A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

They observed ash coating the ocean surface up to 100 miles offshore, giant ash plumes that were coming up. All of that smoke coming up from this horrendous, devastating fire. We were not prepared for a climate disaster like this. Tracy Quinn, who’s the president and CEO of Heal the Bay. Anybody seeing a sick animal, anyone watching a dolphin die on the coast, is touched, and hopefully can understand that it’s climate change that is causing this.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got a great guest on the program, Tracy Quinn, who’s the president and CEO of Heal the Bay. This is the second time we’ve had a chance to chat with Tracy, and I’m just, I’m looking forward to kind of getting an update on what’s been happening since the last time we’ve talked. Great to have you on the program, Tracy, thanks for having me back. Well, the big thing that’s happened since we last talked is the fires here in Los Angeles, and I guess you were personally affected by this. So you know, do tell what your personal experience was, as well as the devastation to the bay, with all the debris and chemicals being washed out to the bay, things from 1000s of houses and chemicals and cars and God knows what.

Yeah, so I bought my very first condo in the Pacific Palisades in 2023 and I was really enjoying living there. And I was actually in Antarctica on an expedition boat when the fires broke out, so I didn’t experience a lot of the things that my neighbors and community did with the evacuation and my home. And is very I’m very grateful My home is still standing. It didn’t burn in the fire didn’t sustain structural damage, but it did sustain ash and smoke damage, so I’m still displaced, and will be for a few more months, while we work through remediation.

But I know how lucky I am, because so many of my neighbors lost everything and in that fire, you know, there was, I think, you know, even those of us observing online, as I did from Antarctica, saw the giant ash plumes that were coming up, all of that smoke coming up from this horrendous, devastating fire. And in fact, there were scientists offshore during the fires, just happenstance, and they observed ash coating the ocean surface up to 100 miles offshore.

So we knew that there were going to be potentially devastating impacts to marine life and the ocean ecosystem as well, and heal the bay. With our 40 years of work on water quality and understanding the coastal environment, jumped into action to be one of the first science voices on the front lines taking samples to understand what those impacts were going to be.

Well, I understand that a lot of the chemicals that got put into the water from the fires were things that generally were never tested for by various organizations, because they’re not the normal things that you would find in the water. So maybe, I’m not sure if I’m correct on that front, but why don’t you take that one? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that this mega fire highlighted was that we were not prepared for a climate disaster like this, even though Southern California has had fires. And, you know, we just had the Franklin fire in December, and obviously the Woolsey fire was incredibly destructive.

You know, we were not prepared for something of this scale, and we hadn’t been testing. You don’t test for heavy metals, or, you know, what you expect from a burned lithium ion battery out into the ocean regularly. We had baselines for for some things, and there are some contaminants that had been tested for infrequently, but certainly not. We didn’t have baselines for all of the heavy metals, for PCBs, for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

You know, the things that we would expect to see when you have so many urban structures burn, and that made it really difficult to understand when we went out to do the sampling, is this is what we’re seeing attributed to the fire, or is this potentially, you know, was this already here? So there were a number of things that made it really challenging. There’s also no protocols on what exactly to test for. There’s it’s not like after a disaster, Department of Public Health goes out and tests for X, Y and Z that that doesn’t exist. And I think that’s something that we’re working on to change.

Well, I guess, in terms of the dissipation of these heavy metals and crazy cocktail of chemicals, what are you finding? Are there still tremendous amounts of these or not?

Well, we’ve only have a handful of samples, so heal the bay went out and. We sampled in January, when the only thing that we expected to see in the ocean was contamination from the ash deposition. We then went back out after that first rain, what we call the first flush, and that was the first rain that Southern California had in almost a year. So that was carrying contaminants from all over the watershed, from summit to see anything that you leave on the street, like, you know, forgetful pet owners leaving some pet waste behind, to cars leaking oil, all of that rushes in.

So that also made it challenging to define exactly what was coming from the burn area and what was coming from the rest of the watershed. And then the Department of Public Health and the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board did sampling in January, February, March, and then at the beginning of May. And for the ocean water, they’ve also done some testing for the sand as well that we’ve been look at, but looking at, but when you look at the water, we only have this handful of data, and so we can kind of try to look for some what’s happening over time, and what’s happening spatially, because sampling is happening north of the burn area, throughout the burn area, and then south, as far as Palos Verdes. So we can kind of look at the spatial distribution, and generally the results are pretty consistent, and where we do see some contaminants that maybe aren’t consistent throughout the testing.

