Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Melina Sempill Watts
Environmental Consulting
Move from wishing to doing.

Writing. 

Facilitation. 

Facilitation Training. 

Community Visioning. 

Watershed Planning. 

Board Retreats. 

Annual Planning. 

Stakeholder Development. 

Fundraising. Grantwriting. 

Environmental Education. 

Documentary Filmmaking. 

Media Outreach. 

Legislative Outreach. 

Events Management. 

Watershed Tours. 

Conference Planning. 

Restoration Consultation. 

Sustainability Evolution.

Move from wishing to doing.

Friday, January 17, 2014


Good afternoon Dear Reader,

This is an online edition of the Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Newsletter.

I welcome suggestions for future content.

Sincerely,
Melina Sempill Watts

Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Newsletter, January 2014

CALIFORNIA DROUGHT EMERGENCY
Drought Emergency Declared by Governor Brown
From Susan Hughes, Emily Green, Jessica Hall, your office...
Governor Brown has made an official announcement that the State of California is in a drought emergency.
This will help encourage crucial water conservation efforts. 
Press release follows below. 

CEQA Suspended for Drought Related Projects
From both Emily Green and Jessica Hall.
As a follow up measure, Governor Brown suspended CEQA for projects related to ameliorating the drought.

Drought Resources
This excellent and uesful set of links comes from Lynn Rodriguez in Ventura:
Department of Water Resources’ Drought Information webpage - http://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/drought/ (check out the resources at the bottom of the site, including frequently asked questions)

IN THE NEWS
Pacific Ocean Post Fukushiima: How Radioactive Is It?
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, easily one of the most prestigious research organizations in the country, weighs in on this issue.  
Press release follows at the bottom of the blog.

Trying to Understand Water Quality Status in West Virginia?
Thanks to Jessica Hall for this link.

Venice Community Gardens to Be Sold

Roman Aqueducts
From Mike McGuire
For inclusion of this link, please note that I was a history  major and am compelled to share:

Worst Case Scenario?
Climate Change in The Nation

BOOKS
A new category for this newsletter, i am looking for relevant books that you are reading that you feel contribute important information or ideas to our work in the watershed.  

Books to keep you up late, per the good items on my reading list this past month.

Recommended by landscape architect Jessica Hall:

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World [Kindle Edition]Paul Hawken

The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels [Kindle Edition]

Brian Fagan 

And, while I read it some time ago, here is what I consider to be Fagan's most important book:

Elixir [Kindle Edition]

Brian Fagan 
This looks at how different societies have managed the collective resource of water, including under periods of duress.  A must have.

And I was also very impressed by:

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Fagan, Brian

All three books help focus on how other societies have dealt with or failed to deal with climate change impacts.

Let My People Go Surfing: the education of a reluctant business man by Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner, Patagonia

And...not the science / history watershed extravaganza I hope that this category will focus on, I am including a novel that is a love letter to one ... fictional, sadly ... watershed in Oregon: 

Mink River, a novel by Brian Doyle
The heroes both work for their local department of Public Works. A lovely mish-mash of nostalgia for Ireland, Native American folklore, a cheer in support of small town Americana and a great appreciation of life on the Oregon coast.  You're going to want to move there...

EVENTS
NEW Aquarium Exhibit at Santa Monica Pier Aquarium 
Thanks to Tara Crow, Heal the Bay for event.
Where: Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, the Dorothy Green Room 
When: Saturday, January 18
From: 12:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Event is FREE thanks to Cirque du Soleil
Celebrate Underwater Parks + join in for a launch party for the new exhibit room.  

Oak Tree Planting in Topanga
Thanks to Rosi Dagit for forwarding this event.
Where: Topanga Community Club 
When: Saturday,  January 25 
Why: Plant some Oaks 
And: If you have some clean 1 gallon bottles to bring along to help water, that would be really helpful.
Event put together by Watershed Stewards from the RCDSMM.
See attached PDF.

Magic Day in Topanga
Thanks to Lisa Cianci for forwarding event.
Where: Cross Bull Ranch, Topanga, California
When: Sunday, January 26
From: First thing in the morning to late at night ...
Learn about wild foods, how to start a fire from Delmar Lathers, and enjoy a definitive Topanga day at Cross Bull Ranch. 

