FRESNO OFFICE REGION PROJECTS
California Product Stewardship Council
Project Title: Sustainable Medication Take Back for the Central Valley
Watershed: Tulare Lake Basin
Grant Request: $99,950 – 24 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Pollution Prevention
The proposed project would expand the award winning “Don’t Rush to Flush, Meds in the Bin We All Win!” (DRTF) program developed by California Product Stewardship Council (CPSC) with funding from a previous Rose Foundation grant. DRTF protects water quality in the Central Valley region by establishing safe and convenient medication collection sites and promoting their use to the public in lieu of flushing or trashing medications. Reducing flushing is the primary goal because wastewater treatment plants typically can only remove a small portion of pharmaceutical compounds, leaving the rest to flow directly into waterways. DRTF also discourages trashing because landfill leachate, which is often pumped out of the landfill and processed at the same wastewater treatment plants, can present a similar risk for contamination of waterways. CPSC will collaborate with community partners and establish up to eighteen (18) new medication collections bins depending on funding available and promote the DRTF program to the community. In addition to strong governmental and community contacts in the Tulare Basin which would allow CPSC to quickly launch a SEP project there, CPSC’s Don’t Rush to Flush program is modular and could be extended into the Sacramento or Redding regions if SEP funding was available in those areas.
California Rural Legal Assistance
Project Title: Water Quality Planning and Well Rehabilitation
Watershed: Tulare Lake Basin
Grant Request: $150,000 – 24 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Well Rehabilitation or Replacement
Del Rey is a disadvantaged unincorporated farmworker community in southeastern Fresno County. It is served by three active private wells operated by the Community Service District and has two additional standby wells. Del Rey’s most recent water testing results show that the community’s water contains 99,000 parts per trillion of TCP, over 19 times the notification level, and significantly higher than the Public Health Goal and proposed MCL of 5 ppt. Eight additional wells have been rendered completely dry and are unusable – and also represent possible future pathways for pollution migrations. CRLA seeks funding to support the community in its efforts to assess the extent of contamination in its wells and develop mitigation and treatment options to bring the level of TCP within an acceptable range, and to foster and encourage robust public participation throughout the process. CRLA will draft a final report chronicling the process for a disadvantaged community to remediate contaminated drinking water sources. The report will include an examination of the steps taken to ensure success including: (1) meaningful community engagement and education; (2) improved governance capacity; (3) increased local technical expertise; and (4) the use of a Technical Assistance Committee (TAC) to ensure meaningful public involvement in the well remediation process. The overall goal of the project is to ensure that the Community Service District consider this community input the recommendations of the planning study on the selection of a final remediation plan. The study will also provide a highly-replicable blueprint for many other communities in the San Joaquin Valley that face similar well contamination problems.
Central California Environmental Justice Network
Project Title: Improving Water Quality by Enhancing Community Monitoring and Documentation Techniques
Watershed: Tulare Lake Basin
Grant Request: $30,000 – 12 months
Theme: Public Awareness/ Pollution Prevention / Water Quality Monitoring
Central California Environmental Justice Network (CCEJN) is proposing to use the resident reporting networks Identifying Violations Affecting Neighborhoods (IVAN) Kern and IVAN Fresno to engage residents in actively monitoring and reporting water contamination hazards in order to prevent and treat water contamination. Residents will learn prevalent sources of pollution that harm water quality and ways water contaminants affect their health; how to identify the sources of their drinking water and based on that accessing and understand the annual Consumer Confidence Reports that describe their local drinking water quality; best practices for identifying and monitoring threats such as illegal water discharge, dairy nutrient management plans, produced water injection methods, wastewater runoff, and household items that harm groundwater; d) and, reporting water contamination using the IVAN reporting networks. The project will expand the education campaign started in 2015 in order to reach 100 additional residents. These residents will learn to identify water contamination hazards, and will learn to report these hazards to IVAN Fresno and IVAN Kern. CCEJN will also establish two new “Water Watchers” groups that will actively participate in data gathering. This project builds on work conducted under previous SEPs.