It’s hard to understand why. So there’s gonna this is gonna take months, if not years, to really look through this data to better understand why are we seeing elevated concentrations at certain locations and and at different times than you might expect. What we want to see happen is more testing so that we can have a fuller set of data to really understand how are these contaminants moving. Where is the dilution happening? Is there areas where contaminants are potentially pooling that might cause risk to public health or risk to marine health? I think what we have found early on is that you know, the other part to not having the protocols in place of what to test for is that we also don’t have established public health standards for recreational contact with a lot of these contaminants.

So we’ve had to scramble to figure out, how do we know when we’re looking at these contaminants, if, if it’s going to be safe for people to swim and serve? We looked at, you know, the things that were available were like the ocean plan, but those the human health standards and that are for fish consumption. We looked at drinking water standards, but that’s not appropriate, because we’re not drinking the ocean water, and ingestion is a very different pathway for exposure than surfing or swimming. And so, you know, we had to go to this EPA risk screening tool where we could put in these different parameters, like you’re an infant and you’re in the water for four hours a day for 180 days, what concentration would pose a risk?

And you know, is trying to establish patterns in that way, and looking at it through that lens, we are not seeing concentrations that appear to pose a risk to public health from recreational contact, for getting in the water, and that’s great news, but we are seeing concentrations that pose a risk to marine life. So, you know, I think, on the one hand, we can’t definitively say that it’s safe to swim, because we don’t know that we’re testing for everything and and we don’t have these public health standards, but we can say that the risk appears to be low.

Well, I guess the, you know, it kind of boggles my mind that we’re not getting more testing. When you figure that there are 10 million people who are affected by this or more who live in LA County, it seems like we could all put in a buck to, you know, to get the testing done, or whatever. Why is the testing not being done?

Well, I think one is cost. These tests are not cheap. So every individual sample is about $3,000 so when you look at 10 to 12 sampling sites along the coast of the bay, you’re looking at, you know, 30 to $36,000 for each sampling event. So for an organization like heal the bay to take this on, you know, it’s really challenging. And then I think for the public health departments and the regional board, the first several tests show that they were that the contamination concentrations were below risk screening levels.

So I think that they, you know, that might have factored into their decision to test less frequently. But I think this is important, right? We’ve, we’ve had other fires. We had, you know, Lahaina had a fire that affected the coast. These things are going to continue to happen, and what we collect now is going to be the base data set, because we haven’t collected a lot of data in these previous events.

And this can help to not only help us figure out how we’re going to respond and how we’re going to protect the coast and public health, but how future communities that experience a climate disaster like this are going to be prepared. You know, we we need to to make sure that we learn from this incident and that we have protocols and guidelines in place for the. X community that joins this really unfortunate club.

I’m no scientist, but I have a little bit of a concern that if marine life is being affected, then why wouldn’t humans be adversely affected?

Well, I mean, I think it’s because they live in the water, right? That’s their food source, and the way that heavy metals work is that they are bio accumulated, so they get into the food chain, and then, you know, so maybe they settle into the sediment, and you’ll have sort of crustaceans and other things that are lower on the food chain will start to consume those heavy metals, and then larger fish will eat them, and then seals and dolphins will eat those fish, and that will start to bio accumulate in their bodies

Humans are just going in to swim. We’re not drinking the water. We’re not eating you know, our entire diets aren’t made up of the fish that are consuming the heavy metals, and so we’re we’re less at risk because we’re not exposed to as much, and we can withstand higher concentrations because of that limited exposure.

Okay, well, talk to us a little bit about the marine health. And I’ve read about number of different sea mammals that seem to be getting sick and dying along the coast. And the temporal connection seems pretty close, like there’s a big fire, and then all of a sudden, you know, huge amount of sea lions or sea life are washing up on the shores.

I’m so glad you brought this up, because this has caused a lot of confusion, and the these harmful algal blooms that we’ve been experiencing off the coast are devastating. They are a natural occurrence. They happen all of the time. Sometimes there are healthy algal blooms, and they just provide a lot of great food for our sea life, and sometimes they’re toxic. And so what we saw this year is the same thing we’ve seen for the last four years, is that we had a harmful algal bloom that produced demoic acid.

Democ acid is a neurotoxin. It impacts our sea life, and just as I talked about working its way through the food chain, this domoic acid also works its way through the food chain. And when it gets to the larger sea life, like our sea lions, it causes a condition that’s very similar to if they had taken like acid, they start to become disoriented. It affects their brain, and they become very confused, and that then they come on shore. We have seen this for the last four years. This harmful algorithm actually started in December, so it predated the fires, but it is also the it lasted longer than any previous event, and it was much more intense than the previous events.

