The final City Council hearing and vote for Oak Creek will take place at 4:30 this Wednesday, March 4th.   Information can be found here  March 4 Hearing Action Alert 

Urge the City Council to Vote NO on Oak Creek

Environmental health experts at Environmental Health Coalition filed this comment letter today on the most recent monitoring reports on the Chatham contamination. EHC Chatham Comment Letter Feb 26 2015.
There is important information about 1,4-Dioxane and it speaks eloquently to several issues we are facing locally.  We are very grateful to EHC to their enduring commitment to community health.

Here are some excerpts

Regarding whether Natural Attenuation is occurring:

Regarding what the MCL does and doesn’t mean and a preference for the PHGs:

Regarding health information on 1,4-Dioxane

Please read this letter for yourself.  You will learn a lot.

If you are not already a member of this amazing group, please join!  You can find more information here Environmental Health Coalition

You
can get more information about the project here: http://escondidoneighborsunited.blogspot.com/

   
There is now even more evidence why the community can not trust Escondido to comply with or enforce environmental laws.

Last week, on February 10, 2015, the City of Escondido received a Notice of Violation (NOV) for violations of municipal storm water permit requirements.  Water Board Cover Letter

The violations include:

• Failure to prevent the discharge of pollutants per permit requirements,
• Failure to implement the adopted storm water mitigation plan
• Failure to adequately enforce permit standards at priority development sites. 

The 4-page NOV notice cites multiple examples of these failures.  The city has failed to fix known problems for years.  In six of seven priority development projects inspected BMPs have been found to be ineffective and/or inadequately maintained.  In some cases  the City has allowed priority development projects (PDP) to be completed with missing permanent treatment BMPs for prolonged periods of time.  In one case 19 inlet filters were to be installed in 2009 but most were not installed until November 2014. The NOV also cites the inquiry involving the 540 W. Grand parking lot, in this category–the parking lot owned by Escondido Mayor Abed.  We have previously raised concerns about this here, Mayor Failed to Comply.

Violations include BMPs that were designed or installed incorrectly, failure to inspect at proper times, ineffective vegetative BMPs, missing storm drain insert filters, sediment overwhelming BMPs, lack of required maintenance, and many other issues.   Even when problems were found, the NOV notes, “The City identified 9 PDPs that had structural BMP violations, but the City issued 0 enforcement actions”   These finally lead the Water Board to the conclusions that the  “The City’s overall program is not adequate to ensure proper functioning of the treatment control BMPs…” The violations are summarized here  Notice of Violation To Escondido and the Water Board Audit Report provide more detail and photos of the violations.  

Specific examples include one case where there was supposed to be a bioswale that would slow water and allow it to seep into the ground,…

  “A concrete v-ditch was found where the bioswale should have been…There were no treatment control BMPs within the v-ditch or at the inlet or outlet of the v-ditch.”  

Concrete does nothing to slow or treat storm water and only worsens erosion, flooding, and water quality.  These kinds of problems are exactly the kind of violations and failure to enforce that, in our case,  puts downstream neighbors at risk relative to Oak Creek.  In other examples, problems noticed by the staff in 2011/2012 were the same deficiencies with the same BMPs found in 2014.  It appears that, even when the city found violations, little was done and no enforcement was taken.  

Here is the mystery.  The NOV states, “While the City seems to be able to identify issues in need of correction, the City lacks an effective enforcement process to resolve the deficiencies and bring the facilities back into compliance with Order No. R9-2007-0001.”  This should be looked into.  Why is the City not enforcing the storm water rules? Who or what is stopping them?  Is this a problem of staff follow-up or is it a failure of the Executive or Mayor and Council to direct?  Or, is it the result of direction being given from some quarter to not enforce?

This is more of the mounting evidence regarding why Escondido Neighbors United has major concerns about the ability, or willingness, of the city to enforce the storm water regulations related to the Oak Creek housing project.  We have been told time and time again that we should be satisfied and that there will be no impacts because the project will comply with regulations.  This has not happened in 6 of 7 examples in Escondido.  Why should we have confidence it would happen at Oak Creek?

These City violations, coupled with eight ‘significant’ violations issued to New Urban West in 2002 of its dewatering permit during construction of Brookside (2002 Report of NPDES Violations ) leave us with no confidence that the rules will be complied with or that our water quality and our local creek will be protected.

It is yet another reason that we cannot support the Oak Creek housing development in the density proposed with its heavy reliance on storm water mitigation and controls.  Apparently, compliance with the rules is not the standard in Escondido and we would be foolish to rely on it.

