Water news
In today’s Chronicle are a couple germane articles.
First, if it doesn’t rain soon (and I don’t think last night really counts) the East Bay Municipal Utilities District may be requiring some form of water rationing. Ninety percent of EBMUD’s water comes from the Mokelumne watershed, via the Pardee reservoir. Thank our lucky stars for our precious groundwater basins. However, the actions discussed, like banning outdoor fountains and washing cars, do point out how much potable water is used where recycled water would do.
Then an article about just how difficult it is to dispose properly of prescription drugs. Pharmacies won’t take them back as a matter of course, although there are sometimes one-day events that do so. While the federal government recommends flushing them down the toilet or combining them with cat litter and throwing them away (the cat litter is to make them less attractive to steal,) both of these methods get drugs into the environment. Since enough pharmaceuticals pass through the human body and are excreted, we don’t need to add to the problem with flushing more down the toilet. In addition, those drugs that are collected have to be trucked to Utah for incineration, since California’s air quality laws prohibit it here.
Finally, on a make-lemonade sort of note, the Food section suggests alternatives to the California king salmon you won’t be seeing available this summer. I’m all over the smaller fish (mmmm…. fresh sardines) but the farmed salmon from Scotland? No.
Hi Diana,
Thanks for posting both these SF Chronicle stories.
EBMUD Board must not have elections scheduled for early June like SCVWD. I can’t imagine our local Board dealing with the certain backlash, aimed appropriately at the Board incumbents, by voting for mandatory rationing before the June elections.
The Pharm disposal issue is a misplaced pollution prevention effort. The amount of disposed drugs into toilets is NOT the significant source of the brew of chemicals now being detected in our water resources. They are coming out of humans, primarily because so little of most drugs is fully metabolized and converted to inert or harmless form before excretion. The solution lies in the reformulation of the drugs by the drug companies, or the reduction in the intake of these drugs by consumers. I’m not going to be the one to advocate less use of birth control or hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women.
This campaign could serve as the stepping stone to get to the real problem, but we will be using many of our P2 resources to get a very small impact on our drinking water quality. The interim solution will continue to be better, more expensive treatment to remove the risk of ingesting this cocktail of excreted drugs that is now in our water supplies.
At least recycled water will get this advanced treatment before groundwater recharge or creek flow augmentation projects are implemented. But this issue of residual drugs in water will cause many folks to balk at reusing wastewater. We have to educate our community about the treatment train required so we can move on this project before the Delta pumps are completely shut down and we face 50% rationing.