This should be an interesting and helpful study. Endorsement by the SCWC would be a valid idea. The SCWC should also find out which other utilities or groups in Sonoma County and surrounding areas are also planning or conducting similar studies and efforts. We may also wish to consider other endorsements.
FOR ROBERT RAWSON: How will measurements for endocrine disrupters, pharmaceuticals, and personal care product removals be made and who will make them? My under standing is the measurement methodology is still not very reliable, and there are only one or two labs in the US that do them. These doubts are also expressed in the attached article. I’m definitely interested in the project and verifiable results.
Len Holt
MMWD’s Russian River Water Quality Testing: what’s it mean?
Dear David, Thanks for forwarding this interesting article. You might be interested to know that we have applied for $250,000 in EPA wetland grants for endocrine research at Graton CSD.
We plan to study the removal of endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals, and nutrients that remain as residuals from a tertiary treated wastewater effluent. Our Capital Improvements Project will be completed by the end of the year and provide the tertiary component. The grant will involve the use of multiple barriers consisting of mycofiltration, bioremediation, phytoremediation (nursery and redwood forest), as well as employing various soil matrix components such as zeolite, peat moss, ferric hydroxide, and carbon.
If the grant is awarded we will be spending a great deal of money conducting sampling and laboratory analysis, looking at processes useful for the removal of endocrines. In turn this will provide a lot of information on the quantities of these compounds in wastewater which has been treated in different ways. Different secondary and teriiary treatment processes will be suggested once the importance of endocrine disruptors gets incorporated into NPDES permits.
I think this issue should be made of prime importance as Santa Rosa evaluates the option of indirect discharge. Conventional activated sludge treatment has very short detention times and allows perhaps half of the medicines and endocrines to pass through. Graton will be employing pretreatment in the collection system using selected strains of bacteria capable of digesting endocrines, followed by secondary oxidation in staged aerated ponds equipped with recirculation and further bacterial inoculation to initiate nitrogen removal, followed by a Suspended Air Floatation (SAF) for copper, zinc, TSS removal, a fuzzy filter with depth filtration, accompanied by coagulation with a starch based polymer for virus removal, followed by disinfection, long term storage, and then the mycofiltration, bioremediation, phytoremediation and soil components.
I believe this approach will remove everything below a detectable limit for less cost than membrane filtration. We have received a letter of support for this from Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey. I think this is a timely study that might show a better way to release treated effluent back into the environment such that it is a benefit to ground and surface waters rather than a detriment.
Sincerely, Bob Rawson General Manager, GCSD From:
What does the MMWD 2002 Report on Russian River Water Quality Testing mean? Overall, by their assessment, the water quality of the Russian River looked pretty good. However, there were some significant defects in the testing procedures, particularly for endocrine disruptors. See a contemporaneous critique article from Louis Nuyens, below, from the Coastal Post. This report, if taken at face value, apparently gives us a reasonably good picture of the Russsian River, and what happens when the wastewater is diluted downstream of the Laguna, and all that tea is chlorinated and pumped down our pipes by SCWA. The next questions are: – complete a valid analysis for endocrine disruptors and any new chemistry of concern since 2002 within the Russian River; are the limits of detection used in this report still valid? what about combination by-products? – do a complete analysis of all the critical components in the wastewater stream, since that will not be diluted when applied to agric etc. for the Ag Reuse Project. – do the research on what happens when this wastewater is applied to ag soils, and to edible crops, such as grapes; what if it is used to recharge groundwater, deliberately or inadvertantly? – do any components of concern make it thru to the grape juice or, more importantly, wine?
David
MMWD Study Marred By Poor Science
COASTAL POST, JULY 2002 By Louis Nuyens
In June, the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) staff presented the results of a quietly instituted, 12-18 month water-quality testing program on the Russian River. The program seemed to be targeting criticism, and attempting to defuse concerns raised by Marin and Sonoma County environmental leaders and public health advocates who, two years ago, brought up the issue of contaminants and pollutants being discharged into the Russian River (RR), a major drinking water source for the two counties.
Many of the concerns to date have centered around mistrust of information provided by the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) a body thought by many to be too closely aligned with pro-development interests — which has frequently under-informed and misinformed its major municipal clients while negotiating agreements with them. Considering its value as wildlife habitat, recreational resource, and agriculture and drinking water supply, comprehensive, scientifically valid water quality studies of the Russian River are long overdue.
