The water of a small stream in western Sonoma County flows slowly under a highway bridge, coursing its way through private ranchland to the ocean about seven miles away. Ducks paddle among floating vegetation, and an egret tiptoes slowly through the shallows. At the edge of the waterway, called Americano Creek, a cluster of cattle huddles under the willows. They frequent this spot and have trampled the banks to mud. Hoofprints can be seen leading into the water, and cakes of manure fester beside the stream, which meets the Pacific Ocean a few miles south of Bodega Bay.
“With the federal Clean Water Act, the state Clean Water Act, and all the other regulations, you would think this would be prohibited,” says Don McEnhill, executive director of the environmental watchdog group Russian Riverkeeper. The organization campaigns to protect Sonoma County salmon and steelhead habitat, which McEnhill says has been degraded by, among other things, cows in the water.
In fact, a suite of federal, state, and local laws ostensibly protect California’s watersheds from pollution, and volumes of codes are dedicated specifically to safeguarding streams and rivers from cattle. Yet through a variety of loopholes and exemptions, and possibly agency languor, roaming cows have access to many of the state’s waterways.
Here, the animals denude riverbanks, eliminate riparian habitat, and degrade water quality. High concentrations of manure-born bacteria are known to flow from Marin County cattle ranches into the waters surrounding Point Reyes. In the East Bay hills, cattle foul watershed habitat, trample creeks, and erode trails on public lands – damage that local groups have lobbied unsuccessfully to stop. Nitrates, an agricultural byproduct commonly derived from manure that can lead to health problems in humans, taint drinking water systems in the San Joaquin Valley, where feedlots are the suspected source of much of this contamination.
Alan Levine, the secretary of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance, says the California regulators who deal with livestock and farm pollution have historically lagged on cracking down on violators. “It’s almost impossible to get agencies to enforce the law unless it’s a flagrant, publicly visible violation of the law that they just can’t ignore,” Levine says.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board’s permitting documents do not prohibit cattle entering waterways. But they state that “[g]razing in riparian areas shall be conducted in a manner that prevents, minimizes, and controls the discharge of waste to surface waters.” The same regulations address shoreline vegetation, requiring that “[r]iparian areas are managed in a manner that allows the natural establishment and growth of native vegetation … to prevent, minimize, and control surface erosion.”
But these impacts are almost the status quo for farms across the North Bay. A clear case of cows trampling and denuding a section of Americano Creek was reported to the North Coast Regional board on March 19. Though the board’s staff visited the site and corresponded with the farm owners, they took no immediate action to keep their cattle away from the water. In late September, the cows were seen standing in the shade of the creek bed, by then totally dry.
Riverkeeper Don McEnhill on the Russian River, where his organization tracks diverse environmental impacts including cattle trampling the banks upstream. Photo: Alastair Bland.
Currently, North Coast region dairy farms are under orders from water quality officials to submit Riparian Management Plans – checklist forms that describe how a farm will sustainably manage cattle near waterways. The rules governing cattle effluent and riparian impacts aren’t simple, even for activists familiar with this regulatory terrain. “It is very hard for us to tell what’s legal and what’s not,” McEnhill says. For instance, manure in the water does not necessarily constitute a violation — lab testing of the water is required to determine if water quality standards have been exceeded. Also, different rules apply to beef and dairy cows, and different rules apply to cows that are considered confined and those that are considered to be free-ranging. In the end, these somewhat arbitrary respective designations may determine whether cow dung in a creek is acceptable or not.
Laurie Taul, an environmental scientist with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, says her agency “loosely” manages cattle operations. She describes an overarching framework of rules that encourage but don’t require measures aimed at reducing environmental impacts of cows. “We encourage fencing [to keep them away from waterways], providing drinking water away from streams, riparian water management plans, healthy vegetation,” she says.
Levine says forcing regulators into action often requires citizen lawsuits. However, going to court over these matters didn’t help the Center for Biological Diversity and Alameda Creek Alliance. In the late 1990s, the groups sued the East Bay Regional Park District for allowing grazing on public land without first conducting environmental impact reviews. The suit, which the plaintiffs ultimately lost, alleged that “[l]ivestock grazing threatens sensitive and endangered species of plants and animals, increases erosion, and degrades water quality.”
“We submitted mountains of evidence and information and expert testimony that the court refused to consider,” recalls Jeff Miller, director of the Alameda Creek Alliance and a senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Pasture near Petaluma’s Roblar Road, at the headwaters of Americano Creek, produces algal bloom. Photo: Alastair Bland
Another lengthy conflict has brewed at Point Reyes National Seashore, where environmental groups have challenged the use of parts of these federally protected public lands as, essentially, a vast farm. The cattle damage creek valleys and gulches and pollute marine zones that drain the peninsula’s hills. Point Reyes cows are also alleged by environmentalists to be the source of Johne’s disease, a bacterial infection that can kill ungulates and has been found in the local population of Tule elk. Protests and lawsuits against the National Park Service have failed to displace the cattle.
The organization McEnhill works with focuses its watchdog efforts on the Russian River, with an emphasis on rebuilding the shoreline and side-channel habitat so critical to the early life stages of Coho and Chinook salmon and steelhead trout, all of which have slid toward extinction in California’s coastal creeks and rivers. McEnhill says livestock in the watershed are not helping.
In the tidal reaches of the Russian River, near where it reaches the ocean, cows graze along the banks and can frequently be seen standing in the water, potentially damaging valuable habitat. “This is right where we’re putting so much effort into creating a nursery area for outmigrating salmon,” he says.
Levine, a former cattle rancher himself, says many farmers have neglected to put up cheap fencing to protect riparian zones because they know they can get away with it. That cattle denude streams in plain sight of public roads, and in spite of water-quality standards, tells Levine that agency staff are allowing it to happen. “It’s not being overlooked,” he says. “It’s being ignored.”
Top Photo: Cows in Americano Creek. Photo: Alastair Bland
A resident of Sonoma County, Alastair Bland is a freelance journalist who writes about water policy in California, rivers and salmon, marine conservation, and climate change. His work has appeared at CalMatters, NPR.org, Smithsonian.com, Yale Environment 360, and the East Bay Express, among many other outlets. When he isn't writing, Alastair can often be found riding a bicycle, pulling weeds from his garden, and holding his breath underwater.
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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.