The San Lorenzo Valley in Santa Cruz County has a partial Do Not Drink / Do Not Boil order in affect: is that order appropriate, what causes Wildfire water contamination, and what are good actions we as a community can take?
Our guest is Andrew J Whelton, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University.
Professor Whelton has studied two other Wildfires in California with water contamination and has some thoughts on our situation for the #CZULightningComplex
13:49 Water Utility vs State Responsibility
22:28 Can you smell VOCs
24:07 Danger Long Term vs Acute
25:11 Stuck in the Pipes?
26:28 SVOCs
27:18 Can we just flush the system?
29:47 If you lived here…
31:00 Activate Mutual Aid
31:47 Testing Issues – UCSC help?
34:13 When would you be less concerned
36:49 What changes should we make?
39:15 California level issue?
43:20 Take Aways
44:24 Home Water Treatment
The Tubbs Fire (2017) and Camp Fire (2018) are the first known wildfires where widespread drinking water chemical contamination was discovered in the water distribution network and not in the source water after the fire. In both disasters, drinking water exceeded state and federal government
Santa Cruz County, already struggling with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, is now in the midst of another disaster—the CZU August Lightning Complex Fires. Donations to the Community Foundation’s Fire Response Fund will be distributed to nonprofit agencies and organizations directly assisting individuals to meet needs as they arise.
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In case of doubt, consult the interview, as I am not an expert. The notes are about in the same order as the interview. =miles=
The state (CA) only requires the water district to test at the source of the water, i.e. where they start pumping it into the distribution system. The rest (downstream testing) is up to the water district.
Contamination can come from multiple sources, including backflow when the system becomes depressurized and air contaminated with smoke leaks into the pipes. It can also result from homes that were equipped with plastic pipes that burned. As well as the pipes we know about that burned, i.e. the 5 miles of HDPE pipe through the forest.
The monitoring tests that the water district routinely runs downstream are limited to only particular VOC
