California Drinking Water Reorganization Transition Plan

Back in January, I wrote about the planned transfer of the Drinking Water Program currently under the auspices of the California Department of Public Health, to California State Water Board authority.  That transfer is still on track, and scheduled to be completed by July 1 of this year.  This past Friday, March 14, the Water Board posted their plan for this process, the DrinkingWater Reorganization Transition Plan, March 2014, on their web site.
The document starts off sounding great:

“The Administration has evaluated the current governance structure of the state’s drinking water and water quality activities and concluded that aligning the state’s drinking water and water quality programs in an integrated organizational structure would best position the state to both effectively protect water quality and the public health as it relates to water quality, while meeting current needs and future demands on water supplies.”

That sounds fantastic!  It’s enough to make even a confirmed cynic like me have some hope that the process really will make an improvement in the overall governance of the water cycle here in the Golden State.  There will be some seriously hard work to make this transfer live up to all that hype.  One of the hardest parts will be the change management for all 291 of the employees of the Drinking Water Program that will find themselves part of a new food chain.  As someone who works along with Drinking Water Program employees on a local level, and with the good folks in the Environmental Review Unit in Sacramento, I can honestly say it’s those front line workers that really make the Drinking Water Program work so well.  But as with any big change, it can be disconcerting for those same employees trying to deal with new processes, new reporting schemes, etc.  The State Water Board would do well to give a great deal of thought to providing as much support as possible to their valuable employees in order to make the transition as smooth for them as possible.  Lest you think I’m being overly kind, I assure you my motives are purely selfish.  The smoother the transition goes for the Drinking Water Program folks that I work with, the smoother I know the process will go for me and others like me.

One of the big concerns with this transfer has been how the Regional Water Boards would play into it.  The good news is it appears they will not.  The Transition Plan clearly states:

“Regulatory staff would remain in locally-based offices and would continue their close working relationships with water system personnel, local environmental health and public health agencies, and relevant community organizations. The Regional Water Boards would not implement any Drinking Water Program functions.”

Music to my ears.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but the regional boards have a tendency to make their own unique interpretations of how regulations should be implemented and enforced, resulting in a patchwork of rules depending upon where your reside in the State.  That is definitely not what is needed in the Drinking Water Program.

California is not breaking any new ground with this move.  “Thirty states, as well as U.S. EPA, consolidate their drinking water and water quality programs into a single entity.”  So there is plenty of experience out there to draw on.  But that doesn’t make the transition any the less exciting in its potential.  “California will achieve comprehensive and harmonized water quality policy through water program consolidation... Locating the Drinking Water Program at the State Water Board also would promote a comprehensive approach to the development of community strategies for drinking water, wastewater, water recycling, pollution prevention, desalination, and storm water, while protecting public health.”  Management of the entire water cycle is precisely what is required to help better manage the resource, especially in the groundwater and recycled water segments.  “Integrating water quality management in a single governmental entity for state- level activities is a key element of the California Water Action Plan and would also further the Groundwater Strategy under development by the State Water Board.”  Anything that furthers the cause of reforming groundwater management is a very good thing.

All in all, I think the Transition Plan sounds great, and I’m looking forward to seeing the combination of programs under the State Water Board lead to better management of the entire water cycle in California.

Consumer Confidence Reports - It's That Time Again!

July 1st of every year marks the day by which community water systems across these United States are required to have provided to their customers the previous year’s Consumer Confidence Report (CCR), more commonly known as the water quality report. Federal regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have a great deal to say about what is and isn’t to be included in the CCR, as well as how it is to be organized and what verbiage to use, and we all know that the Federal Government is not always the best when it comes to communicating in a simple, easy to understand fashion. Just look to the tax code for a good example of that. For that reason, I thought I might try to explain a few of the more confusing things related to CCRs, judging by the questions I get asked.

 Although every water company tests for a great many elements, chemicals, compounds, molecules, particles, and life forms in your drinking water, the CCR is only supposed to contain those items that were detected in the water served to the public at concentrations above a defined level. There is a lot packed into that sentence that we should look at a little more closely, one piece at a time.

