Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis Online Open House Now Open

You have until May 11, 2020 to let the RTC know yet again what you think about how the rail corridor could be used to best-address the traffic congestion our County had faced until recently. We all hope that the economic stability of the region will return soon, and support public transportation into the future.

IS A TREATED SEWAGE WATER INJECTION WELL COMING TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?
If you live in Aptos, the Soquel Creek Water District may be planning to inject millions of gallons of treated sewage water into the groundwater near your drinking water source and the County Environmental Health Dept. will not be concerned and will ask no questions while granting the new well permits to the District.  If you live near these projects, contact the District and County Environmental Health now.

Soquel Creek Water District Board <bod@soquelcreekwater.org>

Environmental Health Services: Nathan Salazar<nathan.salazar@santacruzcounty.us>   and John Ricker<john.ricker@santacruzcounty.us>

Soquel Creek Water District has their three injection well projects out for bid right now.  My inquiries with the Santa Cruz County Health Dept. is that the District has not applied for permits for two of the three new wells, and that will be left to the contractor to do so.  The County will NOT consider whether or not there are other private wells or small water company production wells nearby.

Last year, Soquel Creek Water District violated State Regional Water Quality law by failing to obtain permits required to inject over 6 million gallons of treated water into the aquifer when the Twin Lakes Church injection well was constructed.  The contractor was Maggiora Bros., and the Project was under scrutiny of Brown and Caldwell Engineers as well as the District engineering staff.

Maggiora Bros. violated State law by not paying required state prevailing wages to their trucking contractor employees, which was required by the fact that the District used State Prop. 1 Grant  monies to pay for the project.

Can Soquel Creek Water District be trusted?   Hmmmm……

The County paid no concern to the fact that two small water companies and multiple private wells in Aptos are within 1/8 mile of the Twin Lakes Church injection well and are “downstream” of the millions of gallons of treated sewage water that Soquel Creek Water District plans to inject 24/7.

I found that shocking.

May 12 Bid Closures for three injection well construction projects

• Redevelopment and testing of the Twin Lakes Church SWIP well,
• Destruction of the Monterey Production well,
• Drilling, construction, development, testing, and completion of the Monterey SWIP well,
• Drilling, construction, development, testing, and completion of the Willowbrook SWIP well.

SWIP is an acronym for “Sea Water Intrusion Prevention”  The estimated cost for this work is $1,850,000.  Wow.

If any of these projects is near you, please contact Soquel Creek Water District right away:

Skylar Murphy <skylar.murphy@soquelcreekwater.org> 475-8500 x148

Here is a link to drone footage of the Twin Lakes Church injection well from last year.  That well already has significant problems that require redevelopment.

https://vimeo.com/348278420

APTOS VILLAGE NEW LEAF MARKET CLOSES DUE TO CORONAVIRUS-POSITIVE WORKERS
I am glad that the New Leaf Market in Aptos Village, now owned by a large conglomerate in South Korea, responsibly closed for one day upon learning that multiple of their workers tested positive for the coronavirus.  I wonder if the Santa Cruz County Health Department will trace and notify all the customers?  Let’s hope those workers recover soon, but what about all the others who continue to work there?  Hmmm….

Updated April 19, 2020:
At New Leaf Community Markets, the health and safety of our staff and community is important, and we continue to take extra precautions as the challenges posed by novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continue to evolve. On April 18, we made the decision to temporarily close our store in Aptos after learning that staff members had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Upon learning the news, we took immediate action to notify the Santa Cruz County Public Health Department. We deeply care about the well-being of these staff members, and we have been in touch to support them while they are recovering and self-isolating at home, including compensating them for the necessary leave of absence. While health authorities did not require us to close the store, we chose to do so to deep clean and care for our staff. We reopened the store on Sunday, April 19, following these additional safety measures:

• Sanitation of public and administrative areas throughout the store in partnership MAYBE THE CORONAVIRUS IS NOT AS with a third-party sanitation company and in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance and our own rigorous sanitation and food safety procedures.
• Public health authorities concluded the location is safe for resuming operations.
• The store is staffed with individuals who did not come into prolonged close contact with the staff member who tested positive for COVID-19, as guidedby the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

IS THE CORONAVIRUS PERHAPS MORE BENIGN THAN THOUGHT?
The Stanford University study released recently indicates the infection rate in early April in Santa Clara County alone may already have been 50-85 times more than the number of official cases at that time.  “The estimate comes from a first-in-the-nation community study of newly available antibody tests that suggest how widespread the invisible—and perhaps benign—companion has been in the Bay Area’s hardest-hit county.”

