Sacramento area is Delta's top pesticide source, study finds

Urban Sacramento is the leading source of pesticide contamination disrupting the Delta aquatic environment, according to new research on pollution in the estuary.

The study, led by UC Berkeley toxicologist Donald Weston, found enough pyrethroid pesticides in the American River to kill tiny shrimp – among the first links in the aquatic food chain.

Those pesticides likely reached the river from urban storm drains, which collect runoff from the Sacramento area's 1.4 million residents.

For five years, biologists have hunted for the cause of a collapse in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem, a water supply for 23 million Californians. Nine fish species are declining, from tiny Delta smelt to giant green sturgeon.

Weston's research supports the theory that no single villain is to blame. The problem probably lies at the complex interface between people and water.

"We were just amazed by this data," said Weston. "The American River is not supposed to be toxic. I think it reflects the fact that the river's going through 30 miles of heavy urbanization."

The study also found that among the water sources tested, Sacramento's regional wastewater treatment plant is the single largest source of pyrethroid pollution in the Delta. The plant discharges treated sewage into the Sacramento River near Freeport.

The reason for this contamination is less clear. It may be caused by people dumping unused pesticides into sink drains. It could also come from consumer products, such as shampoos made to kill lice and fleas.

There is no evidence pyrethroids are harmful to people at typical consumer exposure levels. But they are proving harmful to aquatic life at very low concentrations.

"It might be that a public education program could go a long way," said Stan Dean, chief of policy and planning at the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, which operates the regional wastewater treatment system. "Ultimately, you might need to have more controls on consumer products that have pyrethroids in them."

Pyrethroids are manufactured versions of pyrethrins, natural insecticides produced by certain species of chrysanthemum. These stronger synthetic versions began to dominate the retail market in 2000.

That followed the phasing out of pesticides known to be more dangerous to humans and other mammals – mainly the organophosphates diazinon and chlorpyrifos.

Pyrethroids were considered safer, partly because they don't easily dissolve in water. But biologists learned later that pyrethroids are actually more harmful to aquatic life.

The chemicals attach easily to soil. They can remain toxic in creek beds or landscaping for months, then hitch a ride downstream when overwatering or a storm washes topsoil into storm drains.

Pyrethroid-based pesticides dominate the shelves at grocery and hardware stores. They are common in powders and sprays used by homeowners and pest control companies to kill a variety of insects, from flies to cockroaches.

Weston presented his findings last week to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in Rancho Cordova.

The board funded the study and plans to list several area waterways as "impaired" because of pyrethroids, including Strong Ranch and Chicken Ranch sloughs, and Arcade, Morrison and Elder creeks.

In 2006, the state Department of Pesticide Regulation began a process to regulate pyrethroids. This could bring new usage rules and even a ban on some products. It has found pyrethroids in waterways throughout the state.

Pyrethroids found most often in Weston's sampling were bifenthrin and cyfluthrin, common on ingredient labels of many consumer pesticides.

He and a team of researchers sampled water in the American, Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, as well as creeks in Vacaville, on several occasions in 2008 and 2009. They also sampled agricultural runoff on several Delta islands, and sewage treatment outfalls in Sacramento, Vacaville and Stockton.

They found the Delta islands are a small source of pyrethroids. Urban areas appear to be a much bigger source, with Sacramento by far the largest among the areas sampled.

Researchers used a species of shrimp as a test subject. Toxic effects were revealed by exposing the quarter-inch shrimp to water samples for four days and counting how many were killed or paralyzed.

Almost no pyrethroids were found in Stockton's treated wastewater. Unlike Sacramento, Stockton holds wastewater in giant ponds as long as 30 days before discharging to the Delta. The ponds may allow pyrethroids to settle out or degrade before discharge.

Paul Towers, state director of Sacramento-based Pesticide Watch, noted many other areas also likely are adding pyrethroids to the Delta, such as Redding, Chico and Contra Costa County.

"Ultimately, if we took better steps to keep pests from entering our homes, or redefined what our landscapes should look like, we wouldn't have to use these chemicals," he said.

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Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264. To read more about Delta issues, visit www.sacbee.com/delta.

Confessions of an Environmentalist for Earth Day

While in college I, as a student representative, had lunch with David Brower – an environmental hero. Over nearly 25 years we would take time at various conferences and events to talk. His resolve toward sustainability was resolute. He was fond of quoting Adlai Stevenson, who said in 1965:

"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and place, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of humankind, and half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew, can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the security of us all."

During my college days, I heard Senator Gaylord Nelson’s (D-Wisconsin) call for a nationwide "Environmental Teach-in," on college campuses. Working my way through college kept me too busy to be very active in things, but this one-day “environmental teach-in” event seemed perfect for me. And that was my first experience of the energy of a grassroots explosion. More than 20 million people from all parts of the country participated in the first Earth Day. Events were held in 10,000 schools, 2,000 colleges, and over 1,000 communities. I learned the lessons of the power of grassroots organizing and successfully influencing governmental and private change.

On the 25th Anniversary of Earth Day, Senator Nelson said, "It worked because of the spontaneous, enthusiastic response at the grassroots. Nothing like it had ever happened before. While our organizing on college campuses was very well done, the thousands of events in our schools and our communities were self-generated at the local level . . . They simply organized themselves. That was the remarkable thing that became Earth Day."