 “Items that were detected” – in other words, if a water company tested for a hundred different things and didn’t find any of them, their CCR would be blank. So how do consumers know what the water company tests for and how often they test? They don’t, at least not based upon the information in the CCR. To find out, they can try calling their water company and hope they can contact someone who knows the answer, but it’s a much more difficult and complex answer than you might imagine, given the ever growing extent of drinking water regulations. Adding to the complexity is that not every item needs to be tested for every year. Some testing only needs to be done every other year, or every three, six, or nine years. And the frequency can vary depending upon the source of the water or other factors. The answer is complex, will be different for every water company, and could be different year to year for the same water company.

 “Served to the public” – so if someone is looking to the CCR to give some idea of what is in the local lake, river, or groundwater aquifer the water is drawn from, they’re probably out of luck. The CCR tells what’s in the water consumers drink, so if the source water is contaminated with high levels of perchlorate, for example, but the water company treats that water to completely remove the perchlorate before distributing it (which they had better!), then the CCR would not list perchlorate as a contaminant.

 “Concentrations above a defined level” – huh? No analytical test can measure down to zero. They all have what’s referred to as a reporting limit. Above the reporting limit, you can confidently say that the item you are testing for is present at a measured level; it can be quantified. Below the reporting limit, you can’t really measure the level accurately, or even say whether it’s actually present or not with any real confidence. The Federal or State government sets the reporting limit for most items they require to be measured based on their estimation of what can confidently be reported by a majority of laboratories. If the reporting limit is set at 5 ug/L for example, it is not required of any water company to report in their CCR any test results less than that, even if the laboratory that does their analytical work has the capability of reporting lower levels with confidence. So if your water company tested samples at 4 ug/L of this compound, whatever it may be, it would not be required to be reported in the CCR.

 CCR’s contain a wealth of information, but unfortunately the rules governing how they are produced can make deciphering them a bit of a challenge, and producing them even more of one. I’ve tried to shine some light on a few of those challenges in this post, although certainly not all – I’d need a few more pages for that. Feel free to contact me if you have any particular questions, or if you need help getting your CCRs done this year. You can reach me via www.WeWork4Water.com.  I’d love to help!

What Then Must We Do?

Peter Gleick ‏@PeterGleick  10h

Yes, California's drought is bad. But the worst thing we can do is take hasty actions we'll regret later. "No

regrets" actions only please.

Patrick Vowell ‏@pvowell  8h

@PeterGleick I'm more worriedthere will be no actions, period.

Peter Gleick ‏@PeterGleick  7h

@pvowell what are your top recommendations?

This is a recent Twitter exchange between Peter Gleick and myself. Sorry, Peter, but I just couldn't answer in 140 characters or less.  And my apologies to Leo Tolstoy for my rip off of his book title. But here, in a great deal more characters than allowed by Twitter, is what I would like to see done to deal with this drought, and California’s water supply moving forward.  I know some of this you’ll agree with, Peter, and some you won’t; others reading this will have opinions different from either of us. But the first and one of the best actions we can take is this sort of dialogue.

As much as people seem to think Californian’s are environmentally conscience and all practice conservation already, it’s my experience that a great many people still have a long way to go in doing meaningful water conservation.  I’ve been to so many rate case meetings were people testify how they have just two people at home and only use 25 CCF of water a month (that’s  18,700 gallons, or more than 300 gallons per person per day). Or they complain that rates are so high, instead of the acre of turf they used to enjoy, they have to suffer with only a quarter of an acre now.  The issue of whether clean safe water is a human right has been in the news a good deal in the past year, but my experience is all too often people take that to mean they have the God given right to use as much water as they bloody well want at little to no cost.  That has to stop.  Mandatory rationing during the drought and steeply increasing block rate structures all the time should be used to force serious conservation.

