KUSP Reports: Environment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

CCFRP Volunteer Coordinator and MLML graduate student Jennifer Chiu using standardized fishing protocols to sample near shore fishes along the central California coast. Photo Courtesy California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program

By Melissae Fellet | KUSP News

It’s been five years since a network of 29 marine protected areas were established along the Central Coast. During that time, volunteer anglers, divers and hikers have been collecting data that will help scientists and fisheries managers determine how the protections affect ocean ecosystems.

The goal of protecting parts of the ocean centers around fish known as BOFFFs.

“Those are big old, fat fecund females,” explains Cheryl Barnes , a graduate student studying fish biology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory. “Those the ones you want around to feed into the population.”

For rockfishes, anyway, the older females produce more eggs than the younger fish. It’s thought that those extra baby fish will eventually spill out into the unprotected areas of the ocean and restock the fisheries. Barnes says monitoring the size, species and numbers of fish inside the marine protected areas (MPAs) helps ensure the protections are working.

Proving MPAs are More Than a Feel-Good Policy

“Without monitoring, we could be under this false sense of security and thinking that we’re protecting our fish stocks and not actually doing it because of the design of the MPA itself, the size, the placement,” she says. “MPAs are a tool for conservation, and we’re trying to make sure that’s actually happening.”

Together with Rick Starr, Barnes leads a group of volunteer anglers  who fish for rockfish, lingcod and cabezon in the protected areas in Point Lobos and Año Nuevo. “They know how to fish,” Barnes says. “You get a lot of what Rick would call “dorky scientists” out there trying to fish, we wouldn’t probably be doing as good of a job.”

The volunteers also fish in unprotected areas so the scientists can compare the catch there to that from the protected areas. Volunteer divers with the nonprofit group Reef Check California monitor the fish, algae and invertebrates living in the reefs and kelp forests in Monterey Bay and Carmel Bay.

Longer Lived Fish Need Longer Study

Scientists have enough data to determine the current status of the protected area ecosystems. But it’s still too early to say how the protections affect fish populations. That’s because some of the fish species, particularly rockfish, are so long-lived and slow growing that five years is too short a period for changes to appear. Based on the results Barnes and her colleagues have so far she says, “We’re pretty positive we will be able to see it when it happens, if it does or not.”

Another part of determining the effect of an MPA involves knowing how people use the protected areas. In a hypothetical circumstance after an area has been protected for a certain period of time, if the numbers of BOFFFs in and outside the MPA were similar, that could mean that the MPA had failed.

“Another interpretation would be, if you had the data, because of poaching, or lack of enforcement or mindless people, the use inside the MPA and out was actually the same because the MPA didn’t mean anything,” says Steve Shimek of the nonprofit Otter Project.

People Seem to Follow the Rules

Shimek’s group is one of several that organize volunteers(pdf) to monitor how people use the MPAs. The Otter Project’s volunteers note anglers, swimmers, divers and others using the MPAs between Half Moon Bay and Point Bouchon. They also visit a few unprotected areas too. Even in the areas, “from what we can tell are largely unenforced, people are still following the rules,” Shimek says. “People want to do the right thing.”

But still, he says the volunteers have witnessed fishing, and commercial fishing, in even in the most protected areas, like Point Lobos. “We have seen purse seiners in Point Lobos,” Shimek says. “So there is take happening everywhere. But the level of take is much less in protected areas.”

Even with a small amount of fishing, there are more BOFFFs, those big, old, fat fecund female fish, in that long-protected area of Point Lobos. With continued monitoring, researchers should be able to assess if those fish are thriving in the new marine protected areas too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Cy Maramangalam gives a presentation about climate change for the Alliance for Climate Education. Photo: courtesy of Alliance for Climate Education

by Jennifer Ludden

The auditorium at James Blake High School in Silver Spring, Md., is packed when Cy Maramangalam strolls onstage, sporting jeans and a shaved head.

“All right, how’s everyone doing today?” he says to rousing cheers. It feels as if he’s about to introduce a hot new band, but Maramangalam is with the Alliance for Climate Education, or ACE, and he’s here to talk climate change. In the past few years, the nonprofit has put on multimedia presentations for more than 1 million students across the country. Think of it as Al Gore for Gen Y.

“Check this out,” Maramangalam tells the students, as cartoon characters and graphs dance on a giant screen behind him. He explains that carbon dioxide levels are higher than they’ve ever been in 800,000 years, and that this is driving up the globe’s thermostat.

