Wildfire-Caused Water Contamination

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 #CZULightningComplexTopics by Time13:49 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 TreatmentWildfire caused widespread drinking water distribution network contamination - Proctor - 2020 - AWWA Water Science - Wiley Online LibrarySan Lorenzo Valley Water DistrictFire Response, How You Can Help – Community Foundation Santa Cruz CountyListener 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