Community Water Center
Project Title: Clean Water for Disadvantage Communities
Watershed: Tulare Lake Basin
Grant Request: $100,000 – 12 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Water Quality Monitoring
The Community Water Center will further efforts to ensure clean sources of drinking water for disadvantaged communities (DACs) in the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Lake Basin. CWC will accomplish this through three main strategies: 1) Community Outreach and Education in Disadvantaged Communities; 2) Water Quality Testing in Disadvantaged Communities; and 3) Connecting DAC residents with contaminated water to resources on immediate access to safe water and long-term solution options. Water quality testing will include testing for common local groundwater contaminants including nitrate, arsenic, DBCP, uranium, 123 TCP and total coliform, and will include a QA/QC element. Testing of access points in addition to private wells will help inform residents on where they can get immediate access to safe drinking water in their homes and communities. The overall program will help develop a better understanding of local groundwater quality and identify impacts on beneficial uses, particularly for disadvantaged community drinking water supplies. The well testing process may also identify inactive wells that could serve as pollution conduits for contaminants in groundwater. The outreach and education element will center around the AGUA coalition, a grassroots coalition of over 80 representatives from 21 low-income and people of color communities, including youth and private well owners, 12 community-based organizations and 9 non-profit agencies dedicated to securing safe, clean and affordable drinking water in the San Joaquin Valley. Linking DAC residents that have contaminated water with immediate resources and long-term solution projects will ensure that water quality needs of disadvantaged communities will be addressed and sources of community drinking water supplies will be protected and improved. This project builds on past work completed under a previous SEP.
Friends of the River
Project Title: Friends of the San Joaquin River
Watershed: San Joaquin River
Grant Request: $75,000 – 24 months
Theme: Pollution Prevention / Water Quality Monitoring / Watershed Assessment / Public Awareness
This project will gather better baseline water quality information for two stretches of the River (Redinger Reservoir to Millerton Reservoir and Millerton Reservoir to Mendota). To ensure the project engages and benefits the people living in these communities, Friends of the River will work with the California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities program in Fresno, the Big Sandy Rancheria, the San Joaquin River Preservation Trust and American Whitewater to organizing water-monitoring teams. Outreach and recruitment for the teams will center around Firebuagh, (where 91 percent of the population is Hispanic/Latino, 40 percent of the community falls below the poverty line, 35 percent are unemployed, and 50 percent of the population has less than a high school education), the historical center of Fresno (a landing place for many waves of immigrants, including Hmong, Cambodian, and Lao refugees where 43 percent of the community falls below the poverty line, 22 percent are unemployed, and 63 percent have less than a high school education, and the Big Sandy Rancheria (where 80% of households live at or below Low to Moderate Income levels). The teams will collect water quality data on contaminants and conditions including mercury, Diazinon, Chlorpyrifos, Escherichia coli, Nitrate, Phosphate, pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, temperature and turbidity. The data will be cooperatively shared with the CVRWQCB, the City of Firebaugh, the Water Division of Fresno, and the Fresno Irrigation District. In addition to generating valuable water quality data, involving community members in collecting and organizing the information will help boost increased community participation in planning and management of pollution prevention and abatement programs. The project also layers in a broader watershed-oriented education program to encourage pollution reduction and increase awareness of water quality issues.