“Jacking up the temperature toward this point should be freaking people out,” he says. “But it’s happening quietly.”

‘A Part Of Science’

ACE aims to fill a big gap. Polls show most U.S. students learn little about climate change at school, and even many adults have a fuzzy notion of what causes it.

For the first time, new K-12 science standards issued in April include climate change. But the standards, written by a consortium of science and education groups in consultation with 26 states, are only voluntary and could take years to roll out. So Maramangalam hopes to bring kids up to speed fast on a topic that scientists say must be urgently addressed.

“You’ve inherited a country that’s all about living large,” Maramangalam tells the students, his voice swelling. He says each person takes up not only the space occupied by their home and school, but also land in Iowa to grow their food, in Brazil and China to make all their “stuff,” and in the Middle East to get fuel to drive around.

“Can you believe that the average American teenager uses about 21 football fields of Earth’s resources to live?” Maramangalam says.

Now and then, teachers or parents will push back on these presentations, saying climate change is too controversial or too political. Some schools won’t invite the group at all. But Blake High’s biology teacher, Colleen Roots, says she sought out ACE because many students don’t learn about climate change in any of their classes.

“It’s a part of science and a part of education that is lacking in the curriculum right now,” she says. “No one has changed the curriculum in far too many years.”

‘A Right To Know’

In the auditorium, the students are rapt even as Maramangalam lays out complicated scientific concepts: the greenhouse effect, carbon sinks, the correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. The presentation also pulls no punches when it describes how the world may look later this century.

“Economists predict that climate change will cost our world trillions of dollars each year in damages and threaten food and water supplies in communities around the world,” a somber narrator intones.

It’s heavy stuff, and purposefully so.

“They’re going to be the generation to feel the impacts [of climate change] hardest and first,” says Matt Lappe, ACE’s education director. “And so in some sense we target high-schoolers, and young people in general, because they really have a right to know climate science.”

After the presentation, some students do seem a little shellshocked.

“It was kind of scary,” says senior Danielle Snowden. “I didn’t realize that it was that big of an issue. I just thought, you know, we should do better. But it’s like, we have to do better.”

Junior Nicole Lertora nods in agreement. “I want to go home and unplug my charger right now!” she laughs.

In fact, the ACE presentation turns upbeat at the end, suggesting things kids can do to cut down on all that space they take up. Afterward, Maramangalam meets with a dozen students to brainstorm ways to reduce their school’s carbon footprint. One says kids can carpool. Another suggests replacing the cafeteria’s Styrofoam trays with washable ones.

ACE will foster those who want to become environmental leaders. Some have even expanded carbon-cutting projects beyond their own community. But mostly, education director Matt Lappe says, these presentations are designed to get kids talking about climate change.

“The long-term goal of this project — and we hope that it’s not too long term, but relatively short term — is that we really start to shift the conversation, and shift the culture, about climate change,” he says.

And that, he says, could have an impact well beyond the classroom.

For article & comments visit NPR.org

Grassy drainage ditches like this one have been shown to clean pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural runoff. Vegetable shippers, though, often demand that farms have no plants other than crops. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

Between strict new regulations and demands from food buyers, farmers are caught in a tug between reducing pollution and food safety. Bringing both sides together will be difficult, but not impossible, say researchers.

Dirk Giannini is a vegetable grower in Salinas. On his farm is an old pond.

“This is part of the regulation, as far as trying to keep all this water on your ranch, if possible,” he says.

Solving an Old, Growing Problem

The regulation he’s talking about, the “Agricultural Order” was renewed with new conditions last fall. It’ll phase into full effect over the next few months and years. It’s part of the regional water board’s attempt to limit pollution.

The pollution that is targeted has already caused widespread trouble. It’s a likely culprit in some deaths of marine life. And it’s gotten into wells, causing health problems and forcing some people to buy bottled drinking water.

The biggest problems are from pesticides, sediment and excess nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorous. One of the best ways to keep pollution out of streams and rivers? It’s an old idea — keep as much water as possible on site, with a catch basin, like Giannini’s.

“This pond has been up on here by our ancestors and we use it for watering our roads during the spring and summer time,” he says.

Legacy of 2006 E. Coli Outbreak

While it’s not used to water produce, it can go on cover crops or for preparing fields before planting. This catch basin is staying put. But Giannini doesn’t expect the new runoff rules to result in many new basins along the Central Coast. That’s because food brokers and food buyers also place demands on farmers. They want fresh produce, free from contamination by animals or bacteria. The difficulty for farmers is that food safety demands don’t always jive with anti-pollution strategies.

