Walk the Watershed at Otay Valley Regional Park
Written by Erin Reynante
On Saturday, more than 200 community members descended upon Otay Valley Regional Park for San Diego Coastkeeper’s 5th annual Walk the Watershed event. What is a watershed you ask? A watershed is the ecosystem in which we all live including the wildlife, surface waters, water, water quality, and of course, our neighborhoods.
Participants had the opportunity to learn about San Diego’s watersheds at the education stations along the education tour through Otay Valley Regional Park, culminating in ice-plant removal as the restoration project.
It was definitely a joint effort to make Walk the Watershed a success. Partner organizations included the Unified Port of San Diego, Metropolitan Water District, WiLDCOAST, Elementary Institute of Science, Otay Valley Regional Park and park rangers, City of San Diego, County of San Diego, City of Chula Vista, Allied Waste, The Girl Scouts of San Diego County, REI, and I Love a Clean San Diego, and of course the group of rock star volunteers.And what event is complete without tamales, a dance performance, and a few words from San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox and Council Member David Alvarez? The best part is, it was free to the public! Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning learning about your environment, meeting organizations in the community that care about preserving and protecting your environment, and breathing in the fresh air.
Project SWELL (Stewardship: Water Education for Lifelong Leadership) is getting a lot of attention from San Diego Unified School District elementary teachers after last week’s professional development workshops. Targeting K, 1st, and 6th grade teachers, the workshops were well attended with 47 teachers learning the curriculum, many for the first time. If all these teachers implement SWELL, then about 1,400 more elementary students will learn about local water issues in their classrooms this year.
In a post-workshop survey, all teachers rated the workshop as very well-organized and would recommend the workshop to other teachers. Perhaps it had something to do with the sandwiches and cookies provided after a long day of teaching, thanks to generous donors to Project SWELL through Coastkeeper. Or the gift packs and reusable water bottles from Project SWELL partners City of San Diego Think Blue. More likely, it has to do with the thoughtfulness and care put into the creation of the curriculum. Project SWELL was created for teachers by teachers, and it’s easy for teachers to squeeze in the hands-on lessons as part of their regular science curriculum.
The trainings are a great way to share news and new developments with the SWELL program, especially recent updates to the SWELL website and a tutorial of how to access the supplemental curriculum materials (maps, pictures, and graphics) as part of a password protected section of that site. SWELL is adapting quickly to be applicable in the 21st century classroom with smartboards, notebooks, and ipads!
Coastkeeper loves interacting with the teachers who make water education a priority in their classrooms. We took a few videos of the teachers after the workshops to learn more about their motivation and desire to teach Project SWELL lessons. Enjoy!
When and where did water protection begin? It all started back in 1966 in New York. The Hudson River provided water to over 9 million people in New York and Hudson County. Its state was almost toxic. A group of local fishermen had noticed that and decided it was time for change in the ways the river was treated. It was treated like a dump, an easy trash can where one could put all the junk they didn’t want or need anymore. So a man by the name of Bob Boyle found the Hudson Fisherman’s Organization. Later, it would be known as Riverkeepers and would be one of almost 200 “watchdog” organizations. This organization helped establish globally recognized standards.
Back when the organization first started it was a group of locals, who were dedicated to saving their environment. Their work was kick started by the discovery of two laws passed in the 19th Century that prohibited one from polluting American waters, the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the Refuse Act of 1899. These acts also allowed people to claim a reward for catching and reporting polluters to the government. Through this discovery, they were able to shut down the Penn Central Pipe for $2000, which was a heavy polluter of the Hudson River. They also collected rewards by reporting and or shutting down Ciba Geigy, American Cynamid, Westchester County and several other polluters. These rewards eventually built up and made it possible to launch the first ever Riverkeeper Boat to patrol the Hudson for environmental law breakers. These boats were meant for spotting and reporting smaller polluters on boats as opposed to large companies using pipes to pollute. Since then, they have caught a large amount of polluters and have forced them to spend vast amounts to amend their mistake.