SYMPOSIUM
California Water Law Symposium
From Tom Hicks, Board of Direcotrs, California Water Law Symposium
The 10th Annual California Water Law Symposium will be held in San Francisco this upcoming Saturday, February 8.  Past years have sold out, so register soon if you plan to attend. 
WATER RE-USE STUDY FOR SAN FERNANDO VALLEY
From the Arid Lands Institute, comes a study looking at major water re-use in the San Fernando Valley.
Where Is it? Let’s ReUse It!” was funded by the Southern California World Water Forum, a program administered by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Also, a nice article about this ran in Boom magazinae last year -- Pivot: Reconceiving Water Scarcity as Design Opportunity. I'll link in to this one later.

SUMMER PROGRAMS
Summer Learning Opportunity IN THE AMAZON
From Alison Lipman, Silva International
Check out the Amazon Exchange Program this summer 2014.This program is open to university students, or potentially "life students," of any major.  It is an immersive, cultural exchange program in which participants get to work on community projects, live with host families, and teach young children conservation themes in Bolivian indigenous villages.  For more info please visit:t http://selvainternational.org/amazonexchange.htm or see the attached flyer.
For more information contact: Alison J. Lipman, Ph.D. Ecology Lecturer / Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary BiologySenior Research Fellow / Institute of the Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of California Los Angeles
Co-Founder / PresidentSELVA InternationalConservation done right.
See new field study program AMAZONX – live and work side by side with indigenous people in Bolivia’s world famous Noel Kempff Mercado National Park this summer 2014.

AmazonXflyer2014.pdf

ENERGY 
Energy Conservation Rebate I 
From the South Bay Environmental Services newsletter:
Southern California EdisonSCE  Rebates for Your Home in 2014 Thinking about upgrading your appliances? Maximize your savings by taking advantage of the numerous rebates and savings programs SCE offers to help you save on your electric bill.
Read More

Energy Conservation Rebate II

From the South Bay Environmental Services newsletter:

Bright Lights, Big Savings: Just a Click Away!For a limited time, we're offering discounts of up to $15 each on select light-emitting diode (LED) and compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. If you live in a qualifying ZIP code, you can save at participating online retailers now, and see energy savings for years to come.Read More

Energy Generation by Bicycle
And, from me.  Let's be honest, I want one of these so bad I can hardly stand it:

 Walk in beauty.

Sincerely,
Melina Watts
Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Coordinator
Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains


malibucreekwatershed@gmail.com

310.383.9978

Join the Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Council on facebook for updates on news and events.

Support the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains: Donate.

The Santa Monica Mountains Watersheds Coordinator Program is a program of  the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains and is funded by a Proposition 84 grant from the California Department of Conservation and via support from the Cities of Agoura Hills and Westlake Village, the California Department of State Parks, the California Association of Conservation Districts, Ozzie Silna, the  National Park Service,  the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains.

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California governor proclaims drought emergencyJASON DEAREN, Associated PressFriday, January 17, 2014SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown has proclaimed a drought emergency in California, allowing the state to seek financial assistance and other help from the federal government during its third dry year.Brown made the announcement Friday in San Francisco, formally stating what many in California already knew.The U.S. Drought Monitor has reported extreme drought conditions in central and northern California, and there has been little snowfall so far this winter.Precipitation in most of the state is less than 20 percent of normal, and reservoirs are dwindling. Forecasts suggest the dry spell could continue, exacerbating the already heightened fire danger.Other states in the West also are facing dry conditions.Brown's proclamation allows California to request a broad emergency declaration from President Barack Obama, which would provide financial and other help.