“As far as more catch ponds going in, I think they’re combative to the food safety world,” Ginannini says. “It’s interesting to see the ag order and food safety go head to head with each other. And the farmers are just sitting here saying, ‘OK, we’ll follow the food safety,’ but it’s contradicting water quality, so we go back and forth. That’s frustrating too.”

Some food safety inspectors worry catch basins might shelter frogs or attract other wildlife. They’re afraid those animals could, potentially bring bacteria into the fields or even get caught in machines that clip bagged lettuce.

That’s the same reason why inspectors don’t like to see grassy, crop-free areas on a farm. These vegetated areas can filter water and prevent erosion. But, after the E.coli outbreak of 2006, some food buyers rejected crops from farmers if they had these areas.

Scott Horsfall of the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement says the organization encourages farmers to manage for both water quality and food safety. Cases of crop rejection can be down to the preferences of the individual buyer or inspector. This is frustrating researchers for like John Hunt, a toxicologist who studies the effects of pesticides in the region’s water.

“A lot of the systems that are effective in removing pesticides from run off involve vegetation. There has been a push recently by the large food brokers to remove all non-crop vegetation on farms,” Hunt says. “There’s a sense that that harbors perhaps rodents, perhaps amphibians that could get into the crops and cause food safety issues. I don’t think there’s real good data to support that. So that’s a big problem that a lot of people are working on right now is to resolve the pesticide treatment use of vegetation with the concerns of brokers for food safety.”

Cleaning Runoff in the Ditch

Farmer Dirk Giannini points out irrigation installed on a seeded lettuce bed. New regulations put greater pressure on farmers to limit pollution running off their fields. Photo: Danielle Venton

Michael Cahn, at the UC Cooperative Extension in Salinas, is one of those people. He’s interested in how water can be cleaned as it moves across a farm through wide, grass-filled ditches.

“And the idea is, can we treat this run off as it moves through either by slowing it down and holding it and let the biological processes break down the pesticide,” Cahn Says, “or by providing enough organic material where it will absorb the pesticide and hold it.”

In a preliminary trial, plantings of native red fescue, a common lawn grass, was shown to reduce pesticide load by 70 percent, compared with 14 percent in bare ditches. The grass doesn’t have a lot of seeds, so animals aren’t very attracted to it. He says, even though there’s little evidence non-crop vegetation is an actual food safety hazard, he understands why farmers are cautious. It’s just too risky. 10 acres of lettuce can be worth $100,000 dollars to a farmer.

“Would you take a chance of loosing $100,00 just to have some vegetation out there?” Cahn says. “That’s the type of business decision farmers have to make.”

But Cahn doesn’t believe the situation is hopeless. He’s seeking funding for follow up studies, and he believes that with more research, and a greater understanding among growers, regulators, food buyers and environmentalists, we can have cleaner water and safe food too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Maria Nuño’s taps pours nitrate-contaminated water into her sink. She drives 8 miles to get bottled drinking water. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

Water quality on the Central Coast is fraught with problems. After decades of intensive farming, chemical fertilizers have trickled through the soil into underground aquifers, polluting many of the wells rural areas rely upon. As part of our series on agriculture and water.

Maria Socorro Nuño lives eight miles outside of Salinas, near a plant nursery greenhouse where her husband works. She welcomes visitors into her trailer, past a porch filled with pet parakeets and offers them water.

For people like the Nuños with contaminated water, water becomes a significant expense. Photo: Danielle Venton

If you say yes, she’ll handle you a plastic water bottle. That’s what they drink around here. Nuño is one of the quarter million people in the Salinas Valley and Tulare Lake Basin living with nitrate-contaminated water. University of California toxicologist John Hunt says this contamination affects many Californians.

“The main problems on the Central Coast with regard to water pollution start with nitrate,” he says, “which is in fertilizers that is used in agriculture and it’s also in fertilizers that people put on their laws and their gardens. It’s very water soluble, so it moves around with water. It’s very difficult to remove from water.”

Farms are the Main Source of the Pollution

A 2012 report by U.C. Davis concluded 96% of nitrate pollution comes from agriculture. Most of that begins as synthetic fertilizer applied to crops. Nitrate pollution is a danger because it can lead to brain damage and death in infants, through a condition known as blue baby syndrome. In adults nitrate contamination is linked with skin rashes, thyroid troubles and stomach cancer. As of last year the Central Coast Regional Water Board placed farmers under a new set of guidelines for monitoring and controlling their runoff, including nitrates. The board wants to slow the rate of pollution, but no one thinks it’s going to be easy.