Nowadays it is still essentially the same. However, what the pollution watchdog organizations like Riverkeepers look for are quite different. When these organizations first started, they looked for larger scale polluters, such as large corporations that dumped all their waste into the rivers and bays. Now, they still are, however it is rarer to see a big company dump waste so they focus more on smaller scale polluters like fisherman who are painting their boats in the water. They also look for trash that someone carelessly threw into the bay, or people dismantling their boats in the water. They ignore no pollution when they patrol, just as before.
For more information visit these sites:
http://www.waterkeeper.org/
http://www.riverkeeper.org/about-us/our-story/a-brief-history/
http://www.blackwarriorriver.org/library/History_Waterkeeper_Alliance.pdf
There are many ways to approach environmental education. One (and in my view, the most important) is to ensure students have opportunities to see, touch, smell and taste Mother Nature while hiking, swimming or participating in an outdoor activity. Another method is to bring guest speakers into the classroom to entertain students and teach them about animals, plants, watersheds or some other engaging topic. The model of Project SWELL (Stewardship: Water Education for Lifelong Leadership) is unique and effective: it provides hands on activity kits to classrooms and trains teachers to educate about the local aquatic environment as part of their science curriculum. Lessons actively involve students in learning about water supply and conservation, pollution prevention, and the local coastal habitat and wildlife, while reinforcing classroom principles such as the scientific method.
In early November, Project SWELL partners City of San Diego Storm Water & Transportation Department – Think Blue, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) and San Diego Coastkeeper joined forces to offer professional development workshops for elementary teachers in 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades. The response from the workshops was overwhelmingly positive and while most teachers were new to SWELL, a few returning teachers came to refresh and re-engage with the program. A fourth grade teacher from Edison Elementary School, Rebecca Brown, took a moment to share her experiences with SWELL in the video on the left.
According to a recent study, educators in Los Angeles are spending less time teaching science and are receiving less training to do so. Teachers across the country are pressed for time, balancing language and math testing requirements with special needs students and second language learners. We, San Diegans, often insist that we have very little in common with Los Angeles, but the SDUSD is the second largest school district in the state (16th in the nation) and experiences many of the same woes as its big sister LA Unified. Yet a few SDUSD Board of Education Members believe strongly in the value of science in preparing tomorrow’s leaders and SDUSD science scores are above average when compared with the rest of the state. Thanks to the board and educator leadership, strong partnerships and generous donors, valuable programs like SWELL continue to thrive and train teachers even in periods of budget cuts.
Just like many students, many teachers love learning about science. And the more they feel fluent with the content, equipped with the materials to teach lessons, the more likely they are to pass along a love of learning science. Project SWELL trainings will continue each Spring and Fall for SDUSD teachers. Explore the recently revamped Project SWELL website for new developments, access to online curriculum for SDUSD teachers and contact us with any questions or suggestions.
We are San Diego’s water pollution watchdogs. San Diego Coastkeeper is here because we need to hold polluters accountable and ensure government is doing its job of enforcing our laws. Our job is not easy. California has some of the toughest environmental laws in the world, but there is little, if any, enforcement.
As a watchdog we are often times accused of driving jobs out of San Diego. Nonsense! If anything, the opposite is true. We protect the rights of the people to stand up and protect our environment, children, property, livelihoods and future. San Diego Coastkeeper’s vision and work toward making our waters fishable, swimmable and drinkable not only serves to enhance environmental protection, but also protects local economies like fishing and tourism. San Diego is about our coastal waters. We help attract businesses that are environmentally smart and aware of the value of clean and healthy coastal waters.
