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News Round-Up

Over 650,000 Acre-Feet of Bay Area Wastewater could be Recycled according to a draft feasibility study recently completed by BurRec and 15 local water and wastewater agencies. The study surveyed local demand for recycled water and the costs of providing it, and also researched potential markets for the recycled water outside the Bay Area. Out of 30 different water use, storage, treatment and management options four were identified as the most technically and economically feasible. Each marries tertiary treatment of all wastewater and maximum local use of recycled water with export of the remaining water to one of four different areas: the Delta Mendota Canal Service area, the Delta itself, the Monterey Bay area and a combination of the latter two. Stakeholders and the interested public will discuss the new study at a meeting this August. (510)251-2888 ext.3402

A Fake Coffin at the Foot of the Unocal Clock Tower is where 150 costumed citizens, environmentalists, fisherpeople and refinery workers laid the oil company's toxic pollution policies symbolically to rest on July 5, according to local activists. The event - a rally and parade cosponsored by 29 different groups - was a kickoff for a new people's campaign to get Unocal to stop selenium and dioxin discharges to the Bay and to invest in cleaner refining. (415)243-8373

A Recent Agreement Proposing Broad Institutional, Financial, Structural and Operational Changes to the State Water Project has environmentalists worried on several counts. The Monterey Agreement lays out 14 principles which would revise the way the project's water is allocated and transferred among urban and agricultural contractors, delete a key clause in the contracts that acknowledges a state of permanent water shortage and reaffirm a long-standing commitment to complete the project (the original vision for a completed SWP included the never-built and environmentally controversial Peripheral Canal). In a comment letter on the May 1995 Draft EIS done on the agreement, the Bay Institute's Gary Bobker criticizes the EIS for eliminating the "escape clause that could adjust contract entitlements downward to meet realities of water supply situation" and for falling far short of exploring all the fisheries and water quality impacts of "building out" the project (adding new storage and conveyance facilities). But according to Steve Macaulay of the State Water Contractors, the language in the agreement is "more of a commitment to meet water needs than a commitment to build X, Y and Z." (916)447-7357 or (415)721-7680

The Builders of the Controversial 11,000-Home, Contra Costa Dougherty Valley Project have agreed to make a "best effort" to obtain water via the Dublin-San Ramon water district instead of from the water-strapped and reluctant East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). If their efforts fail, EBMUD has agreed to accept annexation of the new development into its district, but not until the year 2002. The agreement was settled out of court and approved by the EBMUD Board on August 8. It disappointed environmentalists, in part because a decision at the appeals court level could have provided a statewide precedent for deciding similar conflicts between urban growth and water supply in the future. (510)867-3250

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