“Some of the nitrate coming down into the groundwater now may have been applied over 50 years ago,” Hunt says. “So it’s a problem that’s going to take along time to solve.”

In fact, authorities expect the pollution to get a lot worse before it gets better. The U.C. Davis report estimated that more than half of residents in Tulare Lakes Basin and Salinas Valley were using public water systems that recently registered unsafe levels of nitrate. By 2050 they estimate 80 percent of the population will be affected.

For people like Maria Socoro Nuño, that means long drives to the store. Nitrate can’t be removed through counter top water filters, so she buys bottled. Before it became contaminated 15 years ago, she used this water for everything. Community worker Jeanette Pantojas joined me as a translator so I could ask what nitrate contamination has meant to Maria.

Cruel Irony: An Expensive Problem for Low-Income People

“It’s meant a lot, a lot,” Pantojas translates. “She used to be able to comfortably use her water for everything and now she can only use it for washing dishes and clothes. There are times when she’s fully stocked on everything else and they have to drive the 8 or 9 miles into Salinas so she can cook that day or have drinking water that day.”

And it’s a big slice of her monthly budget. Ideally, according to EPA guidelines, people wouldn’t spend more than 1.5% of their monthly income on water. But nitrate-affected communities often spend five to 10% of their income on bottled water. Michael Marsh, the directing attorney at California Rural Legal Assistance in Salinas calls this an unfortunate irony.

“The people who can least afford to buy bottled water are the exact communities that are being forced to buy bottled water,” he Marsh says. “They didn’t contribute to this problem of nitrates in the groundwater. What makes the ag order so important is that it’s the first time the regional board has really tried to put teeth into their ordinance, into their regulation.”

While the farming community, regulators and even some academics are deeply divided over how to best address the problem, everyone agrees something must be done. Closely monitoring the nitrates coming off farms seems like a good start to some, but for residents like Maria, her tap water will remain undrinkable for many years to come.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Farmer Dirk Giannini points out irrigation installed on a seeded lettuce bed. New regulations put greater pressure on farmers to limit pollution running off their fields. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

A new law is phasing into effect that changes how farmers manage water on their farms. It’s designed to cut down on water pollution from fertilizers, pesticides and nutrients. But, while farmers say they want to be good environmental stewards, they claim the new regulations go too far.

Dirk Giannini is a prominent Central Coast farmer. It seems everything in his life is big. He’s tall, he has a large truck, he grows 3500 acres of carrots, onions, and other crops.

He sells to some of the biggest buyers in the country. Last year he was one of McDonald’s featured farmers, and appeared in a national TV add.

Hot Topic

Giannini’s crops are irrigated with well water. Water that’s not absorbed by crops or the ground is mostly caught in a pond, where it can be pumped and re-used. But during heavy rains, some of water inevitably leaves his fields and enters local streams and rivers. That water is the focus of tough new regulations aimed at stemming water pollution.

“It’s the most rigorous law that our region is facing right now,” Giannini says. “And it’s the hot topic.”

The rules, known as the “Agricultural Order,” guide how farmers manage and reports water quality on his farms. The regulations are renewed every five years, and allow farmers to legally comply with the Clean Water Act. It’s an important piece of legislation since, according to the EPA, agriculture is the nation’s biggest source of water pollution. are slowly phasing into effect. While most farmers are complying, almost all of them are unhappy about it. Some academics are too, including Marc Los Huertos, an environmental studies professor at California State University, Monterey Bay

“It’s a little bit like putting your trash out in the front yard and then having someone decide they were going to investigate it all and put it on the web,” Los Huertos says. “It just seemed pretty intrusive.”

Rules May Punish Those Who’ve Done the Most to Clean Runoff

Los Huertos helped growers propose an alternate plan to the water board, one that emphasized collective monitoring and allowed reporting information to remain private. The requirement for some farmers to publicly report pollution levels is a key point of the new regulations and possibly it’s most controversial.

Growers worry that if members of the public can access pollution records, farmers will become targets of unjust criticism. It’s the larger growers who, Los Huertos says, tend to be doing the most to improve water quality who’ll bear the brunt of this.

