Water quality shouldn’t be impacted by nearby fires
Water quality isn’t likely to be impacted by nearby wildfires, but one of the local water districts is working with other agencies to ensure that continues to be the case.
John Friedenbach, general manager at the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, which serves more than 80,000 customers in the county, said the district is having discussions with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the California Office of Emergency Services and Trinity County to discuss debris removal operations and sedimentation control around Ruth Lake.
“It’s a developing situation and our district is very active with those agencies to address those issues and get it taken care of as
quickly as possible,” Friedenbach said.
The August Complex fire is scorching the Ruth Lake area, where the water district has a reservoir that impounds water before traveling down the Mad River for about 70 miles, Friedenbach said. At that point, there are diversion pumps that draw up groundwater from 60 to 80 feet below the surface, allowing for natural filtration to occur.
“That’s why we have a
very high-quality water that we supply to our seven municipal customers,” Friedenbach said. “We’re not terribly concerned there’s going to be an impact, but we have initiated increase testing just to verify that.”
There have been other fires in the watershed before, but they weren’t as close to the lake and river as the current fire “so a lot of structures were lost,” Friedenbach said.
That makes volatile organic compounds a concern, for which the water district has ramped up testing, Friedenbach said, but so far, the testing hasn’t
turned up anything problematic.
“At this point, residents can be very confident we’re still going to be delivering high-quality water,” Friedenbach said.
Water quality is likely to become more a cause for concern when strong rains begin to occur and debris removal operations begin, giving contaminants in the soil more opportunity to come in contact with the water, Friedenbach said.
Humboldt County typically sees heavy rain in November and December, said Jonathan Garner, a meteorologist at the National
Weather Service in Eureka. He added that this year is a La Niña year, so there should be normal to below normal rainfall for California.
“Based on past La Nina episodes, it’s been drier than normal and that’s what the Climate Prediction Center is forecasting for this winter,” Garner said.
The general manager of the Redway Community Services District, which gets its water from the Eel River, said water quality there wasn’t a cause for concern right now.