groundwater

EPA to look at Tahoe drainage systems

lynellg — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:11:31 -0700

Tahoe Daily Tribune article, copied from Wednesday, November 2, 2005
EPA to look at Tahoe drainage systems
By Amanda Fehd

Homeowners and businesses in Tahoe could be installing drainage systems regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for health safety reasons - and not know it.

Representatives from the EPA, Tahoe's planning agency and Nevada's environmental protection agency met by conference call last week to discuss whether drainage systems used in Tahoe fall into a category EPA alleges has the potential to contaminate groundwater. No decision was made.

A variety of drainage systems are used in Tahoe to comply with a Tahoe Regional Planning Agency ordinance requiring most property owners to install devices to catch rain and snowmelt.

Called stormwater best management practices, or BMPs, the systems are intended to prevent soil erosion.

Most not a concern

While most of the drainage systems in Tahoe are not a concern, some may be classified as Class V wells, according to Elizabeth Janes at EPA's Region Nine groundwater office in San Francisco.

Tahoe's rain and snowmelt, called stormwater, is generally very clean, diminishing risk of contamination, according to Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control board, which regulates water quality at Lake Tahoe.

However, certain drainage systems would allow any contaminants, or spills of auto or lawn chemicals, to more easily enter groundwater, according to EPA.

EPA requires inventory information from property owners who install Class V drainage systems because of their alleged potential to contaminate groundwater.

Users must also agree not to allow any substances that are threats to drinking water to enter the systems.

EPA's list of threats to drinking water includes chemicals used in household cleaning, lawn and auto care and is available at www.epa.gov/safewater/mcl.html#mcls.

The worst kind of Class V well is a drilled hole allowing water directly down to the water table. The technique is not used in Tahoe but has been standard construction practice in other parts of California, Janes said.

But Class V wells can include many other types of underground drainage systems, according to EPA.

Much of South Shore gets its drinking water only from groundwater, while the lake supplies drinking water to most of the Nevada side. Drinking water is constantly monitored for purity.

No decision yet

EPA is not ready to make a determination on designs for residential or commercial BMPs in Tahoe before taking a closer look at them, Janes said.

"We all agreed we need to sit down and look at these on location," said Russ Land, supervisor of the groundwater protection office of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, Janes's Nevada counterpart. NDEP provides funding for TRPA's residential BMP retrofit program.

Based on his limited review of residential BMP designs in TRPA's contractors handbook, Land said none fit the definition of a Class V well.

EPA Region Nine was not so sure, Janes said.

The three agencies met after inquiries to EPA from the Tahoe Daily Tribune about whether the Class V wells were used in Tahoe. Area engineers raised the issue with the Tribune.

While Birgit Widegren, head of TRPA's soil erosion team, said it has not been interpreted in the past that Tahoe's designs qualify as Class V, EPA representatives were not certain.

Engineer approved

All Tahoe BMP designs are approved by a state engineer, according to Erik Larson, program coordinator for the Tahoe Resource Conservation District, which provides information to owners of homes where BMPs are installed.

Measures are in place to protect groundwater in Tahoe, according to Widegren. Properties expected to release pollution into rain water or snowmelt, like an auto station, are required to treat it before it is allowed to enter the ground.

TRPA's approach to BMPs is very conservative, Janes said. "They aren't ignorant of the vulnerability of their groundwater."

TRPA's BMP ordinance is aimed at reducing soil erosion, one of the main factors in Lake Tahoe's declining clarity.

"The fundamental concept of keeping soil on property is sound and how we do it may evolve over time," said TRPA spokeswoman Julie Regan. "It's a collaborative process and we will be making sure we are all in agreement."

Homes less risky

Residential properties are less of a risk to groundwater than commercial properties, Janes said.

"EPA does not want to discourage anyone from implementing their residential stormwater BMPs," said Janes. But she cautioned property owners to be responsible about chemical use such as fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and auto chemicals.

"What you pump into the ground ends up somewhere," she said.

A fact sheet from EPA says there is concern "there may be a dramatic increase in the use of Class V wells as a (BMP) to dispose of stormwater. Infiltration through stormwater drainage wells has the potential to adversely impact [underground sources of drinking water].

The runoff that enters the stormwater drainage wells may be contaminated with sediments, nutrients, metals, salts, fertilizers, pesticides and microorganisms."

The fact sheet was put out in response to construction practices in Modesto, Janes said. It is available at www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/pdfs/fact_class5_stormwater.pdf.

Groundwater in Sierra Nevada: meeting/speaker

lynellg — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:54:53 -0700

Source: Truckee River Watershed Council.
"Groundwater in Sierra Nevada"
7/11/2008, 1:00-5:00 p.m. Called by Sierra and Foothill Citizens Alliance and UC Berkeley to discuss a fracture hydrology investigation to provide data on fractured rock ground water resources for land use planning.RSVP to 559-855-5653.

Litigation in Pyramid Lake case moves to Minden

lynellg — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Litigation in Pyramid Lake case moves to Minden
by Sheila Gardner, Record-Courier
April 25, 2008

The Town of Minden has succeeded in moving litigation from Fallon to Douglas County challenging the community's right to transfer water.

Churchill County District Judge David Huff granted a motion April 16 to change the venue of a Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe challenge of Minden's authority to transfer water rights.

The litigation - expected to go on for years - will be heard in Douglas County District Court.

Attorneys Michael A. Gheleta and Gary M. Kvistad, hired by the town to fight the Pyramid Lake challenge, filed a motion to dismiss the litigation or to change the venue.

Huff agreed to the venue change.