“Now they have to do all this extra reporting that likely is going to show significant amounts of pollution without any kind of context of their farm,” he says. “Yet they’ve been spending the most money to improve water quality in the last 10 years.”

But regulators say the law had to change. Central Coast streams and rivers are some of the most impaired in the nation and they want to protect water for people and wildlife. The previous order, they say, just didn’t give them enough information. Lisa McCann is overseeing the new order’s implementation. She says there was anecdotal evidence that many people were doing good things, but says, “our evidence for what level, where, how effectively, was absent.”

Many parts of the growers’ proposal were accepted, not all. As for the key point of contention – public reporting – it’s already state law, a relatively recent one.

“Ultimately the main reason it still wasn’t ripe is it wasn’t consistent with some aspect of the California water code and the state’s policy on non-point pollution
control,” McCann says.

Regs Aim for Improvement, not Perfection

She says that some farmers are over-worried about the new regulations. Regulators want to see pollution improving overtime, they’re not expecting that water leaving farms will be drinkable. But the new requirements still seem heavy handed to farmers like Giannini.

“I agree with regulations and checks and balances, but usually regs are for low hanging fruit, the people who are not complying. This is affecting every farmer in the region.”

Some of the Agricultural Order has begun taking effect, including, as of March, a requirement that growers install devices preventing contaminated water from backflowing into their fresh water supply.

Ecologist Josh Adams (kneeling in white shirt) plants native plants in an area cleared of ice plant near the entrance to Natural Bridges State Park. Photo: Melissae Fellet

By Melissae Fellet | KUSP News

With its ocean views, walking path, and ice plant-covered cliffs, many in Santa Cruz consider West Cliff Drive to be a jewel of the community. Now a couple of scientists want the community to help them restore native habitat to the coastal bluffs.

They’ve started the non-profit West Cliff Ecosystem Restoration project to help organize the restoration. Last winter, volunteers with the group ripped out ice plant in a small bed near the entrance to Natural Bridges State Park.

“Having the community participate in it is really important,” says Bill Henry, an ecologist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, who helped start the non-profit. “Oftentimes projects happen where people come into a community and do some point change and then leave. And a lot of times that model doesn’t really work. A lot of projects take some follow up.”

Locals Pitch In to Restore Local Habitat

On February 1, Henry was back with volunteers, working to widen the original bed and adding more native coastal bluff plants.

“This way we’re trying to get community members to help out and have a vested interest in their backyard,” Henry says. “That automatically sets the stage for care taking of our environment and of our backyard. And this is a perfect place because so many people from our community use the West Cliff corridor.”

Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, a small non-profit conservation organization, is one of the partners in this local habitat restoration effort. Ryan Carle, a project ecologist with the group, said that people were stopping all the time to ask about what they were planting. Some of those people wanted to know why they were removing ice plant, he says.

“A lot of people don’t realize that the ice plant is a non-native invasive species and don’t know about our local native species,” Carle says. So he stopped to talk to them about the difference between ice plant and a native habitat. “When they learn about our local native species, how beautiful they are and what they’re bringing to the ecosystem, then they’re excited.”

The yellow or pink flowers on plants like yarrow, gumweed and sea pink attract wintering monarch butterflies and other insects. They also shelter lizards and salamanders. Birds may nest in the grown shrubs.

The community helped bring these native plants from seed to seedling as well. California State Parks provided seeds from plants native to coastal bluffs and scrub. Ecologists at the University of California in Santa Cruz grew the seedlings in their greenhouses. The City of Santa Cruz helped the scientists figure out how to truck tons of removed ice plant to the dump. And on this work day, volunteers from the Patagonia store in Santa Cruz are helping to plant more seedlings.

Josh Adams, an ecologist with the United State Geological Survey who worked with Henry to start the restoration project, says that school groups, of all ages and class levels, can get involved too.

Restoration Project Provides Outdoor Education

In late January, students from the Gateway School helped to restore a site at Pelton and West Cliff across the street from the surfer statue. Adams says the project is a chance for students to learn about math, ecology and native species.

The junior high math class mapped out the site and calculated the area so that the workers could determine the density of the planting, he says. The fifth grade class was in charge of growing the seeds.

“They came in with their plants that had been growing since the fall and in one fell swoop they planted that little section out,” Adams says. “What could be funner than coming out, sticking your hands in the dirt and seeing a plant that you’ve shepherded along for nine months put into the ground and then to drive by that and see it in the future? It’s great.”