Madera Coalition for Community Justice
Project Title: Madera Community for Sustainable Water
Watershed: San Joaquin River
Grant Request: $30,000 – 12 months
Theme: Public Awareness
Madera Coalition for Community Justice aims to build capacity in Madera County to make water management and planning process more inclusive. MCCJ’s constituents are predominantly Latino, and a large number of new immigrants and farmworker families, including the largest Indigenous (Mixteco, Zapoteco, Triques, etc.) community north of the Mexican border. According to US Census data, a remarkable 34.8% of children in Madera County lived below the federal poverty line in 2012. The project will address the issue of water security and management using the following approach: outreach to make community members aware of planning and participation opportunities; education so that community members are able to constructively participate; and public input to governmental agencies that reflects the community’s practical experiences, attitudes and beliefs in order to contribute to decision-making before policies are made. Through the broad outreach and series of community workshops and training sessions, local community members will gain a better understanding of how to promoting safe potable water, groundwater protection and recharge, flood control and habitat preservation, and knowledge and skills to develop a comprehensive community water management plan. The thrust of the project to mobilize the community is twofold: (1) empower community members to become informed and active participants in local, regional and state watershed planning and protection processes, especially related to upgrading of water system, improving community infrastructure and remediating septic pollution and other contaminants; and, (2) establish a cadre of youth watershed stewards who will be trained on the fundamentals of protecting, restoring and improving our surface and groundwater through a 8 week course based on the USEPA Adopt-a-Watershed program, and field trips to the Fresno River and the San Joaquin River Parkway.
Rural Community Assistance Corporation
Project Title: Arsenic-free drinking water for Central Valley DACs
Watershed: Tulare-Buena Vista Lakes watershed in Fresno County
Grant Request: $100,000 – 12 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Water Quality Monitoring / Water Treatment
The project is a Point of Use (POU) program to provide safe drinking water to Central Valley disadvantaged communities (DACs), and would replicate RCAC’s current work in Arvin on the largest POU program ever to be funded by the State Water Resources Control Board. Initial outreach will be to Caruthers and Riverdale in Fresno County – both designated DACs with primary and secondary water contaminant issues. The outreach component, Agua4All, is an innovative campaign to increase access to and consumption of safe drinking water in low-income rural areas. In addition to publicizing the new filling stations, Agua4All raises awareness about the lack of safe drinking water access in many schools and communities. The goal of the project is to reduce exposure to arsenic – a toxic element that is both naturally occurring and artificially produced from industrial processes – present in the groundwater that is the source of drinking water for Caruthers and Riverdale. The program would remove arsenic along with dozens of other subtances from water at the point of use: in this case, the water bottle filling stations installed by RCAC. Although installing water filters is not the necessary long-term solution to improving the quality of the water in the Tulare-Buena Vista Lakes watershed, the installation of bottle filling stations equipped with POU filters will provide an interim solution that will greatly increase access to safe drinking water for the residents of Caruthers and Riverdale and will help protect public health now while research and implementation of a long-term solution is in process. At least 10 bottle filling stations equipped with POU filter systems designed to remove arsenic contamination will be installed. Each filling station will have a capacity monitor to ensure that filters are changed at appropriate intervals, and each station will have two filters installed in parallel to ensure adequate flow. In addition to receiving safe drinking water, community members will benefit financially when they no longer have to spend up to 10 percent of their income on bottled water.
The Wildlands Conservancy
Project Title: The Wolves Preservation Water Quality Improvement Project
Watershed: San Emigdio Mountains. / Southern Joaquin Valley
Grant Request: $100,000 – 12 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Riparian and Wetland Restoration / Water Quality Monitoring / Well Rehabilitation or Replacement
The project combines public access and education with water improvement project and watershed ecosystem restoration. Funding would allow the Wildlands Conservancy to drill a new well and install irrigation infrastructure very near their facilities, campgrounds, bathrooms, and nursery at the Wind Wolves Preserve in southern Kern County. This will allow a four-fold increase the annual number of native plants produced from approximately 10,000 to 40,000 containers (various sizes) per year. These plants will then be used in habitat restoration in programs in drainage corridors where rainwater currently goes highly unimpeded via incised channels all the way to the valley floor, never reaching the historic flood banks that created the large alluvial areas on the preserve. The project’s goal is to begin restoring this system to slow the velocity of water, accumulate sediment, and improve habitat conditions, groundwater recharge and water quality by reducing sediment. In total, 11 acres will be directly restored through this grant, including 5 acres of riparian habitat, 2 acres of valley oaks, 3 acres of alluvial shrub habitat, and 1 acre of native pollinator habitat. The Preserve hosts 18,000 visitors annually, including residents of Arvin, Lamont, Weedpatch and Greenfield, and educational programs include Ridgeview High and the Fairfax School District. Half of the Preserve’s staff are fluent in Spanish and educational materials about riparian and wetland ecosystems, and interpretive signage about the well project and riparian re-planting will be bi-lingual. The grant will be leveraged 1:1 by a combination of cash match and in-kind time and tools.
