On Wednesday, Oct 16, Chuck Parker and Bob Terry attended a “Air Quality Roundtable” sponsored by Assemblyman V. Manuel Perez, and the Clinton Foundation Health Matters Initiative. It was held at UCR Palm Desert. The subject was really the potential disaster that would come if the Salton Sea is allowed to dry up. Representatives from many agencies and groups were present, including SCAQMD, Imperial Irrigation District, Imperial Valley Air Pollution Control District and Promotores (a east valley grass roots group you may remember from last years Environmental and Leadership Summit) A powerpoint on Owens Lake led off the program. Ted Schede (Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District) showed photos of the monster dust clouds caused by Los Angeles theft of their water. He told of the horrific effect these clouds have on neighboring communities. He told us that the Salton Sea is three times the size of Owens Lake. What he did not say (but Bob noted to the assembly later) is that because Owens was drained in 1913, the Salton Sea has had 100 years to accumulate pesticides, fungicides, insecticides and fertilizers, making it potentially much more deadly). Ted also told us of the successes they have had as a result of winning a lawsuit against Los Angeles, that resulted in 75,000 acre feet of water and $12 Billion dollars worth of restoration. Ted told of the PM 10 readings and that were the highest in the nation. They estimate that 10% of that is PM 2.5. Again, that PM 2.5 may not be as deadly as the stuff under the Salton Sea, or what comes from the Sentinel. He told us it cost LA $2700 a ton (over a dollar a pound) to clean up the PM 10. John Benoit (our Supervisor who sits on both the SCAQMD board and the Salton Sea Authority) left the meeting after the powerpoint. Chuck and Bob noticed he has a new straw hat (for those who remember the magic hats skit). Bruce Wilcox of Imperial Irrigation District talked of the QSA that will take 4 million acre feet of water from the Salton Sea, starting in 2017. He stated that California agreed to restore the Salton Sea. (That is debatable, in fact a court upheld the decision, but the state has long said they will not have an open ended purse. In my opinion the QSA is a deeply flawed agreement, and the signatories of it should be held responsible for the costs both in money and health that will result.) Bruce said 103 sq miles of plata will be exposed because of the QSA. Dr. Phillip Fine from SCAQMD spoke next. He said that SCAQMD is in charge of the top 1/3 of the Salton Sea, Imperial Vally APCD the southern 2/3. He made the statement that “PM 2.5 is not an issue in the Coachella Valley”. That we need to work on “mobile sources” (trucks and cars?). He doesn’t “know if it will be as bad as Owens Lake” (worse). He mentioned the Sentinel and $51 million that was gained from mitigation. He also talked of pollution “offsets” that may be available to businesses around the sea. When Dr. Fine was done, Bob raised his hand. Bob corrected his $51 million. Bob told the assembly that it was $53 million and that SCAQMD took $2.5 million off the top for “administration”. Bob stated that there were no offsets avail as the Sentinel took all the legal offsets and that SCAQMD had to make up some from “thin air” from companies long closed. Bob stated that two weeks ago Chuck and Bob delivered a letter to the Supervisor’s meeting with a formal request for three PM 2.5 monitors, one in Desert Hot Springs near the Sentinel, one near the Salton Sea because of the sea drying up, and one in between. Bob talked a little about PM 2.5. Chuck spoke of the monitors avail in Orange County, and “arn’t we entitled to the same health consideration as the people in Orange County?” Dr. Emily Nelson, a “health and environmental risk consultant” for CVAG taked about PM 2.5, that it behaves “almost as a gas” in how it can enter your body without even breathing it in. She spoke of increased “emergency room” needs and “increased mortality”, how it affects infants and seniors and those with existing lung problems. It looks like someone HAS been reading our fliers, after all. She spoke of LA’s pollution. She closed it with “we have the best and brightest minds” working on the problem. Where have we heard that one...Oh, yeah, It also is the lie they told us about nuclear waste, “we have the best scientists in the world working on the problem” if you let us build the nuke plants “we will have the waste problem solved before the first ounce of waste is produced”. That was in the 1950’s. Dr John Heydt of UC Riverside talked of PM 10 having long and short term issues with the lungs. PM 2.5 can cause heart disease. He spoke of asthma and COPD and emphysema. He stated that one in 11 children has asthma. Manny Perez stated that perhaps we should reconsider the QSA. He also stated that maybe we should discuss forming our own AQMD for the Salton Sea basin (which all of Coachella Valley is in). Louis with Comite Civico spoke of “Greenleif, Coalmax and Geothermal” needs to be brought into discussion as well as the greenhouse gasses caused by all the rail transport in the east valley. And that we need to develop policies for emerging industries compliance and not wait until the problem is out of hand. Dr Fine talked of the school buses the AQMD has replaced and retrofitted. He did not mention that this came out of the Sentinel’s mitigation funds, where the rest of Riverside County got retrofitted buses out of the AQMD’s general fund. Sylvia Betancourt, Policy Director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice stated that this is a good start but that the community needs to be brought into the conversation. Bob said that we (Chuck and Bob) do represent the community. That they had gathered over 2,000 signatures against the peaker plant (they should have mentioned that these were all gathered in person, not by the web), and that they had presented 200 additional signatures to Benoit requesting PM 2.5 monitors. This is when Bob said that they may be underestimating the impact of the Salton Sea drying up, the 100 years of pesticides etc. After the meeting (at Chuck’s suggestion) Bob gave a copy of their monitor request with 200 signatures to the representative of the Clinton Foundation. Dr. Fine of SCAQMD stayed and talked to Bob for almost a half hour. He was not aware that POP had requested these monitors. He was not aware that the Palm Springs and Indio monitors would not give an hourly reading (“its a software problem and if it isn’t fixed already” we will fix it. The problem still isn’t fixed as of when I wrote this.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 02:52:23 +0000
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