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How Radioactive is Our Ocean?Citizen science campaign aims to collect ocean samples and fund radiation analysisFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMedia Relations Officemedia@whoi.eduJanuary 14, 2014(508) 289-3340Link to full press release: http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/ourradioactiveoceanLink to citizen science website: http://www.ourradioactiveocean.org/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) marine chemist Ken Buesseler began sampling and analyzing seawater surrounding the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant three months after the 2011 disaster. Today, he launched a crowd sourcing campaign and citizen science website to collect and analyze seawater along the West Coast of North America as the radioactive plume travels 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean.“Whether you agree with predictions that levels of radiation along the Pacific Coast of North America will be too low to be of human health concern or to impact fisheries and marine life, we can all agree that radiation should be monitored, and we are asking for your help to make that happen,” says Ken Buesseler, WHOI senior scientist and director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity (CMER).Through the website “How Radioactive is Our Ocean?” the public can support the monitoring of radiation in the ocean with tax-deductible donations to fund the analysis of existing samples or by proposing new locations and funding the samples and analysis of those sites.“We already have dozens of seawater samples from the coast of Japan out to the middle of the Pacific, but now we need new samples—from up and down the West Coast of North America and across the Pacific. The trouble is, these samples are expensive to collect and analyze,” Buesseler says.To propose a new location for seawater sampling, individuals and communities will be asked to donate a minimum of $100 for seed funding. Not every proposed site can be accepted due to limits on sample throughput, but if selected, WHOI will setup a fundraising webpage to help a group reach their fundraising goal. The collection and analysis of a seawater sample costs between $550 and $600, depending upon location. Once the full amount is raised, the individual will receive a sampling kit to collect 20 liters (about five gallons) of seawater to be shipped back to the CMER lab for analysis.The results from those analyses will be posted on an evolving map online, where you can see cesium concentrations and sponsors’ names with links to information about radioactivity in the ocean and what the levels tell us.Since Japan's triple disasterNearly three years after the tsunami that resulted in the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident, questions remain about how much radioactive material has been released and how widely and quickly it is dispersing in the Pacific Ocean. Marine chemist Ken Buesseler at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has been gathering samples -- some from as close as half a mile from the damaged reactors -- and has been analyzing this seawater for Fukushima contaminants since 2011.No U.S. government or international agency is monitoring the spread of low levels of radiation from Fukushima along the West Coast of North America and around the Hawaiian Islands. The Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity (CMER) at WHOI, a private non-profit marine research and education organization, is launching a project to involve the public in gathering seawater samples and raising funds for analyses that will provide the latest information about radiation levels in the ocean. The data will be published on a website, “How Radioactive is Our Ocean?”The world’s oceans contain many naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, as well as the remnants of nuclear weapons testing from the 1950s and 60s. Starting in 2011, fallout, runoff, and continued leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan added to this baseline and sparked fears of wide-ranging impacts to the marine ecosystem and human health.Although Buesseler does not expect levels to be dangerously high in the ocean or in seafood as the plume spreads 5,000 miles across the Pacific, he believes this is an evolving situation that demands careful, consistent monitoring to make sure predictions are true.“I’m particularly excited about finding support for sampling key locations along the West Coast multiple times throughout the coming two years, because radioactivity levels are expected to be increasing,” he says.How radioactivity is measuredMeasuring radionuclides in the ocean requires a specialized gamma-detecting instrument that costs about $75,000, skilled lab personnel to operate the equipment, and a scientist to analyze the data. Fukushima contamination can be “fingerprinted” from precise measurements of the relative amounts of a long lived cesium-137 isotope with a 30 year half life, that has been in the ocean from 1950s and 1960s weapons testing, to its ratio to cesium-134, which decays with a 2 year half life, and is only around from the more recent 2011 Fukushima source.Radiation levels are measured by Bequerels (Bq), the number of radioactive decay events per second. They are reported per cubic meter of seawater (m3), which is equivalent to 1,000 liters (264 gallons). A typical seawater sample will contain just a few Bq/m3 of the cesium isotopes and much higher levels of naturally occurring radionuclides. By comparison, the limit for cesium in drinking water in the U.S. is 7,400 Bq/m3.Latest cesium levels will be updated and reported on the website beginning January 14, 2014.Support for this project thus far, has been provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Deerbrook Charitable Trust, Onset, the Pacific Blue Foundation, and the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity (CMER) at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu.