The San Lorenzo Valley in Santa Cruz County has a partial Do Not Drink / Do Not Boil order in affect: is that order appropriate, what causes Wildfire water contamination, and what are good actions we as a community can take?

Our guest is Andrew J Whelton, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Purdue University.

Professor Whelton has studied two other Wildfires in California with water contamination and has some thoughts on our situation for the #CZULightningComplex

• Topics by Time

  13:49 Water Utility vs State Responsibility
  
  22:28 Can you smell VOCs
  
  24:07 Danger Long Term vs Acute
  
  25:11 Stuck in the Pipes?
  
  26:28 SVOCs
  
  27:18 Can we just flush the system?
  
  29:47 If you lived here…
  
  31:00 Activate Mutual Aid
  
  31:47 Testing Issues – UCSC help?
  
  34:13 When would you be less concerned
  
  36:49 What changes should we make?
  
  39:15 California level issue?
  
  43:20 Take Aways
  
  44:24 Home Water Treatment

• Wildfire caused widespread drinking water distribution network contamination - Proctor - 2020 - AWWA Water Science - Wiley Online Library
• San Lorenzo Valley Water District
• Fire Response, How You Can Help – Community Foundation Santa Cruz County
• Listener Miles Z made some notes while listening - here they are:

  In case of doubt, consult the interview, as I am not an expert. The notes are about in the same order as the interview. =miles=

  
  

  Contamination and Testing/Monitoring

  
  

  The state (CA) only requires the water district to test at the source of the water, i.e. where they start pumping it into the distribution system. The rest (downstream testing) is up to the water district.

  
  

  Contamination can come from multiple sources, including backflow when the system becomes depressurized and air contaminated with smoke leaks into the pipes. It can also result from homes that were equipped with plastic pipes that burned. As well as the pipes we know about that burned, i.e. the 5 miles of HDPE pipe through the forest.

  
  

  The monitoring tests that the water district routinely runs downstream are limited to only particular VOC