Earth
Chatting with federal officials Thursday, I learned something that probably won't surprise you: The San Joaquin Valley is the worst place in the nation for PM-2.5. At least from 2005 to 2007.
Such particle pollution is considered the worst villain among air pollution problems. Most big health and social costs related to air quality come from PM-2.5 -- which is soot, chemical droplets and other tiny debris in the air.
It's always a bit of a mystery about how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes up with these numbers. The ranking is based on a design value, which is a calculation of monitor readings.
Here's the breakout:
1. San Joaquin Valley
2. Liberty-Clairton, Pa.
3. South Coast
4. Birmingham, Ala.
5. Steubenvillle-Wierton, WV
6. Cincinnati-Hamilton, OH - KY-IN
Notice a flattened skunk in the road? Perhaps a mangled bird, porcupine or mule deer?
People want to know about your roadkill finds. The University of California, Davis, has set up a Web page called California Roadkill Observation System, with the ghoulish mission of tracking smashed critters, getting photos and getting their locations on a map.
The reason? I think folks are trying to influence management and policy decisions in such matters as road building and placement of signs.
"We have created this site to provide a way for people like you to report roadkill so that we can understand and try to influence the factors that contribute to roadkill," the Web site says.
Total roadkill reports is 1,435 over a few months time.
I thought the headline said it all.
"It's Time to Tell a Dirty Story:
World Toilet Day, Nov. 19"
I thought I didn't even need to read the rest of the e-mail, but this was one message that I could not put down.
"Imagine where you'd be without a toilet? It wouldn't just be a crappy problem, it would be a crisis. In fact, that's exactly what it is for 2.5 billion people in the developing world."
OK, if you don't have toilet, you have a problem. I get it. As the e-mail says: "The lack of access to sanitation is a cross-cutting issue affecting health, environment, education, and economics not just far away, but here in the United States as well."
But it's tough to embrace the world toilet problems with modern communication marketing.
You are going to get a few folks giggling when you tout your public event as "The Big Squat."
Two days after the state passed a landmark law to improve the state's ecosystem and water delivery last week, environmental groups filed lawsuits over two dwindling fish species in the Bay-Delta.
One of the groups -- the Tucson, Ariz.,-based Center for Biological Diversity -- expressed doubt that the new law would do enough to save the fish.
The groups want federal officials to raise the Endangered Species Act status of the delta smelt from threatened to endangered. They also want officials to reconsider their rejection of a petition to protect the longfin smelt.
The endangered designation for the delta smelt would tighten federal standards for development or water permits.
The Bay Institute in Novato also was involved in the federal lawsuits.
Long-time environmental attorney Tom Graff, a well-known figure in California's water wars over the last several decades, died Thursday after a long bout with cancer.
Graff, 65, opened the California office of the Environmental Defense Fund in 1971. Graff is known in the San Joaquin Valley as someone who fought to stop farm drainage contamination.
He is remembered as the environmental pioneer who hired expert economists, biologists and computer specialists to acquire the knowledge and background needed to fight for the ecosystem.
There are many tributes being written for Graff. Among them is this one is from Tom Philp, former Sacramento Bee editorial writer and Pulitzer Prize winner.
A group of environmental justice advocates, Native Americans and endangered species activists filed suit today in Bakersfield against the proposed resort community Tejon Mountain Village.
Kern County Supervisors last month approved the project, which features two golf courses, 750 hotel rooms, a long string of homes and housing tracts on 5,000 acres in the Tehachapi Mountains along the Grapevine.
Activists oppose the development for many reasons, including a concern for the California condor, the sacred sites of the Chumash people and air quality.
"Tejon Mountain Village straddles the two worst-performing air districts in the country," said Brent Newell of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. "Thousands of car trips going in and out of this resort -- which we all know will include daily commuters, given its proximity to Los Angeles -- will further dirty the air and increase pollution-related health problems of the people who live here."
The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Wishtoyo Foundation, TriCounty Watchdogs, and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.
The cooler, calmer weather signals the start of the Valley's next air pollution concern: tiny bits of soot, dust and chemicals. In warmer weather, the problem is ozone, the main ingredient in smog.
The San Joaquin Valley violated the federal standard the first for days of November, but the air has been better for the last week.
Pay attention to the local air district's daily forecasts to find out if it's legal for you to burn wood in your fireplace or wood stove. There already have been several wood-burning bans.