WildPlaces
Project Title: Kern/Tule Watersheds Disadvantaged Communities Water Quality Improvement and Outreach
Watershed: Tulare Lake Basin
Grant Request: $20,000 – 12 months
Theme: Riparian Restoration / Public Awareness / Pollution Prevention and Trash Clean Up
The project utilizes a holistic approach to water stewardship that includes community outreach and education combined with hands-on, place-based restorative activities. Wild Places teaches its participants that restoring meadows, like Long Meadow, is part of repairing an immense natural clean water system where the meadows act as natural sponges to that help store and filter water. 25 community members will participate in Long meadow restoration, and an additional 25 will participate in clean-up days to removing waste and pollution from the Tule and Kern River. Through these programs, community members have a tangible effect in improving water quality, and also increase their knowledge and overall community literacy about watershed health. By embracing an ecosystem-wide approach, and through water education, community outreach, land-based restoration, and stewardship activities, the project will engage disadvantaged communities to improve water and habitat quality. Protecting and restoring upland habitat and watersheds will help strengthen community fabric in the targeted disadvantaged communities by bringing diverse neighborhood members together to take action toward the common goal of watershed restoration. There is also a strong engagement component in the community. Watershed informational assemblies including a video, side presentation, and grade appropriate lecture about the water, ecosystem, water pollution, and what saving water means will be held at elementary schools in East Porterville and Arvin reaching approximately 1,000 total students. Presenters would be two Wildplaces youth leader staff, who are bi-lingual and local community members. Additional outreach activities will include bi-lingual presentations on topics on local surface and groundwater quality and what people can do to improve water quality, combined with local contests to encourage residences and businesses in East Porterville and Arvin to engage in voluntary pollution reduction and water conservation.
SACRAMENTO OFFICE REGION PROJECTS
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
Project Title: Realizing the Human Right to Water for Sacramento Valley Disadvantaged Communities
Watershed: Upper Sacramento River Watershed, Sacramento-Lower Cow-Lower Clear Watershed, Sacramento Headwaters Watershed, Sacramento-Upper Clear Watershed, and the Lower Cottonwood Watershed
Grant Request: $100,000 – 24 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Pollution Prevention / Watershed Assessment/ Water Quality Assessment
This project will expand on activities that EJCW already initiated under a previous, nearly-completed SEP (more than 75% complete) by providing watershed education and water justice capacity-building projects throughout the Sacramento River watershed. A primary focus of the expansion will be to engage water-disadvantaged communities in the upper Sacramento Valley, including, but not limited to: Chico, Redding, Anderson, Mt. Shasta, McCloud, Red Bluff and Willows. Based on specific local conditions, drinking water contaminants addressed in these watersheds will include primarily arsenic, nitrate, and hexavalent chromium; subsistence fishing threats including the protozoan Ichthyopthirius, heavy metals, mercury, and other industrial pollutants; contaminations related to homeless populations including fecal coliform, human waste, algae blooms caused by contaminant runoff, and other diseases capable of transmission via water; and pollution related to illegal dumping including paints, household chemicals, electronic waste, and other unknown pollutants that impact water quality and watershed health. Throughout the Sacramento Valley, EJCW will advance four main strategies: 1) disadvantaged community identification and water quality needs assessment; 2) community outreach and education in disadvantaged communities; 3) supporting community participation in watershed planning; and 4) providing technical assistance to disadvantaged communities, including the creation of community advocacy resources and organizing tools. Elements of the project will occur in both the Redding region and the Sacramento region.