The obvious question is, does Escondido even deserve the ability to annex more property when they can’t handle the property they already have?

Here is a link to the  Channel 10 News Report: Environmental Group Says Toxic Plume in Escondido has spread tonight. There are questions about whether access was denied to sites for testing or not. Our letter cites the December 12, 2014 consultants report from Hargis and Associates, which states on page 4 that,


the regional well deJong2
property owner did not grant access to
the Group for scheduled groundwater sampling in October 2014, or for water
level measurement of deJong 2 or 34-E4. (HA, Dec. 12, 2014 report, p. 4, emphasis added)  

We have requested action from the state regulatory agencies.  We will post any responses we receive from them here.

A wonderful article about a compelling and unique project in Escondido was included in the Coast News today.
Straw Bale Eco-Homes Article.  It is so great to have local news outlets covering north county news. Please read and support all independent news sources that cover local stories.  It’s important!

Here is another important opportunity to support clean water in our region.  There are two water quality improvement plans that have recently been submitted to the Regional Water Board.

San Dieguito Watershed Water Quality Improvement Plan and

Carlsbad Watershed Water Quality Improvement Plan


Interested persons wishing to submit comments on the following draft documents must submit them so that they are received no later than 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 29, 2015. Written comments should be submitted electronically to


For San Dieguito
SanDiego@waterboards.ca.govAttention: Christina Arias

For Carlsbad
SanDiego@waterboards.ca.govAttention: Laurie Walsh

While the planning commission meeting didn’t go as we’d hoped, UT San Diego Article on Planning Commission OK, we did receive some good news during the staff presentation.  It sounds like the interior clear glass firewalls have been removed.  Who ever made that decision, we thank you!  This will reduce impacts to the very wildlife we are hoping to support in the area.

Stay tuned.  City Council hearing expected for March 4th.

ENU quoted in the article.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

By John Martin, Wildlife Biologist, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, San Diego National Wildlife Refuge 


On a Saturday morning, as I walk into the kitchen to top off my coffee, an
unmistakable thud takes precedence over all the other little sounds in the
house. I move into the living room, quickly running through and instantly
dismissing a series of alternatives: a log settling in the stove, something on
the radio, a distant car door…. No, that thud was a bird hitting the window,
and I can see the ghostly splayed imprint of feather dust on the glass as I
approach. I look over the sill, and on the ground beneath the window, on its
back, wings quivering, is a splendid splash of black, white and red: a
red-breasted sapsucker. I rush out the door, to either help the bird or recover
the specimen, but in the seconds it takes for me to get there, the bird had
regained its equilibrium enough to see a big, rapidly-approaching person, and
fly across the road to disappear into the oaks and chaparral.
A happy ending? Probably not. How can a body as complex and delicate as a
bird’s hit a solid object hard enough to make that sound, and fly away
unscathed? If the woodpecker sustained any injury, he’d now be in the
unforgiving woods, with his ability to keep warm, find food, and avoid
predators compromised. It’s a grim outlook for this woodpecker, a continued
risk for the rest of the birds in my yard, and a risk around the world wherever
birds and glass share the airspace.
In 2014, scientists from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Smithsonian
Institution analyzed 23 recent studies of bird/window collisions, to better
estimate the magnitude of the problem. They estimated that window collisions
kill 365-988 million birds annually in the United States. Of these, 44 percent
occurred at residences, presumably because windows of homes are within the
range of heights of vegetation that essentially defines habitat for most
songbirds in North America. Only 44 percent? That’s still hundreds of millions
of repetitions of the sapsucker collision at my house, every year, across the
nation.
A depressing statistic, especially when I think of the enjoyment I get out of
birds. When I’m out in the yard, or the oaks and chaparral in the neighborhood,
it’s the birds that are the most conspicuous sparks of life, another song or
flash of motion every few seconds, livening up the landscape.
Is anyone studying the mechanics of bird/window collisions, to better
understand not only the size of the problem, but how windows kill birds, and
what we can do to reduce the problem? Surprisingly few biologists have made
bird/window collisions a focus of their research. But Dr. Daniel Klem Jr.,
Professor of Biology at Muhlenberg College, has built his professional career
on this issue, publishing over a dozen papers elucidating the mechanisms of
injury, the factors that affect the likelihood of collision, and what we can do
to reduce collisions and injuries.
Dr. Klem has taken a closer look at exactly what happens to birds that strike windows,
and found a surprising result. Though it’s commonly assumed that birds that die
striking windows die from a broken neck, this isn’t the case. It makes sense:
breaking a bird’s neck is like trying to break a rope by pushing it into a
solid object. Birds have 13-27 neck vertebrae (compared to 7 in mammals such as
ourselves), and the articulations between them are especially flexible.
Dissection of hundreds of birds killed by window strikes reveals that none of
them had broken necks. But essentially all of them suffered ruptured blood
vessels in the cranium, and died of intracranial bleeding and/or associated
damage to the brain. Most birds that have apparently “recovered” after striking
windows also suffered intracranial bleeding. A bird that regains consciousness
and flies off after hitting a window isn’t necessarily in the clear: it may
have recovered enough to seek shelter, and die later of its injuries.