The tiny pollution specks, as you may recall, are quite dangerous. They pass through the body's defenses and get into the lungs.
Such particles have been connected with lung and heart disease as well as early death.
The early morning hours are generally fine for vigorous, outdoor exercise, local air district experts say. But there's a buildup of particles in the later morning and early afternoon. By late afternoon, the particle levels begin to drop.
One big criticism of the new water reform law is the "back-room process" to arrive at a compromise proposal that could be passed. The criticism is not without merit.
"Too few powerful interests had too much power to determine the content," wrote Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based think tank. Gleick, a water policy expert, has an interesting analysis.
The law, passed Wednesday by state legislators, sets up a council to watch over the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It also starts the process to clean up the state's water quality and conserve water in cities, along with a mountain of other goals.
Voters will need to approve an $11 billion bond next year to make this happen.
So what happens when there are too few people in the negotiating room? Organizations not at the table tend to be pressured to fall in line with philosophies and past loyalties, instead of details.
Now there is a swarm of Northern California opponents, such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the River, who have to be brought along.
The leading edge of the San Joaquin River is 2.8 miles from the Chowchilla Bypass structure, federal officials reported this morning.
That's not far from Mendota, but it still has not reached the Mendota Pool. This is an initial, experimental flow of water that began Oct. 1 as the start of the river restoration.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to slow down the release of water from Friant Dam on Wednesday morning.
Right now, it's going 700 cubic feet per second. It will slow to 350 cfs Wednesday through Nov. 20. Then the extra flow will be shut off until Feb. 1.
In the afterglow of a historic water reform law passing the Legislature this week, it's good to remember a few things:
1. Voters next year still need to approve the $11 billion in bonds. It is not a slam dunk.
2. There is an oversight council now to monitor every twitch of every species in the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But there is no money yet to pay for it. Look for that in January.
3. The state is going to hire 25 new inspectors to catch folks who are illegally diverting water from streams. But right now, there's no real penalty, just a laborious process that could result years later in a fine. And the fine is just about what the thief would have paid for the water to begin with.
Will this new law make any more difference than the Calfed Bay-Delta Program, which flopped over the last dozen years or so?
 The first wood-burning ban of the fireplace season is today for Fresno, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Kern counties.
You can't burn wood in fireplaces, wood stoves, fireplace inserts and pellet-burning devices until midnight today.
Kings County had the San Joaquin Valley's first wood-burning ban on Sunday.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District makes the wood-burning forecasts on a county-by-county basis. You can call 1 (800) 766-4463 to find out if you're allowed to burn.
Wood burning pumps tiny specks, called particulate matter, into the air, and the pollution can cause a number of health problems.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Sunday will increase water releases in the San Joaquin River for two weeks as part of the the restoration program.
The flows are test releases to study how the dried part of the river will react. The river has not connected consistently with the Pacific Ocean since Friant Dam was completed in the late 1940s.
The flows began on Oct. 1 with releases of about 350 cubic feet per second at Friant Dam. On Sunday, the flow will be doubled to 700 cfs.
Movement of the flows can be tracked on the program's Web site at www.restoresjr.net/activities/if/index.html.
What will interstellar travelers find in the distant future when visiting this planet, presumably after humans have died off?
Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz tells the science of such a story in a book called "The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?"
Here's part of what you'll learn:
New Orleans would become fossilized, but not San Francisco or Denver.
Your coffee mug could be a fossil, but not your Cadillac.
And, sadly, forget about the music of Mozart and Schubert and Duke Ellington, and the poetry of Shakespeare. Not much fossil material there.
There were no explanations in the advertising tease. But if you know anything about fossils, you can probably guess the reasons. The book will be available next month from Oxford University Press.
On the news blog, read reporter E.J. Schultz's diagnosis of the problems with getting votes for legislation to fix California's water problems. As he says, it's a little like herding cats.
Another development that he has mentioned is the split between environmentalists and Northern California water interests.
The Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council are onboard with a compromise that also has the support of San Joaquin Valley farmers and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
But fishing groups, delta farmers and other northern water interests aren't buying it.
A similar split in opinion happened in 1994, as I recall, when the stars seemed to align and the historic Bay-Delta Accord was signed. A lot of environmental groups signed on. But a lot of Northern California groups had big doubts.
The Bay-Delta Accord, like many noble efforts to settle California's water wars, has not fixed the problems. Will the latest effort succeed where others have failed? Stay tuned.