Tri-Valley CAREs
Project Title: Stakeholder Involvement for Water Restoration & Sustainability in Western San Joaquin CountyDisadvantaged Communities
Watershed: San Joaquin Delta Watershed
Grant Request: $50,000 – 36 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Pollution Prevention / Water Quality Monitoring
The project will promote community capacity building in Tracy and the surrounding western San Joaquin County to improve access to safe and clean water for present and future generations. At its core, the project will initiate an IVAN-like process that builds on Tri-Valley CAREs’ longstanding relationship with the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which owns Site 300, and Tri-Valley CAREs’ Tracy-area membership and Tracy-based environmental advisory committee to bring together Tracy-area stakeholders and multiple agencies involved in water quality decisions. The primary pollutants addressed which affect surface waters and groundwater aquifers in San Joaquin County are Volatile Organic Compounds, high explosive compounds, nitrate, perchlorate and, in some areas of the County where nuclear weapons testing has occurred, depleted uranium and radioactive hydrogen (tritium). The project’s goal is to beneficially impact water quality decision-making by educating residents and empowering their engagement as stakeholders with a focus on Spanish-speakers and youth. Its methods involve bi-lingual community outreach, listening sessions, development of materials, a youth video contest and community-wide meetings. The project will result in direct community involvement in public hearings and other water quality processes. The three year project term reflects the need for sustained community involvement in the complex decisions around the Site 300 Superfund site.
Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center
Project Title: Water in Balance – Four Key Actions
Watershed: Watersheds of the Mokelumne, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and part of the upper Merced River
Grant Request: $67,525 – 24 months
Theme: Pollution Prevention / Public Awareness / Water Quality Monitoring / Watershed Assessment
Central Sierra Environmental Resources Center (CSERC) is uniquely positioned to directly respond to the multiple threats exacerbated by the past years of drought: competing water demands, lack of water quality, and degraded watershed health on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. First, CSERC will serve as a watershed watchdog across 2,000,000+ acres of public and private watershed lands in the foothills and mountains of the region. CSERC biologists will locate watershed threats, notify agencies, and raise awareness. Second, CSERC will do water quality monitoring to pinpoint segments of streams polluted by E. coli and fecal coliform, or impacted by sedimentation from degraded banks. All testing is done with a QAPP Plan that is fully compliant with State Water Board sampling requirements. Third, CSERC is on the forefront of developing collaborative water solutions by engaging in 4 separate collaborative processes and bringing CSERC’s successful collaborative experience to often-polarized discussions. Fourth, CSERC will enhance water conservation by providing online water issue articles through its bilingual Spanish/English website, social networking outreach, and a highly praised program that brings slide show presentations to schools and community groups in Modesto, Stockton, Lodi, Manteca, Turlock and other urban areas of the Central Valley, reaching 7,000 students and community members each year. At least 50% of the students in the schools targeted by the project receive free of reduced-price lunch, and 40 – 65% of the families in these target communities are living under twice the federal poverty level line.
The South Yuba River Citizens League
Project Title: Growing Green: Reducing Water Quality Impacts from Marijuana Grows in the Yuba Watershed
Watershed: Yuba Watershed
Grant Request: $63,500
Theme:Pollution Prevention / Public Awareness
The project expands on a previous SEP (Triangle SEP) to continue to work directly with DACs in the Yuba watershed to research and develop Best Management Practices (BMPs) pertaining to marijuana grow operations. SYRCL will target water quality impacts created by the overuse and illegal disposal of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, the erosion of sediment caused by improper forest management practices, accidental dumping of diesel fuels, and overuse of and water diversions from natural streams and rivers. Outreach will include BMP workshops for growers, and disseminating educational materials to local farmers and interested community members. This project will create Cannabis BMP webinars, which will be available for free online to reach a widespread audience and have a large impact on the ongoing issue of pollution sourced from unregulated cannabis farms. While the project’s focus is the Yuba watershed, the materials, results, and outcomes will be applicable to communities and watersheds throughout California’s Central Valley and beyond.