I think the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) has got to move forward. The Delta is in precarious shape, physically and environmentally.  Its ability to continue to provide water to Southern California is in serious jeopardy.  Talk about hasty actions: If we continue to do little or nothing to deal with this issue, the Delta will collapse and water deliveries to Southern California will be seriously limited or even halted all together.  If that happens, you’ll see hasty decisions made to quickly provide new water supplies that will wreak environmental, social justice, and budgetary havoc.  The BDCP isn’t perfect, but it’s a controlled plan that we can move forward with, and that needs to be done.

Desalination has got to become much more prevalent in California.  The Coastal Commission should never have killed the Huntington Beach project posed by Poseidon; that project should be resurrected, and more of the desal projects planned up and down the coast moved forward as well.  Is there an environmental cost to these projects?  Absolutely, but those costs can be minimized without killing the projects.  But no project is without any environmental cost, just as for each of us to get out of bed every morning and live our normal lives there is an environmental cost.  If we want to continue to live our lives here in California, then desalination will have to play a bigger part in providing us with water.  The energy use and associated expense of desal continues to fall, and funding for research into lowering those costs even further should be a priority.

There you go, Peter.  My top three recommendations for moving forward with California’s water supply problems. Thanks for asking!

How Does California Set a Drinking Water Standard?

Last week, I wrote about the process the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) goes through to set a new drinking water standard.  This week, we’ll take a look at the process the State of California goes through to set a standard at their level.

As you no doubt remember, in addition to drinking water standards set by the EPA, each state can also set its own standards as long as they are at least as stringent as the EPA standards.  For example, states can decide to enforce the EPA's secondary drinking water standards.  California enforces several of these, including iron and manganese.  A state can also set a standard completely separate from the EPA.  California has chosen to do this in the case of perchlorate.  The EPA had previously declined to set a standard for perchlorate, although they are working on one now.  California, however, adopted a regulation that became effective in October 2007 that set an MCL for perchlorate at 6 ug/L.  The process for adoption of a standard in California is similar to the EPA's process, so we'll just take a quick look at that process in general.  

Once the state makes a determination that a contaminant should be considered for regulation, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assesment, or OEHHA, sets a public health goal (PHG). A PHG is the concentration of a drinking water contaminant that poses no significant health risk if consumed for a lifetime, based on current risk assessment principles, practices, and methods. OEHHA reviews all available published health risk data in making that determination.  Once the PHG is finalized, the Department of Public Health (DPH) must set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) as close as possible to the PHG.  As part of that process, DPHs Drinking Water Program evaluates the technical and economic feasibility of regulating a chemical contaminant.  Technical feasibility includes an evaluation of commercial laboratories' ability to analyze for and detect the chemical in drinking water; the costs of monitoring; and the costs of treatment required to remove the contaminant.  Costs are required by law to be considered whenever MCLs are adopted. To determine technical and economic feasibility, CDPH selects possible draft MCL concentration or concentrations for evaluation.  They then evaluate the occurrence data; evaluate available analytical methods and estimate monitoring costs; estimate population exposures at the draft MCL concentration; identify best available technologies (BATs) for treatment; estimate treatment costs at the draft MCL concentration; and review the costs and associated health benefits (health risk reductions) that result from treatment at the draft MCL concentration.

Based on all of this, DPH proposes a draft MCL concentration.  The draft MCL then moves through the standard law making process, including public review and comment.  Once finalized, the regulation goes into effect 30 days later or at an agreed upon date.  Existing MCLs are reviewed by CDPH every 5 years to see if they should be changed, which usually means lowered to be closer to the PHG.

This process sounds very scientific and all, but unfortunately can be all too easily co-opted by political forces.  Hard to believe, I know.  A good example of that is the ongoing battle over a hexavalent chromium, or chrome 6, MCL.  This compound, which is highly toxic if inhaled at even very low levels; and also known to be quite toxic if ingested in very high concentrations; is embroiled in scientific controversy when it comes to its toxicity at the very low levels found in most drinking water.  There seems to be evidence that at these levels, there is very little risk.  Granted, that point can be and is being argued quite loudly by both sides of this issue.  It also would appear that DPH did not adequately take into account the costs of treatment in their health risk reduction calculations.  If the currently proposed MCL of 10 ug/L for chrome 6 becomes law, many millions of dollars will have to be spent on water treatment to provide minimal, if any meaningful health risk reduction for Californians.  And guess who will pay those millions of dollars?  The rate payers in the systems that require treatment, that’s who.  So why is the MCL being proposed at all?  Because of political pressures brought to bear after a great deal of publicity regarding chrome 6.  Not something you like to see happen in the regulatory compliance business, which should be science based.

