Struggling Martinez Sturgeon (The Fish, Not Baseball Team) Could Get a Boost from Bay Area Regulators on Wednesday
Regional Water Quality Control Board may go to bat for threatened species by requiring wastewater agencies to reduce nitrogen discharges that cause harmful algal blooms; Central San pushes back
While Martinez’s professional baseball team, the Sturgeon, struggles through a tough season on the field, its namesake that populates the Carquinez Strait is faring even worse. But that may start to change Wednesday when the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board takes up a proposal that could give the beleaguered ancient fish species — which has existed for an estimated 200 million years and can live up to 100 years — a lifeline.
Board members will consider whether to approve a “revised tentative order” that would require 40 Bay Area wastewater treatment plants, including Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) and Mountain View Sanitary District (MVSD) in Martinez, to collectively reduce harmful nitrogen discharges into the Bay by 40% over the next 10 years. Excessive levels of nutrients such as nitrogen, which in wastewater primarily result from human waste, cause algae growth and “blooms” that can upset the Bay’s ecosystem and threaten fish, among other environmental and health impacts, according to the water board.
According to a staff report accompanying the water board proposal, the California Fish and Game Commission recently added white sturgeon as a candidate species for listing under the California Endangered Species Act, in part because of the number of white sturgeon killed by harmful algae blooms in 2022 and 2023. White sturgeon numbers in California have dropped by about two-thirds since the early 2000s, according to a report cited by the water board.
A dead sturgeon is seen floating along the Martinez waterfront last week.
The staff report goes on to say:
Furthermore, harmful algae blooms have the potential to increase health care costs through direct contact, airborne transmission, and fish and shellfish poisoning. Allowing harmful algal blooms to be fueled by excessive nutrient loads would lead to devastating impacts to San Francisco Bay, its habitats, and its people, with incalculable losses. The investment in nutrient-removal technology is necessary and will benefit the entire Bay Area community.
According to the water board, municipal wastewater treatment plants account for about 86% of the total nitrogen load to San Francisco Bay during the dry season. As a result, the proposal targets reductions in “dry-weather total inorganic nitrogen loads.”
The water board’s proposal, however, has drawn significant pushback, including from Central San, which has complained about the prohibitive costs associated with complying with the rule within the 10-year timeframe and argued that the problem of high nutrient levels is more severe in the South Bay, which should absorb more of the burden for addressing it.
Complying with the new rule would ultimately cost Central San customers $665 million, or nearly $5,500 per household, the agency estimates. “And because the proposed requirements do not reflect the science to date, there is no assurance that these costs would have the intended benefit to the Bay.”
The agency also argues that “the short timeline precludes Central San’s ability to implement thoughtful, multi-benefit solutions, such as regional recycled water projects that would reduce nutrient impacts to the Bay while also increasing precious water supplies.”
Central San is asking its ratepayers to sign a petition opposing the order and/or attend Wednesday’s public meeting either in person in Oakland or remotely to provide public comment to the board.
The much smaller Mountain View Sanitary District, on the other hand, says it foresees no problem complying with the proposed order.
That district “currently meets the proposed limits for the five-year load cap and will be able to meet the 10-year load cap with minimal effort,” MVSD General Manager Lilia M. Corona told Martinez News and Views correspondent Tom Lochner.
Central San and MVSD currently provide wastewater-treatment services to different areas of Martinez. MVSD is preparing to launch a study to explore the feasibility of consolidating its services with Central San’s.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board, meanwhile, has sought to refute Central San’s claims ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, saying that it will work with the agency “to provide a reasonable amount of time to undertake” the innovative solutions it is interested in pursuing. The board says it is not allowed through its permit regulations to provide a compliance timeline beyond 10 years but that “more options may be available in the future.”
The water board is scheduled to take up an accompanying resolution at Wednesday’s meeting that would direct its staff to “evaluate and identify regulatory mechanisms to provide more time for dischargers” to meet the new order’s requirements.
The board also contends that Central San’s $665 million compliance cost estimate is “based on worst-case assumptions,” and “it should not take 10 years to investigate and implement conversion of its wet weather storage basins for multi-benefit treatment wetlands.”
On its website, Central San has also produced charts showing that acute dissolved oxygen levels, which can result from algal blooms and cause fish kills, vary considerably throughout the Bay, and tend to be much higher in the South Bay.
“Although not all regions of the Bay are equally impacted, the tentative order requires an across-the-board 40% nutrient reduction. Yet there’s no guarantee this would have any impact on water quality in Central San’s Suisun Bay discharge location,” the agency argues.
