Point Reyes Light - January 8, 2004

Groups vary over reporting bay pollution

By Dave Mitchell & Ivan Gale

Directors of the Tomales Bay Watershed Council have endorsed a proposed water-quality monitoring program that will monitor amounts of e coli. bacteria in the bay but not identify their specific sources.

Directors could have opted for increasingly widespread DNA tracking, which would have identified whether ranches, boaters, septic systems, park facilities, birds, or wildlife are polluting the bay.

Instead, directors unanimously endorsed the draft of a proposal to monitor water quality at four places in the bay and nine places in its tributaries.

As it happened, the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin almost simultaneously published a list of places in the bay and its tributaries that were closed for a day or more last year because of pollution.

The watershed council’s proposal will test the bay and tributaries for fecal coliform bacteria, as well as for transparency, flow, salinity, oxygen levels, pH balance, temperature, and ammonia levels.

Under the draft proposal, monitoring stations would be placed in the San Geronimo Valley on Lagunitas/Papermill and San Geronimo creeks, around Tomales and the Chileno Valley on Walker and Chileno creeks, on Millerton Creek, on Olema Creek, and on either First Valley Creek or Second Valley Creek in Inverness.

Tom Baty of the council’s Water Quality Committee told The Light now that a draft has been endorsed, all that remains for the watershed council is to work out the details.

The cost for the monitoring could run as high as $160,000 annually if the council conducts all the testing by itself, Baty said. He added, however, that a number of government agencies already have some form of testing in place so the council can make use of these tests.

"We know there are a variety of agencies and institutions that are conducting monitoring on the bay," Baty said. "We’re planning on sitting down with these institutions and agencies and figure out who can do it for the least [amount of money] and still come up with dependable data."

Before it can begin testing its own, the council will need to obtain the approval from private landowners with creekside properties.

In unanimously endorsing the proposed monitoring program, the council has seemingly abandoned the most-modern scientific testing, which relies on DNA to determine the sources of pollution. Without DNA testing, critics have argued, the actual sources of any pollution may never be known, and taxpayers could end up with heavy expenditures that accomplish nothing.

Comparison of costs

Dr. Mansour Samadpour at the University of Washington, who was previously hired to conduct bacteria-source tracking at Morro Bay, Bodega Bay, and Santa Barbara, along with many other places, has told The Light it would cost approximately $250,000 to conduct DNA testing on Tomales Bay.

That contrasts with $160,000 per year to be spent in perpetuity under the Tomales Bay Watershed Council plan.

But the main advantage, professor Samadpour said, is that with DNA testing, one can "identify the problems, identify and control the source, and get it over with."

High coliform levels in local waters at both Morro Bay and local waters in Santa Barbara in Southern California were initially blamed on humans. After DNA testing, it was discovered birds were major sources, he noted.

Baty said the Watershed Council’s water-quality committee considered DNA testing but decided against it for the time being, listing both technical and political reasons. "What we’re looking for is trends in water quality. We’re looking to see if water quality in the bay ... is improving, staying the same, or declining. DNA focuses on possible sources, but it would not help us at all with trend analysis."

No finger pointing

Baty also said DNA testing could lead to finger-pointing. A number of people on the council feel that DNA testing does not help towards creating solutions to water quality problems but instead focuses public blame.

"The Watershed Council is interested in finding solutions," he said. While acknowledging that wildlife is responsible for some of the "pollution" in Tomales Bay, Baty said, "There are background levels of fecal coliform, but there are also significant levels of fecal coliform that can be related to human uses.

"And since we can’t really manage the natural system, we have a much better chance of managing and solving some of problems with human uses within the watershed."

Critics, however, have noted that wildlife has, in fact, been managed to improve water quality. A large population of raccoons was rounded up and relocated in eastern Virginia while in Santa Barbara a falconer was hired to drive off seagulls.

The Watershed Council’s board consists of 29 directors who are supposed to represent homeowners, environmental groups, shellfish growers, dairy ranchers, commerce, the public, and local, state, and federal governments.

EAC publishes suspects

While the Watershed Council does want to name names, Catherine Caufield, executive director of Environmental Action Committee has published a list of places where, she says, county monitoring between April and October found contaminated beaches.

In the fall issue of EAC News, she writes that Lawson’s Landing at Dillon Beach and Marshall Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore were each closed for a week because of e coli bacteria; Millerton Point in Marshall was closed five times for 34 days; Muir Beach tested safe but Redwood Creek upstream tested unsafe nine times."

One of the most problematic sites, Caufield writes, is at Chicken Ranch Beach in Inverness; while the main channel across the beach tested unsafe only twice, Channel B beside the now-closed Sandy Cove bed-and-breakfast inn "failed virtually every time it was tested and was posted for 154 days...

"Equally bad was Lagunitas Creek, which was posted for 154 days at the Green Bridge." The bridge is near the Genazzi Ranch and is downstream from Black Mountain Ranch and North Bend Ranch. It is also downstream from Tocaloma and Jewell, Samuel P. Taylor State Park, and the San Geronimo Valley.

Indeed, the creek was posted as unsafe at the Ink Wells for 126 days and at Samuel P. Taylor State Park for 69 days. One body of water not within the Tomales Bay watershed but mentioned by Caufield is Kehoe Lagoon. Caufield quotes the county as saying, "While Kehoe Beach itself met water standards, Kehoe Lagoon was posted for 126 days...

"County staff named several likely sources of pollution, including several ranches, a licensed waste-disposal site, a state park septic system, horses, and home septic systems."

Is cleanup order legal?

The Watershed Council’s planning is supposedly a response to the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Regional Water Quality Control Board’s order that e coli in the bay be reduced 30 percent by 2005 and 75 percent by 2007.

The penalty for not doing so, regional board staff said early last year, could be a prohibition on boating, a moratorium on homebuilding, and the elimination of horse stables.

This fall, however, senior staff of the federal Environmental Protection Agency told The Light the regional board cannot legally issue such an order without first finding out where the bacteria is coming from.

Any grant money available for clean up actions, the staff said, will require regulations to be legally defensible, and being legally defensible includes being based on the most-modern science available. And what’s the most modern?

The Southern California Coastal Water Resource Project notes on its website that DNA testing is the most-accurate way to find pollution sources.

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