Our environmental laws are only effective if they are enforced. No enforcement - no environmental protection. California’s “thin green line of environmental enforcement” is broken. State and federal environmental enforcement budgets have been slashed, regulatory oversight reduced and too many violations go undetected or unpunished. To make matters even worse, government’s ability to enforce the laws is further reduced by political pressure from industry to minimize enforcement. And, as might be expected there has been a wholesale erosion of deterrence.
Environmental law professor David Hodas contends that effective deterrence requires four elements:
- significant likelihood that a violation will be detected;
- swift and sure enforcement response;
- appropriately severe sanctions; and
- that each of these factors will be perceived as real.
In The Riverkeepers, John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. posit that none of the above elements is consistently present: “Enforcement is underfunded, abused, and ignored in nearly every environmental bureaucracy.” The situation is much worse today than when Cronin and Kennedy wrote in 1999. I can find no evidence that there is any real deterrence in San Diego.
Given the economic downslide, California and local governments like San Diego have moved away from enforcement because they do not want to dissuade business from expanding or relocating to their areas. No government wants to risk losing jobs because a business sees a neighboring region as being more industry friendly. Thus, there is pressure to weaken regulations and ignore violations because politicians and bureaucrats think by doing so they will be able to attract and keeps jobs in their jurisdictions.
The story of Riverkeepers is one of the struggle to take back the Hudson River from polluters. In the 1960s, the Hudson was treated as a sewer. Industrial development, raw sewage discharges, and toxic contamination drove all but the hardiest away from the river. Today, anglers, boaters and bathers flock to the Hudson to experience the wonders of this great river. Thanks to Hudson Riverkeeper. industries and municipalities have ceased their polluting ways and have developed a respect for the resource.
San Diego shares a similar story. We have lost jobs because of the lack of environmental enforcement. Take for example San Diego Bay. Gross violations by numerous polluters occurred on the bay for years. Violations were either ignored or marginalized. As a result, water pollution became a small cost of doing business. Today San Diego Bay is grossly polluted with toxic contaminants. The long history of violations and pollution killed what was once a vibrant commercial fishing industry in the bay. Not only is there no commercial fishing on San Diego Bay today, but due to the fish contamination from toxic pollutants, the Port of San Diego posted signs along San Diego Bay piers with fish consumption advisories.
“It’s a classic lesson that it's easier to prevent the problem than it is to fix it once it's been introduced into the environment," says David Gibson, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The recent 2.6-million gallon Los Penasquitos sewage spill is another example of how gross pollution not only spoils the environment but negatively impacts our economy. As a result of the spill, beaches and parks were closed five miles north and south of the mouth of Los Penasquitos Lagoon between September 9 – 14, 2011. The Los Angeles Times ran an article that provided a travel advisory because of beach closures from “Scripps Pier (in the La Jolla Shores area) north, including the popular swimming and surfing areas of Black’s Beach in La Jolla, Del Mar and Solana Beach.” San Diego Coastkeeper’s watchdog activities on the Los Penasquitos sewage spill will most likely produce a significant enforcement action against the polluter, the City of San Diego.
No doubt our environmental laws need to be vigorously enforced to be effective. That is why San Diego Coastkeeper exists. We are ever vigilant watchdogs protecting our environment, livelihoods and future.
At the invitation of Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), San Diego Coastkeeper toured the environmental justice communities of National City and Barrio Logan on Saturday, Oct. 15. No doubt we saw some of the worst environmental harms and violations in San Diego. EHC builds grassroots campaigns to confront the unjust consequences of toxic pollution. Coastkeeper is proud to be one of EHC’s partners. Indeed Nicole Capretz, EHC’s Green Energy/Good Jobs Campaign Director, is a San Diego Coastkeeper board member.