And so it does appear that it was impacted by the fires, and the current theory is that there were conditions that made the fires worse. So these harmful algal blooms often come from upwelling of nutrients. They’re caused by nitrogen and phosphorus in the marine environment that are already there and are also added from our wastewater treatment plants and some other sources. And these harmful algal blooms happen when there’s an upwelling of those nutrients from the ocean floor that bring it up. It hits the sunlight and it causes this big algal bloom. Now this can this upwelling can happen when we have really high winds, and as you might recall, at the beginning of the fires, LA was experiencing winds up to 100 miles an hour, so that could have contributed to the upwelling.

And then when we are trying to put out the fires, we’re using phosphorus based fire retardants. So when that washed into the ocean after that series of rain events in late January and February, that could have also helped to feed that algal bloom, making it more intense and making it last longer. So I think it’s what’s really important for folks to understand, is that it’s very unlikely that it was the heavy metals, or things, you know, from the ash and the burned areas that made those animals sick.

It what is most likely, and what we believe the data will confirm, is that this is contributed entirely to the algal bloom and to the demoic acid, and then we also had another harmful bloom of saxitoxin at the same time. We never get those two things. That may be what was affecting the dolphins and the whales, but we’ve believed that the nutrients from the fires could have contributed to that to make that so much worse.

Well, you know, it’s hard for me to resist asking further questions about the sea lions taking acid. Are we talking about LSD? So they were tripping?

Yes, yes. It’s very, what we understand from the scientists, it’s very they’re tripping, yes. And the good thing to know is that if they get to shore and they get treatment from folks like the Marine Mammal Care Center, you know, they can be treated and, you know, be in recover and go back to living a healthy life. So I think that, you know, that’s really important, that there are great groups out there, like heal the bay that are doing the testing and doing, you know, making sure we have the science, and we have great groups like the Marine Mammal Care Center that are taking care. Of these animals when they are harmed by these types of incidents.

So it’s kind of like sea lion rehab.

Exactly, exactly.

So I’ve never heard of saxitoxin. Saxitoxin, what are they and where are they coming from?

They are also naturally occurring. So all of these harmful algal blooms are naturally occurring. Saxitoxin is very similar to demoic acid, but it’s how it affects the animals. Is different. It’s a paralytic, so it’s going to affect their ability to swim. And this is what we think is was causing the dolphins to beach themselves, is that they they were getting poisoning from the saxitoxin. It was making it challenging for them to swim, and they beached themselves.

This may also be what impacted the whales. We weren’t testing for saxitoxin, or the Marine Mammal Care Center and other scientific entities weren’t testing for saxitoxin at the time. We did see demoic acid in a lot of these animals. But you know, it does seem as though the saxitoxin being a paralytic could have impacted animals like the dolphins and the whales.

Well, it is a complex set of chemical reactions going out there.

Yeah. I mean, just a moment on the on that I think may be particularly interesting to your audience, is that you know this is happening more and more because of climate change. Climate change is creating the perfect conditions for these harmful algal blooms. It’s certainly not being helped by the fact that we’re dumping a ton of nutrients into the ocean every year, predominantly through our wastewater treatment plants. But climate change is a huge contributing factor.

And so, you know, as we as climate change work gets worse, we’re going to continue to see these events, and they are likely to be longer and more intense. And so I think for those of us that live near the coast, for those of us that love the coast, knowing that this is one of the devastating impacts of climate change, I think this makes it real for a real broad spectrum of folks beyond party lines, you know, beyond partisanship. I think anybody seeing a sick animal, anyone watching a dolphin die on the coast, is touched, and hopefully can understand that it’s climate change that is causing this.

Well, tell us why climate change is causing this. Obviously, the fires were exacerbated by climate change and the and the weather patterns and the droughts and the heat and all that, but tell us the other things that are contributing to these events.

Well, warmer temperatures, or, you know, impacts on the ocean temperature changes to swell and wind, all of these things can help to exacerbate upwelling and, you know, and climate change is impacting all of those things, right? It’s making our oceans warmer, it’s increasing winds, it’s changing climate and weather patterns. And so, you know, those things are going to have consequences. You know, that we probably couldn’t have predicted. It certainly wasn’t in our top 10. I think we were looking at, you know, more intense hurricanes and tornadoes and others and other natural disasters. But understanding that even these slight changes in weather patterns can really impact marine life and you know, life on Earth.

Well, tell us what you’ve measured in terms of warmer temperature ocean temperatures, as well as maybe acidification of the ocean here in Southern California?

