Six months at the Water District: a status report

I've now finished one-eighth of my term in office. At my web page you can see the issues that I've run on, and I thought I would report on them and other issues at the District.

Mercury: the District continues to work on existing mercury problems, with funding moving ahead. The idea I have for state legislation on Extended Producer Responsibility on mercury hasn't gone beyond discussion stage. So far. I figure it will take a while, and I'm still working on it.

The District as an environmental champion: on the two big issues of continued work on environmental enhancements and on watchdog work to protect streams, both are moving forward. The District continues to work on its Three Creeks Habitat Conservation Plan (although I am worried about how much the planning is costing), as is the multi-agency County Habitat Plan. There hasn't been new money spent on Clean Safe Creeks environmental enhancement, although existing projects have continued to operate, such as the opening of a major tidal pond off of Alviso.

The other major environmental development is a budget of a half-time employee to make sure development is not violating guidelines for land use near streams.

Greater public transparency and control: I think this is the area where we've made the most progress. The Board established an Ad-hoc committee to improve our work with advisory committees. I was appointed to the committee and made its chair. We've completed our work in just a few meetings to propose significant improvements in increasing advisory committee involvement with the District Board, ability to channel recommendations, and flexibility with agenda.

We've had some progress on involvement with other groups, like the new Friends of Adobe Creek group and helpful work by the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce on emergency access to Alviso. I would like to see more progress here.

We've held a number of evening meetings and will hold at least one a month, starting in July. It's an experiment, and if it works then we can expand it. Obviously, I continue to stand by my promise of no more than two terms in office. I and the other Directors made clear that the Redistricting Committee isn't limited on what district boundaries it can choose, although it would be inappropriate for us to bias their selection. I continue to be interested in changing the Board's structure to be more like a City Council, and as part of that, the Board will consider my suggestion of reversing the pay raise it gave itself, to be considered this August.

So overall, I think there's been significant progress. I wish it could be faster, and I'll keep working on it, but still I believe it's going well.

-Brian

Why I hope to earn your vote for the Water District election

Tomorrow is Election Day, and I thank every voter reading this for taking the extra step of researching this election by coming to my campaign website and blog. This post explains why I think my campaign has been endorsed by the Mercury News, the Mountain View Voice, super-majorities of the Mountain View City Council (five of seven members) and Palo Alto council (eight of nine), and majorities of the County Board of Supervisors and Los Altos Hills City Council. And from the County Democratic Party, the Sierra Club, County League of Conservation Voters, and community members, businesses, and unions, with the endorsements found here.

I have been involved with water issues and other civic issues for over fourteen years since I moved to our area to study environmental law at Stanford. As an environmental lawyer with a special interest in water, I have worked to protect our water resources and for safe and environmentally-sound flood control. Working for over seven years as the Santa Clara County Advocate for Committee for Green Foothills, over six years at the Water District's Environmental Advisory Committee, and at the District's Performance Audit Committee, I have seen helped get the right work done but see the possibility to do more.

The Water District is a solid organization with trouble at its Board of Directors, with inadequate democracy and inadequate citizen involvement. I propose evening meetings so working citizens can attend and serve as Directors. I would remove artificial restrictions on citizen advisory and oversight committees, letting them operate more like similar city and county committees in being able to set agendas and offer recommendations. I would support reasonable and meaningful term limits - while Measure C deserves support, it doesn't go far enough because it isn't retroactive, and I'm pledging to serve no more than two terms regardless of Measure C's success.

Fixing these problems will help us address core issues for the Water District. I believe we can do much more to address mercury contamination in what is one of the worst, if not the worst-contaminated county in the state. We can champion state efforts to get any company bringing mercury into the state to either retrieve all their mercury or help our existing mercury cleanup efforts. We can do more to ensure cities are following policies to keep new development away from streams. We can specifically work on maintaining recent progress to address flooding along San Francisquito Creek, and to start addressing the major problem of protecting our cities from sea-level and Bay-level rise that will result from climate change.

We can do this all while controlling costs. I've called for cutting Water District Director compensation by over 50%, to more closely match City Council compensation. I've been calling for close examination over Water District involvement over the economically and environmentally risky proposals to dredge a port in Alviso. I'm the only candidate who's observed that emergency boat evacuation could possibly be done more cheaply from Moffett, or that the money might be better spent for disaster preparation in totally different ways.

