Transcript
This is Eileen Wray-McCann for Circle of Blue. And this is What’s Up with Water, your “need-to-know news” of the world’s water, made possible by support from people like you.
In the United States, environmental, health, and civic groups have sued the federal government, claiming that revised rules for lead in drinking water are not strong enough to protect health. In late December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized the rule revisions. According to MLive, the groups filing the lawsuits oppose many of the new drinking water rules, but they are especially concerned about the timelines for eliminating lead pipes. They argue that utilities are allowed too many years to remove a major source of lead in drinking water. One lawsuit was filed by Earthjustice and includes the NAACP and United Parents Against Lead. A second lawsuit was filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
There were a lot of people who didn t have water for a long time, Mahood said.
In fact, much of the drinking water system operated by the San Lorenzo Valley Water District that serves Mahood s neighborhood, along with some 7,100 other households, was damaged or destroyed.
Over the past five years or so, hundreds of California drinking water systems have suffered similar fates while struggling with the impacts of the state s increasingly intense climate-driven wildfires.
In 2020 alone, 250 water systems were either damaged by fire or were subject to fire-related public safety power shutoffs, according to Stefan Cajina, who leads the Drinking Water Division for the State Water Resources Control Board s North Coast Section.
Lightning Complex fires caused significant damage to Bay Area drinking water infrastructure
By Kiley Russell
A look back at the CZU Lighting Complex Fires
In total, 86,509 acres burned - 135 square miles. 1,490 structures, many of those homes, were destroyed. An additional 140 structures were damaged.
BEN LOMOND, Calif. - As the CZU Lightning Complex fire bore down on Gail Mahood s tree-shrouded Felton neighborhood last August, she gathered what possessions she could and fled. As I drove away and saw how fast the fire was moving, I didn t have much hope for my home, Mahood recalled.
Thankfully, fire crews saved the little community of 20 or so houses, stopping the blaze within a half-mile of Mahood s home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but the pipes that delivered drinking water from a spring just up the hill were completely destroyed.
Last summer’s rolling blackouts in California did not last that long, relatively speaking. But the first statewide outages in nearly 20 years drew a quick and pointed response from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Let me make this crystal clear: We failed to predict and plan for these shortages and that’s simply unacceptable,” Newsom said at the time, no doubt keenly aware that Gray Davis became a former governor after a string of blackouts helped to trigger a recall effort that cost Davis his job. Newsom ordered the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Independent System Operator to deliver a report explaining what happened and why.
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On December 17, 2020, the Sacramento County Superior Court substantially limited the scope of waters to which the State Procedures for Discharges of Dredged and Fill Material (“Procedures”) apply through its decision in
San Joaquin Tributaries Authority v. State Water Resources Control Board (Case No. 34-2019-80003133). According to the Court, the State Water Resources Control Board (“State Water Board”) exceeded its policy-making and water quality control plan development authority, resulting in the restriction of the Procedures to those waters regulated under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act or Clean Water Act (“CWA”) and State “ocean waters.” The Court’s decision significantly narrows the delta between the discharges of dredged and fill material regulated exclusively under the Procedures, and those that will now be regulated under both federal and state water quality control laws. However, bec