County water district looking for pharmaceuticals and chemicals
resistant to breakdown in sewage processing
The next time you take a pill or use anti-bacterial soap, you
may want to think twice about where the chemicals that make up
those products ultimately end up.
County water district looking for pharmaceuticals and chemicals resistant to breakdown in sewage processing
The next time you take a pill or use anti-bacterial soap, you may want to think twice about where the chemicals that make up those products ultimately end up.
It’s a good bet they accumulate in your water supply, creating a stronger brew with every passing year. They are called microcontaminants, and unlike most byproducts of raw sewage, they are highly resistant to breakdown.
Personal care products, soap gel, shampoos – none of them decompose in the environment rapidly, especially anti-bacterial soap.
“It’s a very persistent compound,” said John Gregg, head of the San Benito County Water District.
Gregg is looking for components of prescription drugs and detergents lurking in San Benito’s groundwater and wastewater, and wants to know how the tiny long-lived contaminants became part of the water supply. Last week he and his staff took samples of wastewater from Sunnyslope, Hollister and San Juan Bautista and groundwater from wells in the San Juan Valley, along the San Benito River and “blue valve” San Felipe water coming in from the San Luis Reservoir off Pacheco Pass.
The water samples have been sent to a special lab in New York for testing of microcontaminants. Gregg said he doesn’t expect the results for several months.
There are two good reasons to do the testing, said the water guru and engineer. First, it is a direct way of tracking wastewater, so it may assist the city and county water agencies in understanding how wastewater affects local groundwater supplies, and where and how effluent seeps, especially in the vicinity of sewage treatment plants.
The second reason, said Gregg, is that it’s an area of interest, if not concern, as far as microcontaminant impacts on aquatic life – as in the living things that splash around wetlands, such as the one proposed downstream of the future wastewater treatment plant.
“This will help us build a body of knowledge on these constituents,” said Gregg. “As public agencies, we have a responsibility to assess the cost of wastewater treatment and disposal, discharge standards, its impact on the environment, and make the information available to the public so that they can have an open discussion.”
In the case of aquatic life, pharmaceutical compounds leave a lasting impression in whether it thrives, and while Gregg said there is no hard evidence that the recycling of drugs through the system does harm to people, drugs meant for humans aren’t so easy on water-living critters.
“Hormonal compounds can have a negative effect,” said Gregg. “Different forms of estrogen can lead to the feminization of aquatic creatures. The males develop female characteristics.”
Hormones, both natural and synthetic, take on endocrine-disrupting properties in wastewater. In recent studies scientists found that male fish exposed to this micropollutant underwent a process known as feminization, in which they produced female egg sac proteins and exhibited female fish characteristics.
Scientists first noticed the effects of hormones in wastewater in the early 1990s, when the only people screaming about the consequences of pharmaceuticals in effluent were considered a “fringe and kook” element. But it started cropping up in the most seemingly pristine areas in the nation. In 1997 “he-she” fish were found in a pond on a Florida golf course that used reclaimed water. The feminization of the fish was attributed directly to hormones in reused wastewater.
Now, said Gregg, what was once thought to be eco-freak hysteria is taken quite seriously by environmental scientists throughout the nation.
“We’re the people that are putting it in there,” said Gregg. “People are beginning to test water and wastewater, and look at means of removing these compounds.”
Scientists also found that the feminization of aquatic species has a direct correlation to the sophistication level of the treatment of wastewater. Filtration and microfiltration of sewage water shows a drop in hormone concentrations, whereas activated sludge treatment – meaning sewage ponds – showed higher levels of hormones, and thus, more dual-sex fish. Reverse osmosis treatment brought the levels far below the hormone limit necessary for feminization to occur.
If you don’t think microcontaminants could be a problem in San Benito or Santa Clara counties, you might want to ponder where all that water in the San Luis Reservoir comes from.
“We have to check the San Felipe water,” said Gregg, “because a lot of cities dispose of their waste along the San Joaquin River – which eventually ends up in the reservoir — cities like Modesto, Stockton, Sacramento and Antioch.”
So Gregg took samples along the Hollister conduit, the pipeline that brings in water from the San Luis Reservoir to San Benito.
Microcontaminants, especially hormonal compounds, could affect the future aquatic life in the proposed artificial wetlands that is supposed to be part of the city’s proposed 2005 sewage system.
“It has that potential,” said Gregg.
“We live on top of this incredible sponge that’s full of water,” said Gregg. “There’s a need for systems to help us deal with it. There’s plenty of household hazardous waste. You need to think two or three times instead of automatically dumping them down the toilet.”
Gregg hopes city leaders – or whoever is deciding on what kind of new sewage treatment Hollister should have – use a lot of long-term planning when making any final decisions on its design.
“It’s a matter of accountability and responsibility,” he said. “It is wholly inappropriate for these decisions to be made by a second- or third-tier staff member in a water agency or a city. It’s awfully easy to say ‘the regional board made us do it.’ It’s essential the community be given the opportunity to be involved.”
Many of the mc can be removed in treatment. Looking forward in time, maybe the type of treatment process we use. Will share the information w the city.
I think they need to review the seklection of ww treatment provesee. In doing that they need to look beyond existing regulations, and look at future
Its one of many, nitrogen removal. We as human beings increase the nitrogen content of the ww stream,. Right now its one of the higher constituents that discharge to surface water.
For anyone that has the responsibility to treat ww to the environment where its going to be reused, they have a respon to llok be. Oif they choose not to choose that flexibility, there ought to be a record that they.
I think its something that were not the only agencies are dealing w this. It would seem yto me that constituents were extremely hi we would have to look and see potentially.
The ommunity