What can we do to reduce bird mortality at our own windows? One approach is to
reduce the likelihood that birds will fly into the window. Birds presumably
strike windows either because the transparent glass creates the illusion that
they can fly straight to the habitat that they see beyond the invisible
barrier, or because they see habitat reflected in the smooth surface of the
glass. In either case, they don’t perceive the glass as a barrier. To allow
birds to recognize the glass as a barrier, people have tried applying opaque
objects or patterns to windows. Isolated objects or patterns (such as falcon or
owl silhouettes) don’t work: the bird sees the object, but not the window. The
birds attempt to fly around the falcon graphic, and in avoiding the object they
smack into the adjacent glass. Experiments by Dr. Klem and other researchers
indicate that to deter birds in an aviary from flying through an empty window
frame, the critical dimension for visual obstructions (objects or patterns on
the glass) is about 2 inches apart horizontally, and 4 inches apart vertically.
Windows marked with patterns of dots, stripes, or other shapes (at least ¼ inch
wide) effectively show birds that the window is a barrier, and greatly reduce
or eliminate window collisions. There are several brands of commercially
available window films that apply a pattern sufficient to deter birds, or you
can design your own with opaque tape (such as American Bird Conservancy’s
BirdTape). It’s important to apply the pattern to the outside of the glass,
rather than the inside, to allow the pattern to disrupt the reflected image of
an unobstructed flight path, as well as the transparent window.
Unfortunately, obscuring the window sufficiently to eliminate bird strikes
contradicts the whole point of having glass windows: we want to see through
them. Yet it may be possible to make a pattern on the window that birds can see
and we can’t! Generally, birds can see a wider spectrum of light than humans,
including ultravio-let wavelengths. Experiments have been conducted to
determine if glass marked with a pattern of materials that absorb or reflect
ultraviolet light (invisible to us) dissuades birds from flying into the glass.
Results of laboratory experiments are promising, but investigators note that
under natural, outdoor light, the ultraviolet-marked glass may not function as
it does in the laboratory. Until bird mortality at glass windows is more
widely-recognized as a problem, glass manufacturers are unlikely to invest in
the research, development, and marketing of bird-friendly glass. But
ornithologists continue to research this potential solution.
A different approach to reducing bird mortality due to window strikes is to
reduce the force with which birds hit windows. Kinetic energy (say, of a flying
bird) = ½ (mass)(velocity)2. Can’t do much about the mass, but we can help
reduce the velocity at which birds are moving when they hit the window,
reducing their kinetic energy and thus the damage that occurs inside their
skull when it abruptly stops at the glass. If you have a bird feeder, place it
within 3 feet of a window. Birds leaving the feeder will not have built up
sufficient speed to hit the glass hard, so are less likely to get hurt striking
the window. Researchers have also investigated reducing bird mortality by
installing windows at an angle (20-40˚ from vertical), such that birds are
deflected when they hit the window. Under laboratory conditions, birds are
indeed less likely to die when flying into an angled window, but in nature,
where birds can approach the glass from a variety of angles, it’s clear that
fatal collisions still result from birds striking angled windows. Installation of
bird netting (such as that used to protect fruit trees from birds) over the
entire window several inches out from the surface, has the potential to reduce
the force of impact of a bird striking the window. Netting may also reduce the
likelihood of a bird striking the window in the first place, because the birds
may see it.
If you’re looking for more detailed information on reducing bird mortality on
glass in your home, a good place to start is the American Bird Conservancy’s
web page devoted to the issue:www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/collisions/glass.html.
At my house, I believe a pattern of tape on my living room window is in order.
Sapsuckers are back for the winter, and I don’t want to hear that unmistakable
thump again.