Environmental Justice is about victories brought through community action. We had the opportunity to see a real victory, the restoration/rehabilitation project of Paradise creek that was spearheaded by Margaret and Ted Godshalk. Margaret Godshalk is the President of EHC and a teacher at Hoover Elementary School, which is adjacent to Paradise Creek. Through the Godshalks’ efforts what was once a dumping ground for used motor oil, car batteries and other flotsam that threatened wildlife and San Diego Bay is now Paradise Creek Educational Park, a vibrant watershed which serves as home to crabs, pelicans, egrets and wetland plants. The park also serves as an outdoor laboratory for Ms. Godshalk’s students. As Ms. Godshalk puts it, “Kids can start seeing it’s not just about protecting the water and the stream to the ocean, it’s about what they do in their own neighborhoods. After learning about how precious that wetland is, there’s a 180-degree turnaround, a feeling of pride in what you have in your very back yard.”
EHC Executive Director Diane Takvorian is spot on: “All people have the right to live, play and work in a safe and healthy environment.” It doesn’t take rocket science to understand what is environmentally good for National City and Barrio Logan is also good for all of San Diego.
There are a number of ways to expand water supply in San Diego. San Diego Coastkeeper supports following the route of reduce, reuse, recycle, before attempting to find new sources.
Reduce:
First and foremost, we need to focus more on water conservation, or reducing the amount of water we actually use. It’s the easiest, cheapest way to boost our water supply. It is also the focus of the Be Water Wise 20 Gallon Challenge, a campaign to reduce the amount of water used per household by 20 gallons per day. Conservation techniques can include anything from taking shorter showers to starting a compost bin so you use less water running the disposal and much more.
Reuse: 
Rainwater harvesting and greywater systems reuse water without treating it first. This is also a fairly simple way to increase supply, because less water is wasted. Capturing rainwater allows its use for irrigation and helps avoid using potable water for the purpose. It’s easily done at home, and requires very little installation.
Greywater also can be used for irrigation, with the added bonus of reducing the amount of water sent to treatment plants and released into the ocean. Using greywater at home is more complicated than catching rainwater, as it requires a plumber to divert water exiting bathroom sinks, washing machines, and showers (all with very low dirt-to-water ratios) to landscaping outside the house (storage of greywater is not advised). The low level of detergents and dirt can actually be good for the plants, but keep it on your property and avoid runoff to the street.
Recycle:
Wastewater recycling, or Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) if used for drinking water, falls into this category. Sometimes called “toilet to tap” by detractors, the process uses advanced treatment processes to treat wastewater to levels even cleaner (page 108 of this report) than San Diego’s typical drinking water, then put it back in the water supply. A Demonstration Project is underway to prove the process safe for San Diego. If it succeeds, wastewater recycling could be the next step in increasing our water supply.
Purple pipe is the other side of wastewater recycling, where wastewater is only partially treated and used for irrigation. Coastkeeper is in favor of this strategy only in targeted areas, as it requires a separate plumbing system and is therefore very expensive to install.
New Sources:
After experimentation with the above sources, it might be necessary to look for new water sources. Further importation of water is theoretically possible, but San Diego already imports more than 80 percent of its water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River, supplies not under our control. Increasing that percentage would be risky, so any further imports would have to be done in combination with other techniques. 
Desalination is another option, but while local, this source of water has a number of problems. A major one is the intake pipe: open-ocean intakes function as vacuums into the sea or lagoons where they suck in and kill marine life, a major issue. Subsurface intakes are better, as they take in salt water from under the sand and so greatly limit fish kills. The process of desalting ocean water is very similar to Indirect Potable Reuse, but because of the higher salt content, it is very energy-intensive. Besides the desired freshwater, the process also yields a very saline chemical-laden brine – diluted, the brine can be released into the ocean, but it can poison marine life if too concentrated. Menachem Elimelech, director of the environmental engineering program at Yale, said in a News Hour interview, “Desalination of seawater, because it is energy intensive should always be as a last resort…. It can be and should be part of the portfolio for water supply but only after all other measures are done.” Coastkeeper believes that desalination could have a place in San Diego’s water portfolio, but only on a limited scale and only using subsurface intakes.