Community participation is important to their habitat restoration efforts, Henry says. “We all enjoy this, and most times we’re not active participants,” he says. “So you get out here, and you get people working and then they’re a part of the environment. And we are. We can’t take ourselves out of nature or ecology. We’re a part of it one way or another.”

And working as a community, we can return a human-influenced environment back to its native state.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By: Melissae Fellet

Planting native plants in an area cleared of ice plant near the entrance to Natural Bridges State Park. Photo: Melissae Fellet

With unspoiled ocean views and easy access to beaches, West Cliff Drive is prime real estate in Santa Cruz. Josh Adams, an ecologist with the United States Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, says those coastal cliffs are ideal spots for seabirds too.

A thriving colony of Brandt’s cormorants lives at Natural Bridges. Adams says this colony is unique because few native seabirds nest within cities along the California coast. “Most of the seabirds in our system nest on offshore rocks and islands that are predator free,” he says.

But the cormorant colony living in Santa Cruz had a problem: Ice plant covered the few ledges where the birds nest. Ice plant provides cover and food for introduced rats, which are predators on seabirds.

To help these seabirds, Adams worked with Bill Henry, an ecologist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, to get permission from the city to remove the ice plant from a terrace below the parking lot at Natural Bridges State Park.

“Within one day we saw the cormorants respond and start building nests in cleared areas,” Adams says. “It was dramatic. We knew it would work but not that dramatically.”

The two scientists then identified other sites along West Cliff Drive where ripping out ice plant might help the seabirds. And the non-profit West Cliff Ecosystem Restoration project was born. The project aims to bring native habitat back to the cliffs along West Cliff Drive.

Ecologist Bill Henry says thinking of the kids motivates him to do the restoration. “I have two daughters and we’re out here on West Cliff all the time,” he says. “[I] want them to be exposed to more biodiversity instead of seeing a monoculture landscape of introduced plants.”

Last winter, volunteers with the project removed some ice plant from the cliff edge outside the state park. They replaced it with tiny seedlings of feathery yarrow, bushy lizardtail, and hearty gumweed. In early February, the scientists and more volunteers were back widening the bed and planting more seedlings.

Some of the plants from last year are the same size as the new seedlings. Even though the plants are adapted to handle the tough conditions on a cliff edge, the wind and the salt spray stunt their initial growth.

Adams says the native plants are tough and rugged, despite their small size. “But they need a little bit of help,” he says. “We’re going to try to get them established and then maybe we won’t have to shepherd them along.”

Adams expects the native plants will eventually crowd out the ice plant. Such restoration has been successful at Piedras Blancas and Wilder Ranch. He recommends driving up Highway 1 to three mile and four mile in the springtime to see the diversity of plants fronting the beach there.

“It’s really spectacular,” he says. “And then take a drive down West Cliff and see what impression you have of where you were and where you are now. I think where we want to be is a little bit similar to what’s going on in the north coast of Santa Cruz.”

A diversity of plants attracts a diversity of wildlife, says Ryan Carle, an ecologist with Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, a nonprofit conservation and research organization.

The wintering monarch butterflies at Natural Bridges like the flowers of the native plants. Local song birds might breed in the shrubs when they get bigger. And the plants also provide habitat for alligator lizards and salamanders, too.

“We’re sort of not just restoring several plant species, but we’re actually kind of changing the ecosystem back to what was functioning here before we disrupted it,” Adams says.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

* Normal Sources:  San Lorenzo River + Loch Lomond, etc.
** Other Sources: Using treated waste water to provide fish habitat; Increased restrictions to water customers; Transfers from a proposed county-wide network of water districts.

By Wes Sims | KUSP News -

It might seem ironic that the most visible symbol of the Santa Cruz Water Department is not the San Lorenzo River, from which the city’s drinking water is drawn. But it’s the tanks and towers of the city’s waste water treatment plant at Neary Lagoon. Jim Bentley, a former superintendent for water production for the city hopes the treated waste water could contribute to a solution to Santa Cruz’s water supply problem.

“The water leaving a tertiary waste water treatment plant, that removes all the solids, that removes nitrogen, it’s put out in the ocean a very clear looking water, disinfected, there would be very low coliform count in it,” Bentley says.

Currently the city’s plant does not achieve a tertiary degree of treatment, and using waste water for drinking purposes is illegal. But the city of Santa Cruz does have a legal obligation to provide adequate water for threatened fish. Recently regulators increased the amount of water the city would have to leave in to river for fish during a drought. Bentley believes waste water added downstream from the municipal water supply can meet the habitat obligation. This is one of the sources he hopes the city can use instead of desalination.

