By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Hours after another storm soaked Southern California, LA County’s principal stormwater engineer Sterling Klippel stands at the base of the San Gabriel Dam, looking like a kid in a candy store. He gazes in awe at the thousands of gallons of stormwater rushing through this dam every second.

“Just this October, this facility was completely drained,” he says.

This dam is almost 300 feet deep in the middle, and it went from empty to full in less than six months. And it’s just one of more than a dozen dams in the county.

Soggy Southern California has gotten more than two feet of rain this season – so far, about double an average year, making it one of the top 10 wettest years on record.

“It's amazing to see it when it's here, and every drop is precious. So we do our best to capture every drop of it,” says Klippel. 

Los Angeles County is on track to capture enough stormwater this year to quench the year-round water needs of more than a quarter of the county’s residents. It’s good news, but there is still a lot of work to do to meet local water use goals.

'A good job of for the infrastructure we have'

“We're making strides, and we just need to make sure that we don't let our foot off the gas,” says Bruce Reznik. He leads the nonprofit LA Waterkeeper, which is the city’s self-proclaimed water watchdog. “We have done a good job, for the infrastructure we have.”

That’s thanks to nearly century-old infrastructure that’s still working. 

Trickling waterfalls in the San Gabriel Mountains typically drain into giant dams like the San Gabriel Dam, which was built in the 1930s. When they get full, public works officials open the floodgates at the bottom of the dams to send the water downstream.

“From there, we release it and we send it down to our spreading grounds, which are these large basins,” says Klippel. “The water then will percolate through this kind of sandy gravelly geology here and recharge these local aquifers where later it's pumped out for local municipal water use.”

'A century worth of poor planning'

Klippel says LA County gets about a third of its water from those aquifers while the rest is imported either from Northern California or from the Colorado River.

But the City of LA’s goal is to flip that equation by 2035, using two-thirds local water and cutting Southern California's dependence on imported water. Reznik says the local infrastructure is just not set up for that yet.

“A lot of that is because … so much of LA is channelized and concretized and urbanized, that we're not letting Mother Nature do its job of capturing the stormwater, letting it recharge our groundwater,” he says. “We are trying to undo a century worth of poor planning around water, and it's going to take us a while.”

LA is so developed and has such high flood risk that for decades the county has focused on funneling water as quickly and safely as possible straight to the ocean. 

In big storms like we’ve seen this winter, that’s happening no matter how hard Klippel tries to stop it. “With so much water in the system at this point, there is some water that's still making its way to the ocean.”

Infrastructure woes can get solved with big investments, but Californians decided years ago that two-thirds of voters need to approve new taxes for stormwater capture. That’s an extremely high bar.

“Unfortunately, it's actually very hard to fund stormwater projects,” says Resnik. “There has been a decade's long lack of funding for stormwater infrastructure.”

Which is why people like Reznik were so thrilled when county voters passed Measure W five years ago that devotes $280 million each year to water projects. 

But as the climate crisis worsens, more money has to go toward maintaining current infrastructure. For example, wildfire burn scars result in more loose soil falling into the dams and leaving less space for water.

Officials anticipate it’ll take several billion dollars to hit that 2035 goal to use mostly local water.

“Which seems pretty ambitious to me,” says USC Assistant Professor of civil and environmental engineering Dan McCurry. He says stormwater capture is actually one of the best tools we’ve got for cutting down our reliance on imported water.

“We're not talking about complicated, energy-intensive, expensive engineering treatment processes like we have to do for wastewater reuse. So in some sense, stormwater capture – when it's available – is low-hanging fruit.”


Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.


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As South Dakotans affected by recent record floods take stock of damages, researchers say water quality is among the concerns.

The state has been collecting damage data - but some impacts, like water contamination from livestock operations, are harder to quantify.

According to the nonprofit Food and Water Watch, coming into contact with or consuming manure-contaminated water can increase the risks of E. coli, giardia, and other waterborne illnesses. And those can lead to kidney failure, intestinal complications or cancer.

Amanda Starbuck, research director at Food and Water Watch, said public water systems are tested for these contaminants - but private, rural wells may not be.

