From earlec@water.ca.gov Fri Dec 11 10:16:32 1998 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with ESMTP id KAA28654 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:16:31 -0800 Received: from cd-eso.water.ca.gov (cd-eso.water.ca.gov [136.200.172.76]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.1+UW98.09) with ESMTP id KAA12446 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:16:27 -0800 Received: from cdeso195.water.ca.gov (cdeso195.water.ca.gov [136.200.172.195]) by cd-eso.water.ca.gov (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA04578 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:16:55 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19981211101640.0080aac0@cd-eso> X-Sender: earlec@cd-eso X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:16:40 -0800 To: indknow@u.washington.edu From: Earle Cummings Subject: Newspaper clipping Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Will environmental agencies next adopt a spiritual relationship with the Earth? I think this clipping is the first example I have seen in the popular press of California water quality regulatory agencies acknowledging the effectiveness of indigenous institutions. Sorry for the length of the article. Earle WATERSHED PROTECTION Meeting may be watershed in war on pollution Eliminating urban runoff group's goal San Diego Union-Tribune - December 11, 1998 By Steve La Rue, staff writer =20 ENCINITAS -- About 50 government officials and concerned citizens made progress yesterday toward a goal many American Indian societies achieved in California about 300 years ago. The new-again concept is to organize government by watersheds. A watershed is a geographical basin in which all rain and runoff water drains into the same river. Surface runoff in the 750-square-mile watershed of the Santa Margarita River, for example, all flows down tributaries that empty into that river, which flows from Riverside County into San Diego County and then to the sea. California's American Indians had spiritual and other reasons for dividing up the world by its watersheds. For today's Californians, the idea is to take a more effective approach to cutting down on a type of water pollution called urban runoff. It's a noxious stew of hundreds of kinds of pollutants from thousands of sources, including pesticides and fertilizers dumped on lawns and washed into creeks; waste oil poured down street culverts and washed by rainwater into the same creeks, and particle-type air pollutants washed onto the land by rain, and then into streams and creeks. It also is called, "non-point-source" pollution because it doesn't come from a single source. "It is clear that the water quality problems that remain are related to non-point-source pollution," said Jane Diamond, who administers water quality programs for the San Francisco regional office of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The scene yesterday was Quail Botanical Gardens, where about 50 government officials, environmentalists, American Indian representatives and concerned citizens gathered in a county-sponsored meeting termed a "watershed leadership and coordinating conference." The point of the conference was to begin to identify the people in different agencies and volunteer groups who are working on watershed management plans and allowing them to compare notes and better coordinate their efforts. "Maybe we can take the environmental approach by looking at watersheds as places where we can all cooperate," said Greg Cox, chairman of the County Board of Supervisors. The EPA has adopted the watershed approach, Diamond said, because "we have found that self-determination among local watershed groups is really the best way to get at this pollution." Organizing water-quality monitoring and pollution prevention efforts by watershed would be more effective but will not be easy, said John Robertus, executive officer of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board in San Diego -- one of nine state boards that enforce water quality laws across California. "It has taken decades to screw up the watersheds and we aren't going to correct them overnight," Robertus said. "You can take any watershed in the area and it is a collage of overlapping jurisdictions." "It takes a lot of cooperation and good will" to develop a coordinated approach to managing them, said Leigh Johnson, chairwoman of the meeting and a representative of the County Farm and Home Adviser Department. Major watersheds in San Diego County follow its major rivers, from north to south, the Santa Margarita, San Luis Rey, San Dieguito, San Diego, Sweetwater and Otay. Smaller watersheds surround creeks in the Pe=F1asquitos and Carlsbad areas, and inland mountain areas that shed rainwater into creeks that run into the desert also are watersheds. San Diego County imports from 70 to 95 percent of its drinking water from the Colorado River and Northern California rivers. This is one reason that water quality in urban and suburban watersheds has been a largely environmental issue in the recent past. But non-point-source water pollution in the suburbs seems destined to become a growing health issue as well, said David Gibson, watershed biologist for the city of San Diego. "We are probably looking at five to 10 years before the Lower Otay Reservoir will look much like the Lake Murray Reservoir (in San Carlos) -- surrounded by development," he said. Lake Murray is a outdoor holding tank for imported water. The much larger Lower Otay Reservoir, by contrast, often contains large volumes of rain runoff water. When surrounded by houses and parking lots, the pesticides, toxics and pollutants that rains wash off these areas will be bound for the reservoir and the city's drinking water supply.=20 "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit= there." WILL ROGERS Earle Cummings, Wetlands Coordination Department of Water Resources 3251 S Street, Room 120 Sacramento, CA 95816 Tel (916)227-7519 Fax (916)227-7554 .