Well, we aren’t doing the temperature monitoring, but you know, we are seeing those changes happen along our coast, and there are great organizations like Scripps and the Southern California coastal water research project who are monitoring that and developing models so we can better understand the contributing factors to a lot of things like ocean acidification. In fact, I just got to participate or sit in on a wonderful presentation by the scientists and researchers at the Southern California coastal water research project. It’s we call it squirt. I highly recommend people check them out. They’re doing incredible work.

You can see the ties between ocean temperature and pH. So I think another thing that you know folks may not realize is that the ocean is our best ally when it comes to climate change. It sequesters, you know, it holds on to and grabs out of the air a lot of the CO two that we’re producing. But when it does that, then we see changes in pH. So the pH starts to drop. It becomes more acidic. So it’s, it’s, you know, we’re producing more CO two. It’s trying to help us. It’s, it’s capturing that CO two, but in turn, it’s being harmed by it. So, you know, our oceans capture most of the excess heat in our environment, in our atmosphere.

It they sequester it sequesters carbon dioxide. But then we see these things like Harmful Algal Blooms. We see these things like ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is also much like our harmful algal blooms, impacted by the nutrient loading into the bay as well. And so again, we’re looking at the contribution. From our wastewater treatment plants, we’re looking at other sources, maybe things coming through our storm drains or rivers and creeks, trying to better understand how much those things are impacting what we’re seeing happen out in the ocean, and how much those can be regulated or controlled and to reduce the impacts that we’re going to see in the long term.

So how much farmland is drained out into the Santa Monica Bay, and are the chemicals that farmers are using that are whatever nitrogen fertilizers or pesticides getting out into the bay?

We have very little Ag in LA County, particularly in the watersheds that drain to the Santa Monica Bay, so we don’t expect that there’s huge impacts from agriculture that is being studied in the places where it is occurring, but given the incredible urbanization of the greater Los Angeles area, it’s far more likely that it’s coming from wastewater treatment plants and potentially runoff from The application of things like fertilizers.

What has been done to mitigate the runoff of the chemicals, in particular from the fires and those areas which, my understanding, there’s still a tremendous amount of chemicals kind of exposed. I know the, I believe the Army Corps of Engineers helped clean up a lot of people’s homes, or, you know, the lots where they had been destroyed. What’s the status on that?

So the Army Corps is almost completed with their work. So the way that it worked after the fires is the EPA comes in and they remove all of the hazardous materials. So propane tanks, household chemicals, other things that lithium ion batteries that burned and all the Teslas that were lost in the fires, they come in and they remove those, and they have a separate processing for those. Then the Army Corps comes in.

And if a homeowner elects to to sign a right of entry form and elects to have the Army Corps come in, they will come in and do debris removal, and they remove everything down to the foundation of the burned area and some of the soil. And, you know, they’re, they’re moving at, you know, quicker than they’ve ever moved before. I think those of us that live there are concerned that they’re moving too quickly, potentially, and certainly concerned that we aren’t getting the soil testing that previous communities impacted by Wildfire had gotten to ensure that there aren’t legacy contaminants left behind.

But you know that that process is moving so there is a lot less burn debris left behind to be entering our coastal waters. And you know, through the storm drain system in the immediate aftermath of the fire leading up to that first storm, LA County Public Works and La sanitation in the Palisades deployed a lot of mitigation measures to try to keep those pollutants out of our storm drain system.

Unfortunately, the fire areas between the Palisades fire and the Eaton fires were covered huge areas of land. When you see the maps for those two burn areas you’re talking about, you know, Malibu to near the Santa Monica border, from pch to the 101 almost to the 405 this is an incredible amount of area just in the Palisades fire, similarly, in the Eaton fire, just covered a lot of ground. And so it was really challenging for them to to quickly deploy enough mitigation measures like filtration socks and other things to keep that those pollutants out of our stormwater. I think this is just another reason why we need to invest in stormwater capture all across the greater Los Angeles area. Stormwater capture systems help to keep these pollutants out of our storm drain systems and out of our surface waters, our rivers and our ocean.

They also help us to adapt to climate change. If you do stormwater capture in the form of a park in a highly urbanized neighborhood, you’re going to be able to capture the water that might be flooding the neighborhood when it rains, you’re going to be able to provide green space in an area that’s probably experiencing extreme heat cooling that neighborhood. You might even be able to, you know, address impacts of drought by capturing that storm water for reuse and being able to use that as irrigation when we’re not getting a lot of precipitation or when there’s shortages from our imported water supplies.