What is different about this Stanford study is that the test used to determine the presence of the COVID-19 is an antibody test, and much more reliable.  It has been shunned by many local health authorities because the results take longer to obtain.

They have instead relied on quicker results of a different test performed in Santa Clara County that looks for bits of virus at all, and cannot always pinpoint the specific COVID-19 among the total viral load shown in the tests. It is known as the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PRC) test and according to the interview with the test’s Nobel-Prize winning inventor Dr. Kary B. Mullis, the test was never meant to be used as a diagnostic tool, but rather, used only for research projects.   According to his interview below, the numeric level of the test can be changed to provide different results depending on the number used as the diagnostic indicator.

That explains many confusing results. The article below is a bit long, but definitely worth reading.

I am grateful for the Stanford anti-body tests and the possible voice of reason it could bring to what I see as an unknown frontier that is quickly taking away our personal freedoms and Constitutional rights as if they were bowling pins.

“Emergency powers tend to kindle emergencies”…which are sometimes driven by the availability of emergency monies available. 

Think about that as you read this

Take a look at what the Town of Bolinas is doing

Using the antibody test results, the residents will then work as a community to protect those who are most vulnerable.

Take a deep breath and read about the Stanford study…give it thought.

PLEASE SUBMIT COMMENT ABOUT HOW MUCH CARCINOGENIC CHROMIUM 6 CAN BE IN YOUR DRINKING WATER
Do you think it is right to allow a known carcinogen to be in your water at levels that will most likely cause cancer, just because it would cost money to remove it? The State Department of Drinking is asking for your comment on a Water White Paper that will influence whether new drinking water standards to lower the amount of carcinogenic Chromium 6 (hexavalent chromium) that public water systems are allowed to sell to customers.

Please forward it to others.

For those involved with Ohlone Elementary School and Renaissance High School, here is a link to the Community Water Center discussion of the Chromium 6 issues there

In quick review, in 2011, the national Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessments determined the Chromium 6 health goal, the acceptable risk level, to be 0.02mg/L (also parts per billion or ppb). There was no regulation for Chromium 6 in drinking water, the carcinogenic form, only total Chromium, which includes the non-carcinogenic form Chromium 3, and was set at 100ppb..

In 2014, California Drinking Water authorities were poised to adopt the first regulated amount of Chromium 6 allowed, setting a 10ppb MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level), as close to the health goal of 0.02ppb as feasible.

Several large water companies filed legal action. On May 5, 2017, Judge Christopher Krueger in Sacramento Superior Court declared the State’s action to set the 10 ppb MCL invalid. On May 31, his formal judgement ordered the State to conduct a feasibility analysis and to establish a new MCL. That is currently 50ppb total Chromium.
[Case No. 34-2015-80001850]

[You may be interested to know that Soquel Creek Water District, with a few wells showing Chromium 6 contamination, instituted a tiered rate structure in 2016 to charge customers in Tier 2 extra in order to pay for the anticipated Chromium 6 treatment. They collected this money until July 1, 2018, when ratepayer Jon Cole won his self-represented lawsuit against the District for the illegal rate structures, heard in Santa Cruz County Superior Court before Judge Paul Burdick. The District was not ordered to refund the monies collected for the treatment plant it never built. Case No. 17CV00689. The District had a contract with a company called Ionex, to treat water for removal of Hexavalent Chromium, but exited the contract on May 16, 2017, immediately after Judge Krueger’s May 5 initial ruling.]