REDDING OFFICE REGION PROJECTS
California Urban Streams Alliance – The Stream Team
Project Title: The Stream Team General Support
Watershed: Sacramento River Watershed, Big Chico Creek, Butte Creek, Feather River
Grant Request: $48,000 – 12 months
Theme: Riparian Restoration / Water Quality Monitoring
Funding would support expansion of an existing citizen monitoring program in Big Chico Creek that would maximize the benefits to disadvantaged communities (DACs) working on water quality issues in the watersheds of Butte County. Butte County is one of the poorest counties in the state. Childhood poverty, and thus obstacles to opportunity, are high, with over 24% of children under 18 living in poverty. This project particularly targets young adults from low income neighborhoods and their families, with a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds (Latino, African American, Hmong) to develop their interest and skills in watershed science, which they can translate into career paths, and to participate in environmental decision making. This proposal is an update of a similar proposal which was developed specifically for Big Chico Creek, and which was accepted for 2016 Project List, but was not funded. Current collaborations that would be leveraged by this project include a project with Chico Unified School District, Butte County Office of Education, and the City of Chico to implement a Clean Water Science Ambassador program in after-school programs, and Low Impact Development (LID) projects at nine schools in DAC neighborhoods (SWRCB DROPS and National Fish and Wildlife grants).
The Project will leverage collaborative resources and local knowledge to provide efficient implementation of watershed assessment and enhancement projects. The objective is to demonstrate the benefits of utilizing citizen involvement and knowledge that will accomplish low-cost watershed assessments and ecosystem restoration, while also demonstrating the role collaborative watershed stewardship can play in helping achieve federal, state, and local resource management objectives. The desired outcomes are to help community members achieve specific local green infrastructure projects that enhance water quality such as installing rain gardens, bioswales, rain barrels, pervious treatments for sidewalks and driveways, downspout diversions to vegetated areas, turf replacement with drought tolerant, native habitat landscaping, and pervious pavers and driveways. In addition to the Butte County watersheds that are the primary focus of this proposal, the activities could be easily adapted to benefit other subwatersheds within Butte, Glenn, and Tehama counties, and the DACs within, as water quality challenges arise. Thus The Stream Team has the experience knowledge and flexibility to provide SEP-related services to disadvantaged communities on a case-by-case basis throughout much of the northern Sacramento Valley region.
Environmental Justice Coalition for Water
Project Title: Realizing the Human Right to Water for Sacramento Valley Disadvantaged Communities
Watershed: Upper Sacramento River Watershed, Sacramento-Lower Cow-Lower Clear Watershed, Sacramento Headwaters Watershed, Sacramento-Upper Clear Watershed, and the Lower Cottonwood Watershed
Grant Request: $100,000 – 24 months
Theme: Public Awareness / Pollution Prevention / Watershed Assessment/ Water Quality Assessment
This project will expand on activities that EJCW already initiated under a previous, nearly-completed SEP (more than 75% complete) by providing watershed education and water justice capacity-building projects throughout the Sacramento River watershed. A primary focus of the expansion will be to engage water-disadvantaged communities in the upper Sacramento Valley, including, but not limited to: Chico, Redding, Anderson, Mt. Shasta, McCloud, Red Bluff and Willows. Based on specific local conditions, drinking water contaminants addressed in these watersheds will include primarily arsenic, nitrate, and hexavalent chromium; subsistence fishing threats including the protozoan Ichthyopthirius, heavy metals, mercury, and other industrial pollutants; contaminations related to homeless populations including fecal coliform, human waste, algae blooms caused by contaminant runoff, and other diseases capable of transmission via water; and pollution related to illegal dumping including paints, household chemicals, electronic waste, and other unknown pollutants that impact water quality and watershed health. Throughout the Sacramento Valley, EJCW will advance four main strategies: 1) disadvantaged community identification and water quality needs assessment; 2) community outreach and education in disadvantaged communities; 3) supporting community participation in watershed planning; and 4) providing technical assistance to disadvantaged communities, including the creation of community advocacy resources and organizing tools. Elements of the project will occur in both the Redding region and the Sacramento region.