On its surface, the MMWD program is a good one, testing for pesticides, herbicides, 319 organic chemicals, pharmaceutical pollutants, and endocrine disruptors. However, sewage wastewater was not addressed, and, unfortunately, problems with methodology, quality control, questionable use of new technology, and inappropriate partnerships that undermined the foundation of the entire program. The program was implemented in such a slip-shod manner that the results cannot be considered a scientifically validated study, but merely an exercise in placation.
The Program: The MMWD study included monthly testing of samples for 319 synthetic organic compounds, which were processed by a certified, commercial laboratory. The program ran for 18 months, from the SCWA treated drinking water at Marin¹s Ignacio Pump Station, and for 12 months for raw (untreated) water in the Russian River. The untreated water samples were gathered below the Laguna de Santa Rosa (the wastewater discharge point for the city of Santa Rosa) and below SCWA drinking water collectors in the Russian River. These samples were gathered by Sonoma County Water Agency staff. Additional limited samples were taken at the above sites, plus upstream of Laguna de Santa Rosa, for similar time periods; they were tested using experimental techniques for pharmaceuticals by the University of California at Berkeley, and for endocrine disruptors by Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene using E-Screen Assays which use breast cancer cell growth to determine estrogenic activity.
Methodology Misfires: Coastal Post inquiry uncovered that MMWD did not put together a program plan, sampling protocols, quality assurance plan or a quality control plan for the Russian River water quality study all crucial factors in validating scientific methodology, and a standard practice in any industry. Nor was there any of the above documentation provided to MMWD from their partners, UC Berkeley or Wisconsin State, which is not necessarily out of the ordinary for academic research facilities, but most certainly problematic for public use of the data. MMWD negotiated with SCWA staff to take all of the samples for the Russian River part of the program recognizing that SCWA has a vested interest in proving that their highly lucrative water source is pollutant free. In fact, the SCWA just hired political consultant with $45,000 in public money to polish its image, while one of its closely-aligned contractors is paying over $300k for lobbying to weaken requirements on toxic dumping. While collaborations are often beneficial, partnering with SCWA, given its past negative history, which has engendered serious distrust in the community, damages the credibility of MMWD’s Study. An example of proper methodology and paper documentation for a very similar study, see the website for the USGS’s Pharmaceutical Testing Program (http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/OFR-02-94/index.html).
Cutting Edge Technology Can Be An Unwieldy Sword: Bob Castle, MMWD’s Water Quality Manager, mentioned at the presentation that their partnership with the Civil and Environmental Engineering division of UC Berkeley, who were attempting to test for pharmaceuticals, was not the most successful, or happy of affairs. Throughout the study, UCB was reportedly unable to perform the highly experimental test procedures to achieve the low level detection necessary to produce usable data on pharmaceuticals. Undergraduate students performed the analytical work. According to Mr. Castle, they abandoned the testing for certain types of compounds altogether. UCB has since pulled out of any further testing partnership with MMWD and has indicated that they are not interested in testing surface waters only direct sewage wastewater discharges (which have higher levels of constituents of concerns). In the United States, it appears that the Environmental Protection Agency, and USGS are the only ones who seem to have the capability, at this point in time, to consistently perform the high level of technique required of this type of testing. The E-Screen Assays performed by Wisconsin State also experienced consistency problems; results contradictory to UCB tests occurred on a given sample. E-Screen Assays are used as a general tool to detect estrogenic activity, it does not separate or identify compounds, just that they are, or are not, present. There is ongoing assessment of the accuracy of the test by researchers.
Results and Conclusions: The most viable part of the MMWD study is the organic chemical panel (319 compounds), and was performed by a commercial lab – which would have done appropriate QA/QC using standardized, EPA approved tests, but the sampling procedures are still under suspicion due to lack of documentation of protocols and SCWA involvement. The majority of the results came back “non-detect.” However, the organic chemical report list provided by MMWD to the public, fails to distinguish the Ignacio sample results from the Russian River results, and appears to lump them together. Pharmaceutical testing involves highly difficult techniques, attempting detection in the parts per trillion; many lessons must be learned before reliable data can be achieved reliably by smaller lab facilities. It is worth keeping an eye on for the future, and, in the meantime, lobbying the EPA or USGS to undertake a pharmaceutical and endocrine disruptor study on the Russian River. Unfortunately, virtually no comparative data from other agencies such as USGS, California Department of Fish and Game, National Marine fisheries, is available on RR water quality to compare or debunk MMWD study. MMWD had the right shopping list; it should keep the list and try to fill it properly.