When it rains, it pours. This old saw passes for an apt description of the new precipitation regime that climate change has wrought for the Bay Area: larger winter storms, but fewer of them. The implications of this shift for ecosystems, infrastucture, and water storage are widespread, and often highly visible. But behind the scenes, it is also complicating efforts to monitor pollution inputs to the San Francisco Bay and other local water bodies from stormwater runoff.
The Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in San Francisco Bay (RMP) has been collecting data in Bay water, sediment, and biota since 1993. RMP monitoring of stormwater flows after rain events, which began in 2006, has shown that runoff is a major pathway to the Bay for “legacy” contaminants like PCBs and mercury, as well as contaminants of emerging concern like PFAS and chemicals used in automobile tires.
Only through careful monitoring during and immediately after storm events can RMP scientists accurately characterize—and thus inform efforts to mitigate—the contribution of stormwater runoff to Bay pollution that may harm wildlife and humans alike. But with fewer, more severe storms, this job is becoming increasingly difficult—and costly.
“Literally every single one of our projects has been impacted, and we just keep having to roll forward funds and scope of work to future years, because we don’t get the data that we need,” says San Francisco Estuary Institute’s Alicia Gilbreath, who leads the RMP’s stormwater monitoring team. “So every year we just keep piling on more and more, both what we’re supposed to do in a given year and all the work from the previous years.”
For example, a pilot study last winter of pollutants entering the Bay at creek mouths was to include data from just two storms, a relatively low bar. But not low enough: “We were able to sample one really early-season storm,” says Gilbreath, referring to the record-setting deluge that hit the region in late October and early November 2021. “We fully expected in February to get another storm, but it never came.”
Another study to screen for a wide variety of emerging contaminants in stormwater flows—including PFAS, organophosphate ester flame retardants, bisphenols, ethoxylated surfactants, and tire ingredients—was supposed to be completed over the course of two wet seasons, from fall 2018 to spring 2020. But it ended up running for twice as long as a result of insufficient sampling opportunities, especially during the second winter. This in turn delayed the launch of a more targeted, longer-term program informed by the preliminary study.
“We had so few storms that were suitable for monitoring that we had to stretch our study out longer than expected in order to get enough data to really have a meaningful conversation about next steps,” says Rebecca Sutton, a senior scientist with SFEI who leads the RMP’s emerging contaminants work.
Adapting to this new reality will entail a greater reliance on remote monitoring where possible—using small devices that automatically sample stormwater when flows reach a certain threshold—and more careful deployment of field staff where required, notes RMP program manager Melissa Foley.
“Storms may hit on weekends or at night, and it’s sometimes hard to mobilize multiple teams to get out there and to hit as many sites as possible,” Foley says. “In the past, it’s been, ‘We’ll, that’s okay, we’ll get the next storm.’ Now it’s at the point where we can’t take that for granted anymore. This might be the last storm we get.”
Sampling a green infrastructure installment. Photo: SFEI
But storms aren’t only rarer; they’re also bigger. Extreme rainfall events can pose additional risks to field staff collecting stormwater samples: roadways can be dangerous, creeks can flood, trees can topple. Crew members often must be on site for several hours at the storm’s peak, and their safety takes priority, Foley says. This may require additional planning, prioritization, labor, and equipment—all avenues that the RMP is exploring to ensure it can continue its critical work in an era of megastorms. “We can’t squander any opportunity to collect data at this point,” she says.
In some cases, larger storms may also overwhelm green infrastructure such as bulb-outs, swales, and rain gardens intended to capture and filter stormwater before it runs to the Bay, adds Sutton: “They’re designed with a certain sort of storm in mind. If it’s too intense, the water will bypass. If we end up with bigger, less frequent storms, it might mean you have to redesign that infrastructure or it won’t operate as effectively as you want.”
Ironically, efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of green infrastructure at removing legacy and emerging contaminants from stormwater have also been stymied in recent years. But this is one area where automated sampling could play an important role going forward, says Chris Sommers, a stormwater monitoring consultant who works with both the RMP and county-level agencies throughout the Bay Area.
“[Remote samplers] are helpful to not miss storms, or to not spend money on storms that never appear, which is a big issue,” Sommers says. “Our records show that about 25% of all predicted storms that you are ready to go out and mobilize for end up not producing enough rainfall that is sample-able.”
Reducing the number of such “false starts” through automated samplers integrated into green infrastructure could free up funding and personnel for labor-intensive manual sampling required at other sites like creek mouths. And it’s just this sort of innovating and prioritizing that will be required for stormwater monitoring programs to continue meeting regulatory requirements and helping protect water quality in the San Francisco Bay going forward, Sommers says.
“There are requirements to sample a minimum number of events per year, but if you only have five storm events that come through, then you gotta get those five storm events,” he says. “There’s no room for error here. Even if it’s the middle of the night, even if it’s Christmas, that’s what the expectation is.”
Top image: Sampling at the outflow of a stormwater conveyance in Berkeley. Photo: Don Yee.
Nate Seltenrich is a freelance science and environmental journalist who covers infrastructure, restoration, and related topics for Estuary. He also contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Sonoma and Marin magazines, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, and other local and national publications, on subjects ranging from public lands and renewable energy to the human health impacts of climate change. He lives in Petaluma with his wife, two boys, and four ducks. www.nate-reports.com
Our magazine’s media motto for many years has been “Where there’s an estuary, there’s a crowd.” The San Francisco Estuary is a place where people, wildlife, and commerce congregate, and where watersheds, rivers and the ocean meet and mix, creating a place of unusual diversity. In choosing to tell the...
Ever since the state and federal water projects were built in the 1930s and 1940s, California has captured snowmelt in foothill reservoirs, and moved the fresh water from dam releases and river outflows to parched parts of the state via aqueducts hundreds of miles long. A convoluted system of ancient...
Though the Clean Water Act did an amazing job of reducing wastewater and stormwater pollution of the San Francisco Estuary, some contaminants remain thorny problems. Legacy pollutants like mercury washed into the watershed from upstream gold mining, PCBs from old industrial sites, and selenium from agricultural drainage in the San...
Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.