"I'm pleased," said Minden Town Board member Robert Hadfield. "Part of our overall defense strategy was to get out of Churchill County into Douglas where the impact obviously is. I am very pleased to learn the judge has accepted our motion and reassigned the case."

For entire article, please visit website.

Climate change shrinking water in western U.S.

lynellg — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:12:50 -0800

Program #5460 of the Earth & Sky Radio Series
with hosts Deborah Byrd, Joel Block, Lindsay Patterson and Jorge Salazar.

A 2008 study shows that Earth’s changing climate has caused available water to shrink in the western U.S. during the last half century.

And even bigger changes lie ahead, according to lead author Tim Barnett of Scripps Oceanographic Institution in San Diego.

Tim Barnett: It’s a 20 percent decrease on average over the western U.S. in the snowpack as it exists on the first of April.

Barnett’s study compared 50 years of river and climate data with computer models. It showed that in the western U.S., about 60 percent of changes, such as shrinking snowpack, can only have a non-natural explanation: a human-induced rise in temperature caused by greenhouse gases. Barnett added that water supplies in the western U.S. might be disrupted within 20 years.

Earth & Sky asked Barnett how people will adapt.

Tim Barnett: Some of the adaptations will be conservation. Some will be taking it from farmers and giving it to a growing population. A decent adaptation would be to limit the population growth and development in the western United States. I don’t think that will ever happen. But those are the kinds of things that we’re going to have to do.

Barnett is concerned about the environmental future we’re leaving for the coming generations.

Tim Barnett: We’re altering the climate of planet in ways that we know, and in lots of ways that we don’t know. We’re making a world for today’s children and grandchildren that they’re going to have to live in, in the future. And if they don’t like it, there won’t be a thing they can do about it.

Barnett warns that dam capacity will be insufficient to hold the water coming rushing down.

To view the entire interview/article, please visit the website.

USGS Nevada Water Science Center Water-Resources Data — Surface Water

lynellg — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:39:29 -0800

NV Statewide water-resources data published herein for the 2004 water year comprise the following records:
Water discharge for 182 gaging stations on streams, canals, and drains.
Discharge data for 95 partial record stations and miscellaneous sites, and 16 springs.
Stage and contents for 21 ponds, lakes and reservoirs.
Water levels for 19 continuous observation wells, and 889 periodic observation wells.
Water-quality data for 114 stream, canal, spring and drain sites and 138 wells.
Precipitation totals for 39 stations.
Water withdrawals for 11 wells.

To view maps of collection sites, and data view website below.

Nevada population boom made flood worse

lynellg — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:16:07 -0800

SCOTT SONNER AND MARTIN GRIFFITH, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
Posted: 1/11/2008
SPECIAL REPORT | The Jan. 5, 2008 canal breach and its aftermath

FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) — In 1903, when a 31-mile canal was dug to move water from the Truckee River to the melon and alfalfa fields around Fallon, earthern embankments made a lot of sense.

The dirt canal construction was cheaper than lining the entire route with concrete, and no one in northern Nevada much minded if it and other canals like it in the Newlands Reclamation Project occasionally failed. Floodwaters would flow into pastures and surrounding desert and soak back into the water table.

Today, what once was the rural agricultural town of Fernley is now a growing bedroom community of about 20,000 residents that has been declared a disaster area after storm-swollen water tore a hole in the 50-foot-wide and 9-foot-deep canal and inundated hundreds of homes.

To view entire article, please visit website.

County, Minden discuss water

lynellg — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:51:59 -0800

by Sheila Gardner, sgardner@recordcourier.com
January 2, 2008

Douglas County and Minden officials are to kick off the new year with a long-awaited meeting Wednesday to discuss water issues.

"We had requested this a long time ago," said Minden vice chairman Dave Sheets. "Then, it got delayed, the agenda wasn't what people wanted. We kept pushing and saying we have a lot of things that have a common interest that may be coming to a head at this point."

Minden recently hired a California law firm to represent the town's vast water holdings from a challenge by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe which seeks to halt all water transfers.

"The majority of what I perceive this meeting to be is wrapped around water," Sheets said. "We're not going to say, 'We're hiring a law firm. Do you want to participate?'

"For me, it's to try to figure out, 'Do you, as a county, see this as a serious threat? Of paramount importance?' Or, 'this, too, shall pass.'"

Tribal lawyers argued Carson Valley's groundwater is "severely over-appropriated," and more groundwater use means less flow in the Carson River to Lake Lahontan.

...
Joint meeting between Town of Minden and Douglas County, 5 p.m., Wednesday, CVIC Hall, Esmeralda Avenue, Minden; 6:30 p.m., staff reports; 7 p.m. regular agenda including discussion of U.S. Postal Service process to procure new Minden post office site; bid review of sign at Jake's Wildlife and Wetland Meadow; discuss installation of calliope on 1937 La France Fire Truck for use at town events. Information, 782-5976.

For entire article, please visit website.

Minden hires California firm to battle water fight

lynellg — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:29:45 -0800

by Sheila Gardner,
Record-Courier
December 21, 2007

Minden officials hired "the largest water law practice in the United States" on Wednesday to defend the town's vast water holdings from challenges by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

Board members, meeting in special session, voted 4-0 to hire Hatch & Parent law corporation of Santa Barbara, Calif.

"If you make a decision tonight, we could be ready to go on one-day notice," senior counsel Michael A. Gheleta told the board. "It seems like your concern is legitimate. It's best to get in early rather than find out the case has left the station without you."

The board heard from five law firms Wednesday before selecting Hatch & Parent.

To read entire article, please visit website.