Ten Ways I Can Lower My Environmental Impact
Written by Jamie OrtizI spend my days telling you how to improve your environmental decision-making. You can turn the water off when you brush your teeth. You should carpool or ride your bike. You should water your lawn less.
For many of you, these gentle reminders help, and collectively their impacts make a big difference.
But sometimes, it can feel disingenuous. While I always try to put Earth first, I know that I still have many opportunities to improve my own environmental decision-making. So, today I thought I’d share with you ten ways that I can shrink my carbon footprint.
- Buy sustainable cat food – My cats love some fishy food, but not all cat food is made equally. Globally, our demand for fish has stressed the ocean's health. I can commit to only purchasing cat food that contains sustainably sourced seafood. Or, even better, I can purchase local, organic cat food options.
- Buy organic sun block – My fair skin and freckles escape no one. I have two choices for sun protection—move back to Oregon where it rains 9 months out of the year or soak in sun block. I should commit to only purchasing organic, Earth-friendly sun blocks that don’t cover me in chemicals and that don’t adversely affect our waters.
- Recycle used bike parts – Mostly I’m referring to old bike tubes. I try to find bike kitchens in San Diego to which I can take all my used parts, but I should try harder to get old bike tubes to a recycling center.
- Use my dishwasher – Currently, my used dishwasher exists only to take up space. If I fixed it and waited until we filled it completely, I would most likely us less water and energy when washing my dishes.
- Get reusable bags for produce and bulk items– I’m fully committed to bringing my reusable bags to the grocery story. And many times I stuff items directly into my bike bags. But I have one more step to take and that’s bringing my own reusable produce bags to buy small items that mushrooms, oatmeal, rice, coffee beans etc.
- Stop buying disposable Tupperware – The whole idea kind of offends me--why buy Tupperware if I am not going to commit to keeping it whole, clean and useful? Why buy Tupperware at all? I’ve recently fallen in love with reusing glass jars to transport my leftovers to work for lunch. I can commit to making food transport possible without buying products—real Tupperware or the disposable kind—to make it convenient.
- Stop frequenting restaurants that use polystyrene – My favorite burrito shop shouldn’t remain at the top of my culinary list if it continues to use plastic foam to serve food. I should use my dollars to support restaurants making sustainable choices.
- Compost – According to the EPA, yard trimmings and food residuals constitute 26 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. Even though I live in a condo complex, I can compost my organic food waste to reduce how much garbage my household sends to landfills.
- Stop buying overly packaged items – Packaging creates waste. So many things we purchase as consumers comes well packaged so that it looks nice so that we buy it. It's completely unnecessary. I can commit to using my purchasing dollars to support companies that package with Earth in mind (or even better, that don't package at all).
- Buy gently used items – Since a young age, I’ve loved garage selling. That’s right, my mom taught me that as a verb—it was a thing we’d do at least once a month. While I turn to used stores for many items, I don’t always go there first. I can replace broken drinking glasses, lost silverware, worn rugs and tired blankets by first seeing which thrilling finds I can discover at one of my local favorite thrift shops.
I like to think of myself as a very Earth-friendly consumer and resident on this planet. I already do so many things to lessen my impact, but I know that I can always do more. I try to remember that I don’t have to find perfection on day one, but that I always have to strive to improve who I am. We all have a little to learn.
What one extra step can you take to reduce your carbon footprint?
What Environmentally Friendly Communications Means to Me
Written by Jamie Ortiz
Kermit was right: It's not easy being green.
Especially when communicating about it.
As the communications director for San Diego Coastkeeper, I often find myself asking, "Is this the most environmentally friendly option available?" Much like Rachel discovered when she blogged about the new plastics recycling rules in San Diego, I have learned it's not so clear. Just when I think I've hit an environmentally sound communications solution, I learn another way to improve that idea even more.
