfect our water. Other methods we should consider are slow sand filtration, uv radiation, and ozonation. (Intro to Water in CA) While it would require a system overhaul, making our drinking water as healthy as possible is, for obvious reasons, important to our health and the health of our environment.

Fluoride

Since 1997, California has mandated fluoridation of water in communities that can afford it. I had not thought that SF water is fluoridated, but it is. San Diego’s main water supply is not fluoridated. Adding fluoride to the water supply is done to prevent dental cavities. Advocates say that medicating the water supply, in small doses, is important for people who might not be able to afford to see the dentist. Very good point. Though there are some serious drawbacks to fluoridation, as you can imagine would be the case for medicating the water supply.

While the dosage of fluoride in the water system is very low, no one can control exactly how much fluoride each person is consuming. Eating vegetables washed in fluoridated water and  drinking bottled juices and beer that use fluoridated water can add up to a dose no public health official can measure. High doses of fluoride can have adverse effects on our health, partly because sodium fluoride, the type of fluoride used in the water supply is “an EPA-listed hazardous waste product of the phosphate fertilizer industry.”

NorCal water on its way to your SoCal tap

Keep in mind, it is an extremely low dosage we get in our water. And many medicines are poisons in low doses. But is it worth the possibility of overdose to prevent cavities that could be prevented by eating less refined sugar and brushing your teeth? Possibly a public health outreach movement to low income communities could distribute fluoride to those who don’t get it? I don’t exactly like being the recipient of a fertilizer by-product, which is itself a by-product of World War II chemical warfare. For some strange reason, that’s a little fishy to me 😉

Good news for Bay Area water-drinkers…

One the up and up, one tidbit of info that got me and should get you Bay Area residents jazzed is this: 84 percent of our water comes from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which is fed by the Tuolumne River in Yosemite. Ya know how I was talking about filtration last week? That drinking water goes through all these processes before it’s clean and clear of contaminants. At the end, additives such as chloramine and fluoride are added. While we do get chloramine and fluoride in our Hetch Hetchy water, water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir is “so clean and protected that the SFPUC is not required to filter it.” In other words, our water does not undergo all those complex processes I talked about last week. It is very pure, only requiring disinfecting and fluoridation before it comes to our taps. Isn’t that sweet?

Sources

SF Public Utilities Commission webpage

www.sfwater.org

Intro to Water In California by David Carle

 

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