That grassroots legacy can be seen this Tuesday at our Council meeting where there will be a timely presentation on the status of the closure of the former IT Corporation Panoche Facility Class I Landfill. The facility occupied 248 acres and at one time contained 45 surface impoundments, two landfills, four waste piles, and five drum burial areas. Wastes managed at the Facility included caustic and acidic liquids and solids, petroleum refining sludges, catalyst, hydrogen sulfide abatement sludges, oily slurries, truck-washout debris, inorganic precipitates, contaminated soils, organic sludges, shredded currency, and paint pigment sludges. Waste management practices used at the facility included biological treatment, neutralization, evaporation in ponds, and burial of waste in landfills and trenches. The facility received between 80,000 and 220,000 tons of waste material per year from 1968 through 1986.

Local Benicia residents including Mayor Marilyn O’Rourke, Bob Berman, Marilyn Bardet, Mary Francis Kelly Po among a few others fought for the closure of the landfill because it leaked and was a public health threat. For this Earth Day we can celebrate their success. It was not easy. There were the skeptics that things could be so bad, government regulators who minimized the cleanup, and the responsible corporation who declared bankruptcy.

For years, environmental contamination was seen as the inevitable (and accepted) consequence of economic progress. As cities grew and industries flourished, toxic emissions polluted the air and wastes were dumped into waterways or buried in the ground. Benicia was no different.

In the 1960s, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, exposing the health effects of pesticides and other chemicals on our birds, mammals and us. Others wrote passionately about squandering what once seemed like the country's limitless resources. The 60s word "environment" meant more than simply preserving wilderness areas or regulating the most obvious forms of pollution. Media coverage of disasters like the Santa Barbara oil spill focused popular concern on the environment threatened by human activities and the need for protection.

At times it seemed that every day there were newly discovered threats followed by new protections. Being able to have confidence in law makers and government to address air and water pollution, we saw their efforts to protect us from ourselves as the highest calling of responsible governance. My own path to becoming a public servant owes, in part, from the examples set by Congress and the California legislature’s bold environmental protection actions.

Environmental protection was not a Republican or Democratic issue and the best of both parties coalesced around the needed action. Of course, it could have been better, stronger and quicker, but it was done. A perfect example of this bipartisan and shared sense of responsibility is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established by President Nixon, followed by Congress's passing of a series of laws that regulated the introduction of pollutants into the nation's air and waterways, controlled the production of pesticides and other toxic substances, and required "cradle-to-grave" tracking of hazardous waste.

The 1970s have been called the "golden age" of environmentalism in the United States, but it was also a time when the nation first became aware of a serious threat to human health and the environment.

And that brings me back to Benicia. For it is due to those myriad laws passed, and the power of the EPA, that set the stage for those Benicia citizens’ efforts demanding state regulators investigate the Class I landfill at Lake Herman Road and close it – shut it down. Without all the public awareness, regulations, and grassroots efforts, this closure would not have happened as quickly, nor been as thorough. Neither would the cleanup of Rose Drive have been possible, without Cal-EPA, the city's toxics consultant Jodi Sparks, and the hard work of neighborhood activists, especially Dick Lubin, Larry Fullington and Tom Busfield, who rallied successfully to have landfill wastes left from the Braito dump cleaned out of backyards and Blake Court.

This Tuesday, when you listen to the report about the on-going monitoring of the plumes of toxic brew that almost polluted Paddy Creek and has polluted the city’s watershed, take a moment and reflect on the drama of getting the right legislation at the right time to protect our water and air and public health. (Although we do not use the ground water now, we may want to in the future, but it will need to be cleaned up).

What Earth Day awareness did for Benicia in the 1980s for public safety, Benicia citizens working on the new General Plan in the '90s, and activists such as Gene Doherty, Kathy Kerridge, Jim Stevenson and the usual suspects have carried forward, to promote economic and environmental health. These citizens advocate for sustainability as a city priority. Staff has made exceptional effort in developing the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and the draft Climate Action Plan. This is a new green generation of environmental protection. Next year we will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2010 by highlighting our progress at reducing greenhouse gases, increasing water conservation, providing alternative energy, transit and walkable streets – all the interconnected actions necessary to protect our planet and grow our economy.

Some say we live in dark times: we are destroying Mother Earth and many people have lost hope. But I am energized by all the efforts ongoing at our schools, in our community, our state and – at long last – our nation, again.

I am deeply touched by what Benicians are doing - we are realizing that we as individuals truly make a difference and are thinking more carefully about the effect of our actions. My greatest source of hope for the future is the energy, commitment and often the courage of our young people who are engaged in solving the peril of the warming earth.

But we cannot put off tomorrow for our youth to solve the problems of today. We must take the responsibility to ensure that their environment is not wrecked. A compassionate and successful society will invest its assets in the good health of its children – all of its children. It is up to us to weigh our responsibilities and to invest our limited resources from government, industry, and our residents, without delay addressing environmental needs including local and regional transit, clean air and water and safe community public places.

“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for their children.”
- German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As Mayor, my pledge for this Earth Day is to seek:

• Policies and action, without compromise, for air and water protection and cleanup.


• Policies and actions toward a carbon-free future based on renewable energy.


• Policies and actions toward responsible, sustainable consumption.


• Policies and actions toward expanding our cleantech and greentech businesses and local jobs for our residents.


• Collaboration with Benicia Unified School District to support entrepreneurial environmental programs and prepare students for vocational green job training and careers.