So stormwater capture is a really important tool in a portfolio of tools to make sure that our communities are better adapting to climate change, and certainly can help to protect us when it comes to climate disasters like wildfires.

Well is heal the bay involved at all in fire prevention projects? I realize it’s a little bit a field from your standard operating print, you know things, but it seems as though, obviously, the huge fire affected the ocean so badly that I wonder how you’re assessing. Assessing that risk and what your input is there?

Yeah, we’ve jumped into a lot of new areas since the fires in January, and we are looking at, you know, what are the in developing guidelines and recommendations for what to do after a fire to protect coastal waters. That is going to be a multi year project looking into what happened here and really making sure that we’re gathering the data, but I’m also but I’ve been appointed by supervisor Lindsay Horvath here in LA County to a blue ribbon commission on climate action and fire safe recovery, and through that commission, I’ve been joined by experts on a myriad of areas, such as disaster recovery, and people who’ve looked at disasters all over the world, and we have put together a set of recommendations, not only to make sure that our communities, when they’re rebuilt, are more fire resilient, but also looking at ways to be more climate resilient.

And so a lot of those solutions are the same. We can look at things like in these last fires, one of the challenges was a loss of pressure in the system, and that was because when homes burned, the water still flowed through those pipes, and that was pulling from the same system as the firefighters. In some cases, homeowners stayed behind to use their hose to hose down their properties, or left their hoses running when they evacuated again. That’s pulling from the same system. But if we integrate these same strategies for stormwater capture and nature based solutions into our communities, both the ones that we’re rebuilding and the ones that are also at risk from these types of events, we can use those as fire breaks, so we can build in parks that serve as buffer zones and fire breaks.

Those can have large cisterns underneath that can provide redundancy in our water system. Homes can have cisterns on their parcels that can provide a supply for homeowners, if they want to have that tied to a sprinkler system on their roof, or they want to use that to do, you know, put some prevention hose down their properties before they leave. That isn’t going to pull from the same system as the firefighters. So it’s really, I think we’re going to see some really innovative and interesting recommendations coming out of this blue ribbon commission. The report comes out on June 20, and so that will be public.

We’ve had an interim report that already came out where folks can see some of these recommendations. But it’s really interesting to see, when we’re thinking about climate resilience, we’re thinking about protecting our coastal waters, how a lot of those strategies can have benefits. When you’re looking at things like climate disasters and these mega fires that we’re starting to experience more and more.

Well, how does that have any crossover to measure W and the 300 million for stormwater capture projects that are in that is being funded by measure W? Is this a separate set of potential solutions?

No, I think you know, we’re looking at can measure W funds be used for these types of projects right now, there is a ranking system that’s used to prioritize different project proposals that come into the safe, clean water program, which is the program that administers those measure W funds, and really looking at, you know, do we want to, in the near term, as we’re rebuilding these communities, redirect some of that funding to make sure that we’re we’re embedding these principles of measure, W principles of the safe clean water program, into these communities that can be examples for what else we can do throughout the watershed.

I think that’s still yet to be determined. You know, there are a lot of projects who are already in the queue for the safe clean water program, but I definitely see that as a funding source for the types of stormwater capture projects we would like to see in these recovery areas.

Is there going to be spending beyond that 300 million a year to greater resiliency and safety for the community?

Yeah, I think I’m hopeful that we’re able. We don’t have an established fund right now. I know that the LA County Board of Supervisors is looking at some type of fund that could go to these types of projects and other things within the recovery area, and the details of that are still being worked out. I think this is a challenging time. Our local budgets, our state budget are, you know, are really challenging right now.

We’re in deficits in in both la city’s budget and our state budget. That’s certainly a challenge when we’re thinking out about a multi billion dollar recovery, and, you know, we’re not seeing the type of aid come from the federal government that we’ve seen in previous disasters. And so that also is a challenge. A lot of the programs that have been available to previous communities are likely not going to be available to the California communities that suffered in these fires.

So what projects have been completed by measure W and what projects are close to completion is. Money being well spent. Tell us a little bit about that. Since you’re, you know, involved in all this.

Yeah, you know, you can go to their website and you can see all of the projects that have been completed. There are several of them. And you know, this project of the measure, W was approved in 2018 there were several, and this is the first program of its kind in the country. So, you know, there were a lot of things that were deployed quickly, a lot of projects that got approved in the beginning, that that have been built, and I think, are providing a lot of benefits to the communities where they exist.

And we also know that we can do better. And so heal the bay, along with the LA Waterkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council prepared a report called Vision 2045, where we lay out what we would like to see happen in this next phase. Right? We we’ve learned a lot from the first few years that this project has been in place, and now we want to set numeric targets.