With the proposed transfer of the Drinking Water Program in California from DPH to the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), will this process change at all?  Yes it will, but I don’t think significantly.  The SWRCB Deputy Director would develop proposed MCLs that would then be considered by the full Board.  After public meetings and replying to public comments on the proposed regulation, the Board would act on it in a public meeting.  If approved, the regulation would then move through the regular law making procedure, being submitted to the Office of Administrative Law for review.  The question I have is will the SWRCB be more, less, or equally influenced by the types of political pressures we just talked about in regard to chrome 6?  I think we’re just going to have to wait and see on that one.

And that is how the State of California institutes drinking water regulations apart from the Federal process.  Other states have a similar process.  Let me know if you have any questions, comments on the process, or corrections to what I've presented here, and thanks for reading!

How Does the EPA Set a Drinking Water Regulation?

I’ll be the first to admit that this topic is one that puts most people to sleep.  But for the regulatory geeks among us, it can be an interesting process, full of nuance and surprise.  OK, maybe that’s a bit much, but it’s definitely an important process that it’s good for everyone in the drinking water business to have some understanding of, so let’s dive in.

Drinking water regulations come primarily from two levels of government. Regulation at the Federal level come through the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA or just EPA), and at the state level through the California Dept of Public Health. Since federal regulations generally trump state regulations, we'll start by going over the regulatory process for the US EPA, and save the California process for the next blog post. EPA drinking water regulations become PrimaryDrinking Water Standards that are applicable to everyone in all 50 states, with certain exceptions. Currently, there are Primary Drinking Water Standards for 90 contaminants. EPA also develops secondary drinking water standards, but these are recommendations that states may choose to enforce as they see fit. The Safe Drinking Water Act includes a process that EPA must follow to identify and list unregulated contaminants, which may require a national drinking water regulation in the future. EPA must periodically publish this list of contaminants, called the Contaminant Candidate List or CCL, and decide whether to regulate at least five or more contaminants on the list.  This is called a Regulatory Determination. A regulatory determination is a formal decision on whether EPA should initiate a rulemaking process to develop a national primary drinking water standard for a specific contaminant. When making a determination to regulate, the Safe Drinking Water Act requires consideration of three criteria:

• the potential adverse effects of the contaminant on the health of humans,
• the frequency and level of contaminant occurrence in public drinking water systems, and
• whether regulation of the contaminant presents a meaningful opportunity for reducing public health risks 4

The Third Contaminant Candidate List was finalized by the EPA on October 9, 2009. It contains 104 chemicals or chemical groups, and 12 microbiological contaminants. The EPA started with 7,500 potential contaminants selected from pesticides, disinfection byproducts, chemicals used in commerce, waterborne pathogens, pharmaceuticals, biological toxins, and other sources. Contaminants were chosen based on expert evaluations of the potential for the contaminant to occur in public water systems and the potential for public health concern. The EPA is currently working on CCL 4, which is scheduled to be proposed early this year.

As I mentioned, choosing to make a regulatory determination on a contaminant listed on the CCL requires that the EPA evaluate these three criteria:

• Will the contaminant have an adverse effect on the health of humans? This includes determining what the adverse effect is (cancer, liver damage, thyroid problems) and the level of exposure at which the adverse effect occurs, known as the level of concern.
• Does the contaminant occur in public water supplies at the level of concern, and if so, how frequently? This information is collected from sampling data, including research data from the United States Geologic Survey; United States Dept of Agriculture pesticide data program; chemical production data; and from the data collected by the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, or UCMR.
• Is there a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction? A number of factors are taken into consideration for this, including the number of people who are at risk of exposure from drinking water; whether the contaminant has particular effects on sensitive populations such as children, the elderly, or those with compromised immune systems; and the relative exposure from water versus other sources such as food.