Finally, the effort shown in my campaign mirrors the effort I would bring if elected. The Brian For Water campaign website is by far the most detailed. This is the only campaign blog, a place where we can provide details about new ideas, and we have the only Facebook campaign page in this race, detailing outreach to the community. The extensive outreach door-to-door, at farmers markets, at Caltrain stations and elsewhere, are also chances to interact with community where we are the only ones doing so in this race. I have attended the last three Water District Board meetings before the election and have been the only candidate there.

I'm eager to put the experience and the new energy I can provide by serving at the Water District Board, and I thank you for considering this opportunity to do great things to protect our water supply, to provide safe and environmentally-sound flood control, and to take significant steps to protect our streams and watersheds.

-Brian Schmidt

More on mercury problems from the Mercury News

This week the Mercury News had yet another article on mercury issues, this one dealing mercury in the household, titled "Compact fluorescent lamps save energy but need to be disposed of properly." Some excerpts:

For years, consumers have been urged to switch to CFLs, or compact fluorescent lights, which use about one-quarter of the electricity of incandescent bulbs. But unknown to many, CFLs come with a health risk if they're broken: They contain small amounts of mercury, a neurotoxin that can be particularly harmful to children and pregnant women.

...."It's a public health issue and an environmental mess if they are not disposed of properly," said Rob D'Arcy, the hazardous materials program manager for Santa Clara County.

California and several other states ban disposal of CFLs in the trash because they could contaminate landfills. But there's little enforcement.

....no one has called for CFLs to be banned because, on balance, they offer a wealth of environmental and energy-saving benefits. Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the air, so using CFLs, which use less electricity than incandescent light bulbs and last longer, is still a better deal for the planet.

....Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to shift responsibility for waste management from local governments to manufacturers and producers, is among those who believe "we're still better off using fluorescents."

"But what's happened is that we're trying to keep mercury out of the air by not burning coal, and now mercury is in all of these lamps that are in people's homes," she said.

The regulations prohibiting CFLs from being disposed of in the trash went into effect in 2006, but there's no state funding attached to it. That means each county in California has had to develop its own consumer awareness and recycling program in a time of strapped budgets, and some have done a better job than others.

"This is a problem that cries out for a big, comprehensive solution," said Bill Pollock of the Alameda County Household Hazardous Waste program. "But no one has the funds to tackle it. Right now, the recycling is totally voluntary — people have to make an effort to do it."

The problem does indeed call for a comprehensive solution that solves the mercury issue and the funding issue, and the Extended Producer Responsibility proposal of my campaign can do just that.

-Brian

Mercury problems receiving increasing coverage

Two recent mass media articles highlight increasing awareness of our local mercury problems. The (appropriately-named) Mercury News wrote on how five of the top 20 mercury-contaminated water bodies in California are found here in Santa Clara County:

Almaden Lake, a popular San Jose city park off Almaden Expressway, has fish with the highest concentrations of mercury contamination in California, according to a new state study.

Four other bodies of water in Santa Clara County — Anderson, Uvas, Calero and Chesbro reservoirs — also rank among the top 20 lakes whose fish have the highest mercury concentrations in the state.

The findings come as part of a survey released Thursday by the State Water Resources Control Board. The agency tested 4,905 fish in 272 lakes and reservoirs during 2007 and 2008 for methyl mercury, PCBs, DDT and other contaminants, the most extensive such survey ever completed in the state.

And the website version of the San Francisco Chronicle covered the problem of mercury-contaminated fish just north in San Mateo County:

When researchers wanted to test largemouth bass at Lower Crystal Springs Reservoir for mercury levels, the reservoir's managers in San Francisco figured the scientists were simply looking for a clean sample to compare with toxic results at other spots.

Instead, the study showed that the fish in the San Mateo County lake - which collects rainwater as well as water piped in from Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy reservoir - had some of the highest mercury levels in the state.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/07/MNU41E4CR4.DTL#ixzz0tIK1ktb6

As in the case in San Mateo County, some of our mercury contamination is from far away, but we can take immediate steps to address our local contamination, which is one of the reasons for why I'm running for the Water District Board.

-Brian