Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Salmon Category
Click here to view all posts

Commentary: Farmers being blamed for salmon dying

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 12, 2008 at 7:43 am

From the Lemoore Advance, this commentary:

Sewage water being dumped into the Sacramento River-Delta is killing fish? Remember in May 2007 the reports of Salmon dying in the Sacramento River blamed on farmers? It turns out the fish killer is ammonia, a common by-product of human urine and feces contained in partially-treated sewage water. The cities of Sacramento and Stockton are dumping it into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.

Two recent studies — researching what killed the Salmon, what’s killing the tiny aquatic food sources for Salmon, and why other fish are dying in the delta — was released by Richard Dugdale, an oceanographer at San Francisco University. The study showed sewage contaminated water, containing high levels of ammonia, is being dumped in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and is disrupting the food chain and killing the fish.

The effects of sewage water contaminants was dramatically illustrated last May when dozens of Chinook Salmon showed up dead in the river area where Stockton discharges sewage water into the river every day. Lack of food and other contaminants in the ammonia tainted water is killing the Delta and the Salmon.

Another example: Sacramento’s sewage facility dumps 146 million gallons of ammonia rich waste water every day into the River and plans to increase that volume by 30 percent to almost 200 million gallons per day! This is more than 600 acre-feet of partially treated sewage water per day and/or more than 220,000 acre feet per year being dumped in the river by just one sewage water disposal plant. It’s estimated more than 50 cities along the Sacramento River, its tributaries, and Bay-Delta area cities are dumping partially treated sewage water into the water system.

Read the rest of this commentary from the Lemoore Advance by clicking here.

July 12, 2008 · Filed Under Other Delta Issues, Salmon

Comments

Leave a Reply