Right? We want to set targets for how much storm water we want to capture. We want to make sure that when we’re doing projects going forward, we’re not just throwing a cistern under a parking lot, but we’re thinking about, how can we provide multiple benefits to these communities? How can we put parks in park poor communities? How can we add green space that’s going to provide incredible value from reducing extreme heat and capturing flood waters and, you know, addressing drought.

How can we do all of this and make sure that we are getting the biggest bang for our buck and prioritizing the communities that need it most, and also looking about how these projects are going to impact one another, right, looking at the cumulative impact of these projects, I think all of these things will help to make sure that we are operating effectively and efficiently with these funds and that we are going to get the most benefits that we can.

We can, you know, address issues of biodiversity. Maybe we can stack funding as we’re accumulating all of these benefits, so that we don’t just have money from measure W that’s going into these projects, but we have funds that are meant for flood control, funds that are meant for increasing biodiversity that can be added on to get more value out of these projects. And it’s really exciting to see where the safe, clean water project can go our program can go.

Well, tell us about some of the projects that you see on horizon as being the most important projects, as well as what percentage of storm water is being captured now, and you know what percentage, or maybe volume, that we need to capture, and the goal for 2045 if we captured all of it or a lot of it, would that be enough to deal with all of our water needs in LA County, or are we still gonna have needs beyond capturing the stormwater?

Yeah, I don’t think there’s a silver bullet for our water supply issues, particularly in an area like Southern California, where we have a very dense population, and where, historically, the majority of our water has come from other places, hundreds of miles away, but there is incredible opportunity for us to do stormwater capture. I’m really excited about the small projects that are being proposed, the ones that provide native plants and really beaut help to beautify neighborhoods.

And I’m excited about the large, big diversion projects that are being looked at right now where we’re going to have, you know, huge impacts in being able to recharge our groundwater aquifers, especially as some of our ones in in Los Angeles, in the valley, are have been remediated, or have remediation projects where we’re going to be able to use those groundwater sources again. So I think what’s really cool about measure w is that you can do both types of projects. It’s a funding source for both types of projects, projects of all scales, projects of multiple benefits, but we’re going to need more than just stormwater.

There are still huge opportunities for water efficiency. I think looking at, you know, how much turf we still have in Southern California, opportunities to transform our landscapes to, you know, instead of being sort of boring lawns to be urban sponges that are holding on to water and acting as sort of these mini stormwater capture projects at the parcel level. And there are a lot of funding that’s available through the Metropolitan water district and local water suppliers to help homeowners or commercial business owners to do those types of projects.

And you know, we’re still going to need to recycle our wastewater, I think, when you look across the globe at other places that have similar climates to Southern California. They’re recycling a heck of a lot more wastewater than we are, and we have two projects here in Southern California that are moving forward, one more quickly than the other, Metropolitan Water District, in partnership with LA County Sanitation District, is working on the pure water SoCal.

Project in Carson that’s going to recycle the wastewater that’s currently dumped to the ocean. And in Los Angeles, the city of LA is looking at doing recycling at both their Tillman plant that’s moving forward, that’s in the valley, as well as at the Hyperion Treatment Plant in El Segundo those will provide, I mean, at El Segundo alone, they are discharging about 260 million gallons a day of wastewater into the ocean.

So even just half of that getting back into our drinking water system would provide an incredibly resilient supply of water for Southern California. So you know, those local supplies can really work together to make us more resilient, and to make sure that, you know, we’re creating local jobs, local benefits. And it’s really exciting to see where those things are going to go.

Well, tell me a little bit about more, or tell us about the El Segundo project, because I happen to live pretty close to there, and that is a lot of water going into the ocean. Where would that go to get reclaimed?

So that is still being determined. And, you know, there’s one proposal where the water would be treated at Hyperion, have some level of advanced treatment there, and then be piped up to the the top of the LA system that transporting of that water, you know, uphill to the top of the system where it could enter the drinking water system is incredibly expensive. So I believe the anticipated cost for that project right now are somewhere in the range of, I think, 12 to $20 billion that is an incredible price tag for a project like that. Heal the bay and our partner organizations have asked the city of Los Angeles to look at different alternatives.

