Bay Swimmers Revel in Experience Despite Traffic, Bites, and Pathogens

ESTUARY 1 SCIENCE • RESTORATION • WATERSHED • POLITICS SPECIES BAY • WATERSHED SCIENCE • RESTORATION San Francisco Estuary Partnership Bay Swimmers Revel in Experience Despite Traffic, Bites, and Pathogens Slot Limits for Sevengills? Cocktail of Six Antibotics, Three Anti-Depressants, and One Anti-Diabetic Medicating our Bay Estuary Managers Confront Coastal Challenges Green Cement Blues Sierra to Sea Reflowed NE WS DECEMBER 2018 VOL. 27, NO. 4 Pharmaceuticals . 2 Bay Swimming . 3 Shark Fishing . 5 Hunters Point . 7 Sierra to the Sea . 9 Estuary Programs . 13 Harbor Seals . 15 Sediment Mounds . 16 Cement Plant . 18 2 DECEMBER 2018 ESTUARY NEWS MONITORING ill effects. Also on the list are three antidepressants, a class that has been shown to have physiological effects on mollusks, crustaceans, Medicating the Bay algae, and protozoans, and to impact fish survival and reproduction. NATE SELTENRICH, REPORTER large Brita filter of activated REMOVAL EFFICIENCY FOR FOUR DRUGS Pharmaceuticals are pouring into carbon with sand and gravel,” the Bay, even if we never flush pills. explains Karin North, 1,000,000 watershed protection High Removal Efficiency influent Compounds in painkillers and other effluent common oral drugs are still excreted manager for the city of Palo 100,000 from our bodies, routed through Alto. “It just gets those small wastewater treatment plants that particles out, and since a lot 10,000 of these contaminants like to can’t remove them completely, then Low Removal Efficiency discharged to the Bay where they may sorb onto the solids, that’s 1,000 harm marine life. where you might find them.” 100 The problem isn’t unique to In order to fully remove pharmaceuticals, says North, (ng/L) Concentration the Bay Area, affecting waterways 10 worldwide. It’s also not going away the plant would need to purify wastewater to drinking- — and likely to get worse, says Diana 1 Lin, an environmental scientist with water standards through Caffeine Acetaminophen Metoprolol Carbamazephine the San Francisco Estuary Institute processes known as reverse Source: SFEI (SFEI), which recently published a osmosis and ozonation. But report on pharmaceutical pollution these technologies are costly and Then there is the anti-diabetic as part of its Regional Monitoring thus unlikely to be used on any water drug metformin, poorly metabolized Program for Water Quality in San discharged to the Bay, she says. by the human body and found in high Francisco Bay. Some common A better option, suggests Sejal concentrations in wastewater effluent drugs are already more prevalent in Choksi-Chugh, executive director and surface waters across the U.S. wastewater than caffeine. of advocacy group San Francisco and Europe. It’s also estrogenic and appears to feminize the reproductive “The population in the Bay Area is Baykeeper, may be the use of treatment wetlands such as at organs of male fish. In the SFEI study, continuing to increase, as well as age, median concentrations of metformin so this means an expected increased Petaluma’s Ellis Creek plant or San Lorenzo’s Oro Loma. Also known and the sum of the top three over-the- use of pharmaceuticals,” says Lin, counter painkillers (acetaminophen/ who coauthored the report. “We want as constructed wetlands, these facilities use natural processes Tylenol, naproxen/Aleve, and to be vigilant in monitoring these involving wetland vegetation, soils, ibuprofen/Advil) exceeded median contaminants.” and their associated microbes to concentrations of caffeine in effluent. In 2016 and 2017, seven Bay Area slowly clean and filter water. “Some of Emma Rosi, an aquatic ecologist treatment plants tested incoming the emerging science shows that they with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem and outgoing wastewater for 104 can help remove pharmaceuticals Studies in New York and a renowned pharmaceutical compounds. This from the waste stream,” she says, all expert on pharmaceuticals in provided a measure of not only which at a fraction of the cost of upgrading freshwater environments, says drugs were entering the Bay, but also to reverse osmosis. how well they were cleaned from she’s particularly concerned about Source reduction is important, too, incoming sewage. Removal efficiency how mixtures of compounds may North stresses, like prioritizing diet varied widely from plant to plant and affect aquatic and marine life. A and exercise over pharmaceuticals, compound to compound. study she coauthored whose results ensuring doctors prescribe the right were published last month in Nature Among the seven plants, two dose for the right body, designing detected 69 different pharmaceutical employ what’s known in the industry drugs that break down in the compounds in caddisfly larvae along as tertiary treatment. The other environment, and requiring that a creek in Australia receiving effluent