Earthjustice today filed another suit against the state to push for protection of the American pika, a small rabbit-like mountain creature that can only live at high elevation.
The pika is slowly being forced into alpine islands in the Sierra Nevada as the climate warms up. The California Fish and Game Commission denied a petition in June to protect the pika under the state Endangered Species Act.
Earthjustice filed the lawsuit today on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity. It was the second lawsuit filed this year over the pika.
Environmentalists in May went to court and won a review of their first pika petition, which had been turned down last year. But the state again refused to list the animal for protection.
The Center for Biological Diversity maintains that the pika's habitat will completely disappear at the end of this century.
One look at the local air district monitor readings and you know the wind was blowing crazy on Tuesday.
In Corcoran, the PM-10 monitor -- which measures dust and other small particles -- showed eight times more stuff in the air than on Monday.
The federal standard for PM-10 is 150 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The Corcoran monitor measured 417 Tuesday.
There was no display for Fresno, so I don't know what the reading was here. But Bakersfield was 189.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District has achieved the PM-10 standard. Could this exceedence knock the Valley out of attainment? Not likely. Usually, the high readings are waived if there is a big wind event, as there was Tuesday.
The Bee published stories on Monday about the decline in the mountain yellow-legged frog and efforts being made to save the amphibian, but we didn't talk about how tough these critters are throughout the world.
Amphibians have survived several mass extinctions in the distant past. Most recently, they lived through the extinction that wiped out dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
So they've survived some of the worst hits for life on Earth, but perhaps 200 species already have been wiped out in this era.
Humans have destroyed the habitat of mountain yellow-legged frog in California, but there are bigger problems in the escalating loss of amphibians around the globe. Many of those problems are occurring here, too.
Ultraviolet radiation, climate change and pesticides are all on the list. But the most sinister, according to scientists, is the infectious disease, chytridiomycosis, also known as chytrid fungus.
Many experts think chytrid fungus is directly responsible for decimating more than 200 amphibian species. It is an aquatic fungus. And even more concerning, it is the first of its kind to focus only on amphibians.
As Sacramento bureaucrats, city folks, enviros and farm water officials continue talking about fixing the state's water system, it's a good time to look at the cost of a new dam on the San Joaquin River -- about $3 billion.
In June, the federal government released a report on the idea, which would create up to 1.26 million acre-feet of additional storage. That's double the size of Millerton Lake.
How will this price tag fit into the current compromise that is being fashioned in Sacramento? It's hard to know right now.
Officials are talking about a $9 billion bond, though there are few details about how it will
be divided among the many needs throughout California.
Keep your eye on the mad scramble for money and compromise right now in Sacramento. The Bee's Sacramento reporter E.J. Schultz has been writing almost daily about it, and his reports have been among the most informative.
The South Coast Air Basin had 14 more ozone violations than the San Joaquin Valley this year. Yet South Coast has a lot more pollution.
I looked at the numbers for the two gases that create ozone, and what a story they tell. South Coast puts out about a third more of one gas and nearly 50% more of the other.
The two pollutants are reactive organic gases (fumes from paints, gasoline and dairy waste) and oxides of nitrogen (gases from engine combustion).
Right about here, I usually say: South Coast has Pacific Ocean breezes to break up the ozone, and the Valley usually just cooks in the pollutants. Not a lot of breezes in this bowl.
What do you think? I'll just toss out another number to chew on. Population: Valley, nearly 4 million; South Coast, 16 million.
A reader called, requesting a story to explain that the huge water pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are indeed running.
It may sound like a strange request, considering the pumps have been operating since late June, but this can be a very confusing discussion.
For months, the public has been bombarded with a simple political war cry from farmers and city officials who have suffered water cutbacks: "Turn on the pumps."
As I said, the federal and state water pumps -- which provide water for more than 20 million Californians and several milion cropland acres -- are on. This political war cry is more about timing of the cutbacks, not the actual real-time pumping right now.
The delta is a sensitive ecosystem with dwindling fish species, a damaged food chain, many pollution problems and federal wildlife protection rules. Following those rules, the pumps were slowed or shut down earlier in the year to protect fish species from being wiped out.
Irrigators lost part of their water supply at a critical moment. So they are still crying, "Turn on the pumps," but they are referring to a different time of year. They're trying to head off another cutback next year.
And if the state has a fourth year of drought, the cry will get much louder.
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