“The city has a three-legged, that’s the city’s words, theirs is a three-legged stool based on curtailment, conservation, and desalination,” Bentley says.” Well, we have a multi-legged stool. We would expect more conservation than the city’s asking for right now.”

The Challenge for the SCWD: A 2-Year Drought

Leading the push for desalination is Santa Cruz Water Director Bill Kocher. He’s forged a joint operating agreement with the Soquel Creek Water District for a desalination plant that would address Soquel’s over-drafted groundwater basin, and the big issue that’s driving the narrative for Santa Cruz: the threat of a two-year drought. Kocher says if Santa Cruz were to go through another drought like 1976 and 77, the average homeowner would have to cut water usage by half during the second year.

“We’re not particularly worried about winter,” Kocher says.”But we’re worried about a 210-day period in the summer in droughts. And so we need a project that will give us water when we need water.”

Measure P organizer Rick Longinotti questions the process.

“The city of Santa Cruz in 2005 set on desalination as their preferred options,” he says. “ And since that time they haven’t spent any time or money investigating alternatives, and so we’re trying to re-open that discussion.”

Cutting Back Earlier

Longinotti says the city’s worst case scenario is based on an operations policy in which there is no attempt to cut back on water usage during normal or mildly dry years, or maintain an adequate backup supply in Loch Lomond Reservoir.

Longinotti hopes to : “turn the city’s attention more to what can be done instead of desalination.”

Bentley: “We would also suggest that the city’s water customers are willing to do more curtailment than the city is expecting of them.”

When the city asks, residents use less water. Longinotti says last year, when the city asked for restrictions, residents saved enough so that if a severe drought had begun this year the city would have started about fourteen hundred acre feet ahead of its worst case scenario. That’s about what the city hopes to produce in a drought with a desalination plant. Longinotti notes the desal plan ignores potential supply from a multi-district water network under consideration.

Santa Cruz Water Director Bill Kocher says the city has considered its options and a desalination plant is the only plan that meets its needs.

“We’ve looked at the environmental implications, we’ve looked at cost,” Kocher says.” We’ve looked at ways we can minimize and mitigate environmental impacts, including marine issues, including energy, greenhouse gas emissions cost.”

The next step for the City of Santa Cruz is an environmental impact report. If that is certified by the end of the year, voters could decide the issue the following year. Kocher expects the earliest a desalination plant could be producing water would be 2016.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

By Wes Sims | KUSP News -
“This is Ocean Street Extension and the river doesn’t always look or sound like this, but in a nice winter like this one, it’s a rather nice little sound,” says Santa Cruz Water Director Bill Kocher as we walked along the banks of the San Lorenzo River, the primary source of the city’s water supply.

“And if 90,000 acre feet moved down this river in one year that’s considered an average year. And already, from last October, we’re at 40,000 acre feet.”

An acre-foot is the volume of water that would cover an acre to a depth of a foot. Santa Cruz’s water district uses about 11,000 acre feet in a typical year. Usually the San Lorenzo River and the city’s wells provide enough. In dry years, the district has to let enough water flow down the river for fish to survive. Due to a recent order from the state, the amount or river water reserved for fish in dry years has increased. Meanwhile, the district can only take a limited amount from wells.

“If we had a drought today that looked like ’76-’77, we would be about 50% short for the average homeowner,” Kocher explains. “Just in terms of bathing, in terms of toilet flushing, in terms of outdoor irrigation, whatever they use water for. If they could imagine having half that amount available to them, that’s what would happen in a critically dry year.”

Dry Years are Where the Problem Lies

By imposing restrictions on water users, Kocher says the district can get usage down to about 9,500 acre feet. But the supply from the river and wells could fall 1,400 acre feet short.

“There’s really two things going on,” Kocher says. “One is that we are doing OK now in normal years. We’re not doing OK now in dry and critically dry years.”

Kocher’s plan has been to fill this drought-year gap with water from a 150 million-dollar desalination plant whose cost would be split with the Soquel Creek Water District. That district needs a new source to replace its well water supply or risk losing its wells to seawater intrusion. So during droughts, the Santa Cruz District would use the desalinated water to make up its supply gap. The rest of the time, the plant would provide water for the Soquel District. Taj Dufour, acting general manager for the Soquel Creek District explains the arrangement:

“Our plans are to pump this as frequently as we could to reduce our draw on the groundwater basin. And when the city needs it they would be in charge. So basically, whichever agency is using the plant would be responsible for the operational costs.”