Right now, a lot of wastewater is coming to Hyperion from throughout the city of Los Angeles, which, as you know, is an incredible is incredibly huge and far reaching. And so can some of that be distributed to other wastewater treatment plants closer to where those communities are, to reduce some of the cost and allow for recycling there. Can we divert some of that water to Tillman, where they have capacity, and could put that water back into that local system? There’s also conversations about having the Hyperion supply tie into the Met system, so the Metropolitan Water District system, which is closer, and then having an exchange agreement where the city of Los Angeles would put that water into the Met system, and then could pull water from the Met system closer to where we’re actually using it.

So there are a lot of things that are still yet to be determined, a lot of options and scenarios on the table, but I’m really heartened by the fact that the city of Los Angeles is very open to these alternative ideas. They are sitting down with NGOs and other advocates who are looking at these other alternatives and very engaging in conversation about what our future could and should look like.

Well, as we talked about the last time, it takes a lot of energy, a lot of electricity to pump this water up a mountain, up the hill, and so there would be a lot of electricity savings if the things that you’re talking about could be accomplished as well.

Yeah, I think the more that we can use existing systems, the less that we’re tearing up streets and causing traffic jams and all of this thing is going to be better for everyone, and certainly going to cost us a lot, both in the construction phase as well as in the operation and maintenance phase. And so it’s really smart of them to take a pause and to look at these different alternatives and make sure that when we’re going to invest billions of dollars in something that we know that it is the most efficient system possible,

Right? Well, you’ve been working at the Metropolitan Water District for some time, which serves 19 million people. Tell us about your work there and what’s been happening on the front lines, any big new developments?

Well, yes, I serve on the Metropolitan Water District’s Board of Directors. I’m appointed by the city of Los Angeles, so I have the honor, along with four other folks, of representing the great city of Los Angeles. It’s an exciting time at the Metropolitan Water District. We have are wrapping up our climate adaptation Management Plan process. We this is the first time that we have really taken a comprehensive look at not only the climate impacts of our operations, but how we want to make decisions going forward, what investments we want to make to make sure that our system is more climate resilient, and really weighing those costs of what are the impacts? What are the potential climate impacts of an investment versus what are the benefits?

That’s really incredible for you know, an organization like the Metropolitan Water District, the largest water supplier in the country, to take that on and set that example for other water districts. And you know, we’re also going to have some big decisions coming up. The governor has made it clear that a decision on the Delta conveyance project, which is current. Estimated to be a $15 billion project, although once completed, likely to be much higher.

Price Tag is a priority for this administration. Metropolitan Water District would be on the hook to pay about 66% of that cost, and so we’ll have to make that decision as a board in the coming months or years, and a lot of things coming before the Metropolitan Water District, they’re not only going to affect the people here in Southern California, but are going to have statewide impacts. And then, of course, you know, we’re also the importer of the Colorado River aqueduct, bringing the water from the Colorado River into Los Angeles, or the, you know, into Southern California.

And that is a, not only a multi state, but multinational agreement that determines how much water we’re allocated from that system, and that that distribution of water rights is being negotiated now, and so we’re also be engaged in that conversation. And you know, it’s there’s a lot of balls in the air for the Metropolitan Water District right now, but also a clear pathway for us to think about how we want to do this, given how climate change is really impacting our sources of water, and where we want to make investments going forward.

Well, in terms of the project that the governor wants to do that’s going to cost whatever, $15 billion is there an option of opting out of that for the Metropolitan Water District? And if so, what does that look like? And what are the upsides for the project? The what are the upsides for the 19 million people here that you serve in having that project go forward and what are the downsides?

Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s a great question. And right now, the state is working through a lot of their environmental studies and their planning studies, and so we’ll have more information on those things to make those decisions. The reason that this project is being considered is that, you know, we’re importing water from the northern Sierra that has to go through this delta ecosystem, this incredibly fragile system, and a lot of people rely on that water.

It also has a lot of cultural significance for for indigenous peoples that have lived there for millennia. And you know, so I think that this is really challenging right now. We’re pulling water out of the water has to go through the Delta before it is diverted to agricultural uses in the Central Valley, and then eventually down to Southern California. And that system is also potentially going to be impacted by sea level rise. So we’re you know that system is connected to the ocean, and so salt water can come in.

So as sea level rise is occurring. The salt intrusion is going further and further. And as you know, salt is the toughest thing to get out of water. And you certainly are challenged. If you’re trying to use salty water for agriculture, it can kill a lot of the agriculture that we grow here in Southern California. And so they’re, you know, they’re looking at, what are the solutions to this problem? Is that taking the water out before it goes through the delta. Now I think that a lot of environmental organizations have concerns about diverting water to agricultural and urban uses upstream of the Delta, because historical operations have prioritized those uses over the health of the ecosystem in the Delta, and we need a healthy Delta in order to have a healthy California and to have clean water to deliver to Southern California.