five stop at secondary treatment, manufacturers take back unused from a sewage plant with tertiary designed primarily to degrade the medications — which California treatment. biological content of the sewage. recently became the first state in the Tertiary treatment further cleans the nation to do. “Pharmaceuticals are getting into aquatic ecosystems and then moving water prior to discharge, but does not Among the 104 pharmaceuticals target pharmaceutical compounds through food webs with unknown tested in the SFEI study, 17 merit ecological consequences,” Rosi says. — and, Lin notes, did not always further evaluation because concen- “If you went to the doctor and told outperform secondary treatment in trations in Bay water could exceed them that you were taking 69 different the study. protective thresholds for toxicity pharmaceuticals, they would be very Palo Alto’s 46-year-old wastewater to marine life, the authors write. facility, which discharges to an These include six antibiotics, whose concerned for your well being.” unnamed slough, is among those release into the environment can CONTACT using tertiary treatment. “[As a] last contribute to the growing problem of [email protected]; step we basically put it through a antibiotic resistance, among other [email protected] 3 RECREATION What is of concern is the possibility of a bite from either of the two pinnipeds that live in the Bay, California sea lions and harbor seals Saltwater Revival (see p.15). Last December three swimmers were bit in one week, ALETA GEORGE, REPORTER The scene may be picturesque, and the San Francisco Maritime but the dangers of swimming in An hour before sunrise on a cool National Historic Park closed Aquatic the Bay are real. Sharing the water October morning, a small group of Park Cove for several days. “It’s with wild animals means sharing it swimmers (what they call a pod) not uncommon for swimmers to in sickness and in health — theirs, meets on the beach of the South occasionally get bitten or scratched End Rowing Club in San Francisco’s that is. Right now, Sausalito’s Marine by sea lions or harbor seals,” Aquatic Park. For safety they strap Mammal Center is dealing with a Johnson says. “But given the number waterproof blinking lights to the large outbreak of leptospirosis, a of people swimming and the number back of their goggles, but wetsuits bacterial infection that can cause fatal of pinnipeds in the water, it’s rare.” are conspicuously absent. The kidney damage in California sea lions. temperature of the water is around As of early November, the center was Robinson thinks it would be more 60 degrees Fahrenheit, warm for San treating 220 rescued sea lions that likely for him to get hit by a car than Francisco Bay open-water swimmers. had tested positive for leptospirosis, bitten by a sea lion, though he admits In winter, when the water plunges and according to the Marine Mammal he can be startled by encountering down to the high 40s, they still swim Center website, about two-thirds one in the water. — though not as far or for as long. of them will die. The bacteria are “We are lucky to live in California “Swimming sustains me,” says Fran transmitted via urine while the where we can swim in the Bay,” Hegeler, vice president of the South mammals are hauled out and piled says Johnson. “We also have a great End Rowing Club. “It is what gets me atop each other. Those being treated population of wild marine animals up every day. It revives my spirit.” at the center are acute cases, and it that live with us. They can get scared That’s the kind of enthusiastic is believed that many more have mild and defend themselves, especially in language some Bay swimmers cases and survive infection. the water. Or, a younger animal can express. Those who have been doing it for a while don’t seem to dwell on the dangers like catching hypothermia, being swept out to sea on a tide, getting hit by ships or small boats, exposing themselves to pathogens and pollutants, or having a run-in with a wild animal. While they are aware of these risks, they are more likely to focus on the fact that, as one swimmer says about the activity, “It’s awesome!” The six swimmers step into the inky water and swim with long, strong strokes alongside the Hyde Street Pier and the C.A. Thayer, a wooden-hulled, three-masted schooner built in 1895, twelve years after the formation of the South End Rowing Club. Each swimmer finds their own pace. Brad Robinson, a longtime pool swimmer new to open- water in the Bay, says he always Photo: Clay Schmitz, San Francisco Baykeeper swims hard in the beginning to warm up. “It usually takes me 200 meters see you as something to play with.” before I stop questioning why I’m While leptospirosis is dangerous for sea lions, it isn’t likely to affect Johnson encourages swimmers to doing it!” he says. visit the Marine Mammal Center swimmers.

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