After the EPA makes a regulatory decision on a contaminant, the next step is to set a Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG). The EPA reviews numerous health effects studies before setting the MCLG, the maximum level of a contaminant in drinking water at which no known or anticipated adverse effect on the health of persons would occur, and which allows an adequate margin of safety. MCLGs are non-enforceable public health goals. Since MCLGs consider only public health and not the limits of detection and treatment technology, sometimes they are set at a level which water systems cannot meet. When determining an MCLG, EPA considers the risk to sensitive subpopulations (infants, children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems) of experiencing a variety of adverse health effects.  For microbial contaminants that may present public health risk, the MCLG is set at zero because ingesting one protozoa, virus, or bacterium may cause adverse health effects.  If there is evidence that a chemical is a carcinogen, a substance which may cause cancer, and there is no dose below which the chemical is considered safe, the MCLG is set at zero. If a chemical is carcinogenic and a safe dose can be determined, the MCLG is set at a level above zero that is safe.  For chemicals that can cause adverse non-cancer health effects, the MCLG is based on the reference dose. A reference dose (RfD) is an estimate of the amount of a chemical that a person can be exposed to on a daily basis that is not anticipated to cause adverse health effects over a person's lifetime. In RfD calculations, sensitive subgroups are included, and uncertainty may span a factor of 10 or more. The RFD is multiplied by body weight and divided by daily water consumption to provide a Drinking Water Equivalent Level (DWEL). The DWEL is multiplied by the relative source contribution which is the percentage of the RfD remaining after considering other exposure routes (e.g. food, inhalation, etc.) to determine the MCLG.

Once the MCLG is determined, EPA sets an enforceable standard. In most cases, the standard is a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL), the maximum permissible level of a contaminant in water which is delivered to any user of a public water system. When there is no reliable method that is economically and technically feasible to measure a contaminant at particularly low concentrations, a Treatment Technique (TT) is set rather than an MCL. A treatment technique is an enforceable procedure or level of technological performance, which public water systems must follow to ensure control of a contaminant. The MCL is set as close to the MCLG as feasible. EPA must determine the feasible MCL or TT which the Safe Drinking Water Act defines as the level that may be achieved with the use of the best available technology, treatment techniques, and other means which EPA finds are available (after examination for efficiency under field conditions, not solely under laboratory conditions) are available, taking cost into consideration. EPA must also prepare a Health Risk Reduction and Cost Analysis (HRRCA) in support of any new MCL that analyzes all benefits that are likely to occur as the result of compliance with the proposed standard. They must also analyze any increased costs that will result from the proposed drinking water standard. EPA must also consider costs and benefits associated with a range of MCL values; health effects to the general population and sensitive sub-populations; and any increased health risk to the general population that may occur as a result of the new MCL. Primary drinking water standards go into effect three years after they are finalized. If capital improvements are required, EPA's Administrator or a state may allow this period to be extended up to two additional years.

Wow – that’s a lot to go through to implement a new regulation.  No wonder it can take so long for this process to work itself out.  Next time we’ll look at the process of setting regulations specific to the State of California.

California's Drinking Water Reorganization

Happy New Year to everyone!  It is a year that will be filled with challenges, as most are, but that’s a good thing; we wouldn't want to be bored.  One of the challenges that we in the drinking water business will be facing is the transfer of California’s Drinking Water Program from the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Health (DPH) to that of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB). 

For those of you who haven’t heard, Governor Brown’s Administration is proposing this transfer take place on July 1, 2014.  The proposal is described in a White Paper that came out in the summer of 2013.  In it, the Administration outlines its reasons for seeking this change.  The short version is:

“State policy declares that every human being has the right to clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes. Climate change, increasing population, and economic growth will stretch the limits of our precious water resources and further challenge California’s ability to achieve this state policy. Consolidating all major water quality programs into one agency would allow the State to better manage and protect our water resources.”