The water board counters that observed nutrient levels in Suisun Bay are comparable to the South Bay and as a result, “Suisun Bay is similarly vulnerable to harmful algal blooms.”
The board goes on to state that last year, San Pablo Bay experienced a harmful algal bloom that resulted in at least 10 dead sturgeon, which it said is almost certainly an undercount, as many dead fish drift to the bottom.
While the focus of the proposal is nitrogen discharges by wastewater agencies, questions also have been raised about the impact of discharges from local petroleum refineries, including PBF Energy’s Martinez Refining Co. on Pacheco Boulevard and Marathon Petroleum on Solano Way.
In comments it submitted about the proposed rule, the environmental group San Francisco Baykeeper asked that the water board also require nitrogen load reductions from the refineries.
Citing 2011 data, the water board said refineries combined are responsible for only about 2% of nutrients discharged into the Bay. However, it acknowledged that the data is old and noted that in January of this year, it “required the refineries to undertake updated monitoring, to report nutrient concentrations and loads, and to assess treatment optimization and upgrade options.”
The board said in its response to Baykeeper that it will use these findings to determine whether imposing effluent limitations on the refineries is appropriate.
“Because refineries are likely a relatively small source of nutrients to the Bay, any nutrient reductions they might make would be unlikely to meaningfully offset costs to wastewater agencies,” the water board said.
Central San, meanwhile, is among the top five dischargers of nutrients to the Bay, according to the water board, constituting over 60% of the nutrient discharge to Suisun Bay from municipal wastewater treatment plants.
In recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, PBF Energy revealed that its Martinez refinery was cited by the water board for allegedly exceeding its effluent limitations and discharging to the Carquinez Strait without authorization in October 2022, January 2023 and June 2023. As part of a proposed settlement with the water board to resolve the allegations, PBF said it has agreed to spend $2.25 million to fund restoration of a marsh near the refinery.
The threats to local sturgeon aren’t limited to algal blooms resulting from wastewater discharges, however. Posts last week by a Martinez resident on the Facebook group Martinez Raves and Rants about a dead sturgeon she observed at the Marina included this comment from a researcher at the California Sturgeon Research Project.
The Carquinez Strait area has been found to be an area of unusually high mortality for adult white sturgeon. It is believed that the high volume of shipping traffic, large tankers and ports in the area, along with the narrow geography of the Strait (when compared to the greater SF Bay), has led to an increased sturgeon vessel interactions, and that is why so many fish are found in the area. We are currently trying to get funding for a more in depth research project in the Carquinez Strait area to try and estimate the population level impact of this observed mortality.
A study by the UC Santa Cruz Cooperative Institute for Marine Ecosystems and Climate (CIMEC), published by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, says that while the magnitude and extent of the threat to white sturgeon from vessel strikes is not fully understood, it “is apparent through both anecdotal reports and now eyewitness accounts that vessel strikes pose a risk of both injury and mortality to white sturgeon in the Carquinez Strait,” as well as the San Francisco Estuary and perhaps elsewhere. It recommends as a first step the creation of a registry to track vessel sturgeon strikes.
“Such a database could assist fishery managers in making future decisions in regard to white sturgeon, a long-lived fish that faces significant threats throughout its native range,” the study concludes.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife recommends that anyone who comes across a dead sturgeon report it to CASturgeonResearch@gmail.com. Provide as much information as possible, including:
Detailed location (such as GPS coordinates, landmarks, cellphone map app screenshots).
Pictures ( include common items for scale such as coins or dollar bills, beverage can, etc.).
Do not move or damage the carcass. Specialists will locate the carcass and take measurements and samples as part of this ongoing monitoring study.
Wednesday’s Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting will start at 9 a.m. at the Elihu M. Harris Building First Floor Auditorium, 1515 Clay St., in Oakland. Information on how to attend in person or remotely can be found at the following link:
https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/board_info/agendas/2024/July/7-10-2024.pdf
In other Sturgeon news…
On the baseball diamond, the Sturgeon snapped a five-game losing streak Saturday night with a marathon 14-inning win over the Bakersfield Train Robbers. Erik Whitfield’s double plated Andrew Curran for a 3-2 victory in a game that lasted nearly four hours at Waterfront Park. Josue Rivera pitched four innings of scoreless ball, striking out seven, in relief to earn the win. The Sturgeon improved to 14-23 on the season.