So I think weighing those risks of, can we still get it, you know, can we build a system north or, you know, upstream of the Delta, and operate it in a way that maintains the health of the Delta, even when we’re in tough times, will our state choose to harm the ecosystems in the Delta and harm the you know, the fishermen that that depend on those healthy ecosystems, arm harm the agricultural farmers in the Delta in order To divert water to agriculture in the Central Valley, or, you know, Southern California water needs. I think those are, you know, a lot of questions in the air, a lot of things to be worked out.

We can, you know, in the meantime, while those studies are being done and those impacts are better understood, we can continue to invest here in Southern California and see how far we can get to build resilience here.

Has there been cuts by the new administration in Washington to funding for, say, the Metropolitan Water District, or did the Metropolitan Water District or LA County or LA City rely upon or the state rely upon Washington for funding of major water projects, or is that mostly funded by the city, the county and the state?

Yeah, there is federal funding available for large infrastructure projects. Historically, water has always been under invested at all levels of government. When you look at, you know, compare it to energy or transportation, that’s why. We have a lot of water systems that are antiquated. Why we have, you know, systems that are well beyond their lifespan, you know, across the US, and why we haven’t, you know, been able to make the investments in in a more innovative infrastructure like they have in other parts of the world.

And I think we’re, you know, given the cost cutting at the federal government, I think it’s something that needs to be considered when we’re looking at these large investments. I don’t believe that we were looking at that significant federal funding was considered for the Delta conveyance project. It does seem to be predominantly paid for by the folks that will be using it, is my understanding. But there are other infrastructure projects that have received significant funding from the federal government, including metropolitan pure water project.

Well, couple quick things I’d like to cover before we wrap this up, marine protected areas. Has there been a progress being made on that here in Southern California? And tell us about it.

We are really lucky to live in California, where our state administration is taking very seriously their commitment to 30 by 30. So 30 by 30 is a global effort to preserve 30% of our wild lands and 30% of our oceans. And the state of California has signed on to that global treaty to say that do share their commitment. And right now, the state is going through a process to evaluate our marine protected areas towards our 30% goal, and there are conversations and negotiations about what types of protections would constitute being able to count that area towards this 30 by 30, because marine protected areas have different standards of care across the state.

There are some places where fishing is allowed, others where it’s not. And so we really want to get some clarity, and the state is working on that right now, and there are tons of advocates, including scientists from heal the bay, that are engaging in that process.

Last time we talked about the micro plastics and Senator Ben Allen’s bill, SB 54 my under single use plastics and trying to reduce or eliminate those, my understanding is the plastics industry kind of pushed back and got an extra year to kind of implement this stuff. Where is it at right now? And what do you see is kind of the next step, and in this trajectory towards limiting or eliminating the use of plastics here in California?

Yeah, there was a huge setback in the implementation of SB 54 I think it’s really unfortunate that that decision was made. We every day see plastics impacting our environment. We hear more and more studies about how plastics and micro plastics and nano plastics are impacting our health, and it’s really important that we take steps to try to reduce single use plastics in our environment. And we, you know, we know that slowing down, you know that we can’t increase production.

You know that we really need to slow down the production of these single use plastics and really transition to a culture of reuse. And there are really great examples. There are a lot of great companies that are coming out that are helping folks to do it. We’re seeing large venues take on more reuse, moving away from plastic cups for for refreshments at their venues.

Really excited to see what’s going to happen here in Los Angeles with the commitment to reducing plastics for the LA 28 Olympics, but we really need strong regulations like SB 54 was intending to put out to achieve all of these things in to keep that momentum going. So I’m really hopeful that this, this state, doesn’t allow for any more delays and moves forward with finding ways to reduce the production of single use plastics that are getting into California and and into our environment.

Well, Tracy, it’s been a pleasure having you on the program again, and an amazing amount of you know things that you’re involved in and great work that you’re doing, and kudos to you and all the organizations that you work with to make our environment safer and healthier here in California and beyond.

So best of luck. And also, everybody check out heal the bay and all the great work that Tracy’s doing, we’ll certainly have links to all of social media and all that stuff. So people can get involved and and volunteer.

Yeah. And if you’re in SoCal, come hang out. Come to one of our volunteer events. Come do community science with us. If you’re interested in the marine protected areas, we have an MPA Watch program. There are a lot of ways to get involved, so check out our website and come join us.

We will do that. So thank you, Tracy, and we’ll talk soon, hopefully.

Thank you. It’s great chatting with you.

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