On the surface, it sounds great.  Moving this department will consolidate drinking water, waste water, and recycled water programs.  As we continue to move toward there being no such thing as “waste water”, but recognize that all water is a resource and needs to be treated as a valuable part of the water cycle, this seems like a good idea.  Hopefully, it will streamline the process of permitting for water recycling and water reuse, even the much maligned direct potable reuse that will be a critical part of California’s water portfolio in the future.  All in all, I think this transfer will be good for California.

Of course, the devil is in the details, and there is plenty of opportunity for those details to become so onerous that we wind up with something awful.  Such a situation would arise if, for example, the Regional Water Quality Control Boards become involved and dealt with drinking water issues as disparately as they do now with NPDES issues; or if the State Board begins issuing Minimum Mandatory Penalties for any and all infractions, no matter how minor, instead of the “find it and fix it” approach taken by DPH.  These would truly be steps backward that would harm the overall program and limit any progress toward the State’s goals.

There is a public meeting scheduled for January 15 on the issue, and you can check out the following resources to get more information:

• State Water Resources Control Board
• Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)

And please, let me know what you think of this change.  I’d be happy to hear from you.  Either leave a comment to this post, or e-mail me.

What is a Contaminant?

A chunk of all natural, no artificial additives
chromite, or chromium ore.

When most people think of contaminants in their water, they think of some nasty chemical that’s polluting the land or water; something that leaked out of a tank somewhere; that was illegally dumped along some lonesome road in the middle of the night; or that is the result of some nefarious industrial process.  And in some instances, any or all of those scenarios may very well lead to contamination of the water supply.  But if you look at the EPA web site where they discuss and list all of the “contaminants” that they currently regulate in drinking water, (http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/index.cfm ), you will also find a lot of compounds that are naturally occurring; no one dumped them, manufactured them, or otherwise “polluted” the environment with them.  They are every bit as much a part of the environment as the water itself.  That doesn’t mean they can’t be harmful – arsenic is naturally occurring, but ingest enough of it and it can still kill you.  Contrary to so many marketing campaigns that make you believe that “natural products” are somehow inherently safe, they can in fact be just as, if not more harmful than anything created by man. 

This issue comes up quite a bit in my interactions with the general public.  They may review their local water companies CCR and see fluoride listed, after which they call, quite upset, wanting to discuss the evils of adding fluoride to the water and how terrible it is that we do so. After I explain to them that there is no fluoride added to the water, but that a low level of fluoride is a natural occurring constituent of the groundwater in their local area, they are often quite surprised.  Just as surprising to me is that when they learn it’s naturally occurring, they don’t seem to think it’s a big a deal any more,  when in fact fluoride is fluoride no matter the source, whether it’s added by Mother Nature or the local water agency.  I guess Mother Nature just has better PR. 

Another good example regarding people’s misconceptions about contaminants is the current issue with hexavalent chromium.  Also known as chrome-6, hexa-chrome, Cr(6), or Cr(VI), this particular oxidative state of the element chromium can, under the right conditions and in sufficient concentration, be quite toxic.  Most people, in California at least, think of chrome-6 in terms of the whole debacle with PG&E contaminating the ground water near Hinkley, CA when they used a chrome-6 containing anti-corrosive chemical in the cooling towers at their natural gas transmission pipeline compressor station nearby.  But by far the greatest source of chrome-6 in the groundwater in California, and elsewhere, is from natural geologic formations containing chromium.  Unfortunately, this misunderstanding is one of many reasons that California may soon be saddled with a chrome-6 maximum contaminant level (MCL) that is excessive and unnecessary.

When I was taking botany in college, someone asked my professor what the definition of a weed was.  His response was that a weed is any plant that is somewhere you don’t want it to be.  Likewise for drinking water, saying something is a contaminant doesn’t mean it’s the result of some toxic spill or other pollution.  It means that, no matter what the source, it’s just something in the water that we don’t want there at more than a certain level, no matter what the source.