Let me break it down to you. Let's say that you want to reduce your carbon footprint for your daily commute to work. You drive an older sedan. Easy, you think, I'll just buy a new Electric Nissan Leaf, and my gas mileage will improve, maybe double.
Say hello to your shrinking carbon footprint, right? Not necessarily.
A quick search shows that the carbon footprint to produce and transport a new car isn't necessarily smaller than that to maintain the life of your older car. And did you consider the environmental impact of charging your electric car (Are you using solar polar? And if so, did that come from a roof top or imported from a solar field out in the desert)? You need to think of what type of energy you'll use to repower your car and the impact of the growing need for electrical recharge stations around your city (Will the city have to build new stations to accommodate the demand?).
So, let's say you decide to ditch your car and get a bike.
Talk about kicking foreign oil dependence to the curb, right? Wrong.
Most bikes aren't manufactured in the U.S., and it takes a lot of oil to produce a bicycle. And then add the mileage of worldwide transport of the components and the finished bikes. You also would have to vet the sustainability of each company. I bet you'd hate to find out the manufacturer of your favorite components actually funds opposition to the Marine Life Protection Act.
So maybe you decide to walk to work.
But did you evaluate the environmental impact of your walking shoes? And even if you go barefoot, do you know the carbon footprint of your meat-based diet?
See where this is going? With so many choices and so many hidden truths, we face a challenge to make the most sustainable decisions possible. So, for me, and for Coastkeeper's communication program, being green means continually improving our commitment to sustainable practices. Some of the things we consider are:
- Do we need to print this? We switched to electronic fliers for events and a digital annual report.
- What types of inks can we use? Avoid petroleum-based inks by trying soy-based inks.
- Where are our vendors located and what are their sustainable practices? We support our local guys (which means riding bikes to press checks).
- What materials are used? We look for 100% recycled materials and organic options.
- What's the end use? We try to minimize landfill-bound items. Better if they can be recycled. Even better if they are reusable.
- Is this necessary? We try to walk the line between employing strong communications, which sometimes demands printed materials, and acting as strong environmental stewards, who need to think environment first.
Clearly, this isn't an exhaustive list. With each project, I strive to add more bullet points and improve our sustainability in each category.
It seems daunting. Where should you begin if you haven't thought about any of these issues? The good news is that taking the right path begins with one step--choose today to improve one environmental standard in your life. And then choose tomorrow to improve another standard. And so on. Eventually, you will walk a marathon of "being green."
Maybe Kermit wasn't so right.
Volunteers Gather San Dieguito Watershed Data
Written by Travis Pritchard
Once again, our dedicated volunteers have collected water quality data on August 20. In our efforts to help others understand the data we collect, we going to explore indepth the San Dieguito Watershed in Del Mar and Solana Beach area.
Overall, we've found that relative to the rest of San Diego's watersheds, San Dieguito Watershed is in relatively good condition. The watershed shows some problems typical of urbanization, such as slightly elevated concentrations of some nutrients. But this is expected because of irrigation of land or overwatering of lawns. Because our sites are downstream of agricultural land and golf courses, this could explain the nutrient levels being a little elevated. These levels are only slightly elevated and mostly do not exceed the standards set in the San Diego region basin plan.
One particularly interesting data point for this month is that one site (on the Del Dios Highway next to the fruit stand) had low levels of dissolved oxygen. The dissolved oxygen levels were 4.60 mg/L and the basin plan standard is at least 5.0 mg/l. This low level of oxygen in the water can stress aquatic organisms. On a good note, we've found low levels of fecal indicator bacteria.
In comparison to other watersheds in San Diego, San Dieguito Watershed is in good shape. We want to keep it that way by monitoring the sites and keeping our waste at a minimum. If you would like to be a part of it, sign up to be a volunteer for the September Water Quality Monitoring and training. No need to be a chemist to participate, bring your fun and learning sides together to explore your community and meet new friends.
How can we keep our watersheds healthy? Share your thoughts!