"There's a lot of concerns about rural communities and their waters," said Starbuck, "and whether they have the ability, the financial resources, to test and to remediate any kind of contaminations that do stem from these factory farms."

Huge June rainstorms caused the Big Sioux River to swell up to 45 feet - breaking the previous record by seven feet, according to NASA, and inundating nearby farmlands.

Starbuck said South Dakota has some of the highest concentrations of confined beef, dairy and hog operations in the country.

Starbuck added that, according to a Food and Water Watch analysis, the state's factory farms produce nearly 22 billion pounds of manure each year.

"So, that's 17.5 times as much sewage as produced by the state's entire human population," said Starbuck. "So, we're talking about unsustainable amounts of livestock in these confinement operations."

She said the manure output should be of concern regardless of flooding. Still, river floodplains are expected to grow in coming years, according to a FEMA report.




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New York environmentalists want the Environmental Protection Agency to re-dredge the Hudson River. This comes after the agency released its latest five-year review saying more information is needed on the dredging efforts, although progress has been made. However, other reports show the EPA's dredging efforts failed, leaving the river riddled with PCBs.

Pete Lopez, executive director for science policy and advocacy with Scenic Hudson, said the EPA's reduction targets aren't being met.

"EPA has done its best to get massive amounts out of the river, but there are massive amounts left in the river, in our opinion, that are causing PCB levels to remain persistently high and dangerous. And, EPA is not addressing it. They're kicking the can down the road," he said.

Lopez thinks the agency should investigate where high levels of PCBs are and determine how to keep fish and humans safe from them. The EPA says more annual fish data can help discern whether the cleanup is meeting the expectations of the original plan. Once the data are available, the agency will issue an addendum to the current five-year report no later than the end of 2027. A public comment period on the five-year review is being held until October, with more information available at epa.gov/hudsonriverpcbs.

The river was dredged from 2009 to 2015 to remove 30 years' worth of chemicals General Electric dumped into it. Although the EPA warns against eating fish caught in the Hudson between Troy and Hudson Falls, people still eat them, which can lead to serious health impacts. Lopez said elected officials across party lines and different state regions want the EPA to take action in cleaning up the Hudson River.

"One would think that if 22 members of Congress, a U.S. senator and leaders of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus reached out, that you would step back and think about this, and maybe want to engage with them and talk with them."

Instead, he feels actions from the EPA have been "Pro-forma correspondence," sticking to the agency's assurance that the data aren't wrong.

Wyoming's irrigation infrastructure is aging and the state gets regular requests to update it but in some cases, project benefits may not outweigh the costs.

Parts of the Bighorn Basin are some of the driest in Wyoming, according to state data. The proposed Alkali Creek Reservoir Project would provide supplemental, late-season water to 33 irrigators across 13,000 acres of land, a design in the works since 2007.

Jason Mead, director of the Wyoming Water Development Office, said a recently announced potential design change, from an open irrigation ditch to a pipeline, added about $30 million to the dam's price tag. It also decreases the ratio of benefits to costs, a calculation the office does for any water storage project it works on.

"In regards to the grant and loan, we can grant up to 100% of a project per our criteria," Mead explained. "But it's not to exceed the public benefit."

Benefits include boating and fishing in the reservoir, the short-term benefits of dam construction and the indirect benefits to local and regional economies through increased crop production. Mead noted other considerations are the life expectancy of the dam, the ability and willingness of the users to pay for it and, of course, the direct benefit to irrigators themselves, who plan to use the water mainly for alfalfa, corn, sugar beets and barley. Opponents said the dam will disrupt natural watershed functions.

Dagny Signorelli, Wyoming director for the Western Watersheds Project, said the dam could reduce spring flows in Paint Rock Creek by 33%, in Medicine Lodge Creek by 16% and in Alkali Creek up to 100%.

"In general, dams disrupt natural river ecosystems by altering their flow patterns and reducing the frequency and intensity of natural flooding events," Signorell pointed out.

Signorelli added it could alter habitat for wildlife both upstream and downstream, with special concerns for trout, pronghorn, elk, mule deer and raptors. Plus, according to permit objections submitted by Western Watersheds Project in 2018, greater sage grouse use five breeding grounds within a four-mile radius of the project.


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