A Rare Example of Cooperation

“In an era when you have two houses of congress that can’t talk across the aisle, it’s sort of a model for inter-agency, intergovernmental agency cooperation,” Kocher says.

But there’s plenty of disagreement outside the business model between the City of Santa Cruz and the Soquel Creek District. Santa Cruz voters in the November 2012 general election approved Measure P, requiring a future city-wide vote before the City of Santa Cruz can authorize a desalination plant. One of the organizers of Measure P was former electrical contractor Rick Longinotti, who is concerned in part about the contribution a plant would make to the district’s greenhouse gas footprint.

“it’s twelve times the energy to produce a gallon of water as our current water supply,” Longinotti says.

Longinotti wants the city to make more ambitious restrictions on water usage in dry years, rather than building a desalination plant.

Tomorrow during Morning Edition and All Things Considered we look at some of the ways desalination opponents propose for supplying water in droughts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Mary Paul and Jonathan Pilch, both working at Watsonville Wetlands Watch, clean native grass and flower seeds so that they can be used for habitat restoration projects. Photo: Melissae Fellet

By Melissae Fellet
Standing on a hill at the heart of the Watsonville Slough system, Jonathan Pilch points out a small field covered with golden straw for the winter. This field is a little different from the nearby plots of greens and the strawberry fields visible around the Pajaro Valley. Its neat, rice-straw covered rows contain native grasses and wildflowers.

Pilch is restoration director at Watsonville Wetlands Watch , a group that’s working to restore the wetlands of the Pajaro Valley. Three years ago, the group started a small farm to grow plants native to coastal prairies so that they could collect the seeds for their habitat restoration projects.

That first year, Pilch and his colleagues planted about 30,000 little plug plants grown from seed gathered around the area on a half-acre farm. Now the seed farm has grown to include 19 different species on 1.25 acres of land. Mary Paul, a restoration specialist with the group, says this farm generates quantities of seed that would otherwise be hard to find in the wild.

“It’s probably unlikely that we’d be able to get 100 pounds of wild seed without having it at a production level like this,” she says.

Few Sources of Native Seed Remain

That’s because there are few pockets of coastal prairies left in the Watsonville slough system. As agriculture moved into the Pajaro Valley, people drained the marshes of the Watsonville slough to reveal farming land. Now Watsonville Wetlands Watch returns native habitat to retired agriculture fields near the wetlands and restores land overrun with invasive weeds. It’s possible to buy native seeds for such work. But Pilch says the group’s goals for their projects meant it was easier to grow their own seeds than buy them.

“It was really important to us to have the genetic material that’s specific to our watershed,” he says. “We also grow native seed 100% organically and we don’t know of any other production place where you can purchase organically grown, locally sourced native seed.”

Their homegrown seed farm includes grasses like meadow barley, purple needle grass, and blue wild rye as well as flowers like yarrow, California poppy, and California buttercups.

Pilch says hiring local farm crews has been key to their high level production. The crews bring their expertise and equipment to the seed farm in the winter during their down season.

A Learning Process

That help helps, but come harvest time, it’s still hard work to separate the seeds from the rest of the plant. Paul shows me how they clean the seeds. She takes a handful of dried plant parts and chaff and places it atop a slotted metal screen resting on top of an open bucket. Then Paul rubs it over the screen so that the seeds fall through tiny slots in the screen.

Different screens have different sized slots depending on the seeds being processed. She swirls the material on top of the screen until most of the seed falls through. A peek in the bucket reveals tiny seeds mixed with less chaff than before.

“One of the unique things is that every native seed has its own very specific way of harvest, cleaning and processing,” Pilch says. “So we’re really learning as we go here in terms of how to efficiently clean and harvest. Over the last three years the speed at which we’re harvesting and processing has really increased. And so we’re optimistic that in three more years we’re going to be that much more efficient.”

He expects the need for native seed, and thus the farm, will grow as the public continues to appreciate native ecology restoration. “The end is not in sight,” Pilch says. “That’s the typical rule with ecological restoration. It’s the 50 year, 100 year time frame that we’re looking at in terms of our process.”

Even in the short term, their restoration projects are having an effect. That day ducks, red winged blackbirds, and red tailed hawks visited the farm, spending time in nearby Harkins Slough.