Here is a really good fact sheet on the issue of Hexavalent Chromium in water and the history of this issue in California

That is what brings us all now to this White Paper about the Feasibility Analysis of setting the MCL for Chromium 6 (Hexavalent Chromium). The comment period has been extended to May 15, but there will be only ONE public hearing, held via teleconference on April 27, 1pm-4pm. I encourage you to participate, and to submit written comment.

Below is a link to the information about submitting public comment, the online public hearing, and the White Paper

Here is a direct link to the White Paper itself

Here is the gist of the document, excerpted from page 2:
“Due to the inherent uncertainty of placing economic value on numerous factors necessary for cost-benefit analyses, the MCL set by the State Water Board will be through a policy decision that considers traditional concepts such as treatment costs and number of cancer cases averted, as well as the costs and benefits of the regulation, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act, particularly as it relates to non-cancer health impacts on individuals, their families and their communities. This document describes challenges faced by the State Water Board in considering economic feasibility during the development of MCLs and concludes there is no simple formula capable of generating an economically feasible MCL.”

Note this on page 4 of the White Paper:
“During the economic analysis the State Water Board assumes all water systems exceeding the proposed MCL would implement the best available technology, even though there may be other, potentially less expensive ways for water systems to come into compliance (such as taking a contaminated well out of service, blending, consolidation with another nearby water system or installing point-of-use or point-of entry treatment systems).”

(I added bold type to this option, because that is what Soquel Creek Water District did when their Country Estates Well in Seascape had very high levels of 1,2,3-Tricholorpropane (TCP) carcinogen before the new state contaminant levels required them to close down the well.)

Also on page 4:
“As discussed later in this paper, not all health benefits can be accurately monetized, and a qualitative assessment of the other health effects may be the only possible option.”

Further on Page 4:
“The level at which the State Water Board sets an MCL is a policy decision. It is not an arbitrary or capricious decision but based on applying available scientific evidence to rulemaking requirements of applicable statutes. Determining an MCL cannot be reduced to a simple formula. Arguments have been advanced advocating the use of cost-benefit analyses to establish MCLs at a point where the cost of the MCL equals its benefit to health. However, this document discusses that a cost-benefit approach is not feasible because of its inability to accurately account for and monetize the benefits and impacts of selecting one MCL versus another. “

I encourage you to read page 5 feasibility preface of the Cost/Benefit approach that I find positive:
“Focusing solely on treatment costs for complying with an MCL ignores the benefits gained by ending the exposure to a known carcinogen.”

The cost/connection table on page 8 does not look quite right to me for the values in the 0.010 mg/L category, but the monthly values mostly seem feasible to the 0.010 mg/L MCL and above.

The conclusions are interesting: (on the last page of the report, page 11)
“Statewide protection of public health cannot be limited to what is affordable to the smallest systems serving only a small fraction of the State’s total population. Economic feasibility cannot be determined by a simple formula. Even if such a formula existed, accurately ascribing value on the costs and benefits of reducing exposure to known carcinogens is limited.

Therefore, the State Water Board must take a multi-faceted approach to looking at economic feasibility when setting drinking water standards, considering multiple lines of evidence. Some of those lines of evidence have been set out here, and the State Water Board would like to engage stakeholders in what additional information should be considered.”

So, folks, this is where we all can make a difference. Please submit your thoughts by noon on May 15, 2020 to:
<commentletters@waterboards.ca.gov>

or via US mail to

Ms. Jeanine Townsend, Clerk for the Board
State Water Resources Control Board
P.O. Box 100
Sacramento, CA 95812-100

SUBJECT LINE: “White Paper Discussion on Economic Feasibility Analysis on Consideration of Hexavalent Chromium MCL”

Please write. Listen in on the April 27 teleconference at 1pm and learn more.

STATE INSURANCE COMMISSIONER ORDERS INSURANCE COMPANIES TO REFUND AUTO INSURANCE PREMIUMS
In response to the COVID-19 economic damage, State Insurance Ricardo Lara issued an order Monday that requires insurance companies to credit or refund auto insurance premiums to policy holders between March and May, 2020. This is justified by the reduced amount of driving that Californians are doing due to the shelter-in-place orders.

Read more here