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Article written about the new law change on Graywater all over the bay area. Including Contra Costa County, East Bay, North Bay, Marin County, South Bay, Santa Clara County, and the Peninsula.

The Goods on Graywater
Written by Deia de Brito Friday, 31 July 2009 22:18

In California, we are in the third year of a drought that has now risen to levels deemed “severe” by the state government. Precipitation, run-off, snow packs, and reservoirs are low, while water resources have been over-allocated. That’s why everybody’s talking about water conservation — from efficient showerheads, low-flush toilets, and limits on lawn-watering, to wastewater reclamation and rainwater catchment. One of the recent victories for the water conservation community has been the rewriting of an antiquated and draconian state plumbing code that dealt with the reuse of graywater.

Since state Senator Alan Lowenthal authored SB 1258 in July of 2008, stakeholders have convened several times in Sacramento to come up with a more user-friendly revision that eliminates the code’s difficult and expensive permit requirements. Because of the governor’s February 27, 2009 drought emergency declaration urging urban water users to cut consumption by 20 percent, the revised code was fast-tracked into effect — approved by the California Building Standards Commission on July 30 and implemented shortly thereafter, two years ahead of schedule.

Graywater is wastewater from bathtubs, showers, bathroom sinks, and washing machines that has not been contaminated by toilet water, bodily waste, or harmful chemicals. The average American uses about 100 gallons of potable (drinking quality) water each day — accounting for the highest residential water consumption in the world. By reusing graywater, a person can reduce the amount of potable water he or she uses by 50 to 80 percent.

There are no documented cases of anybody getting sick from graywater, but California’s graywater law has made it nearly impossible for ordinary people to reuse graywater without breaking the law. Reasons for the code’s strict requirements include health departments and building officials’ concerns over direct exposure to graywater and the possibility of graywater surfacing and running off into neighboring yards and streams. However, research has shown that graywater, if applied properly, is a time-tested and safe method of irrigating gardens and lawns, which account for 80 percent of residential water use.

The result of the state’s cumbersome graywater code has been telling: in California, there are an estimated 8,000 un-permitted systems for every permitted system. Graywater experts say there are 200 permitted systems in the state. Laura Allen, co-founder of the Greywater Guerrillas — a graywater advocacy group specializing in do-it-yourself systems — and co-editor and author of Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground, has played a major role in the proliferation of illegal systems, which amount to well over a million in the state. After graduating as an environmental science major at UC Berkeley 10 years ago, the fact that she didn’t know where her water came from or where it went began to drive her crazy, so she enrolled in a basic plumbing class. She detached the sink drains and flushed the toilet with sink water and began draining her shower water into her backyard garden. Later, she built composting toilets to further extricate herself from the water grid.

Today, the Guerrillas teach sliding-scale workshops in which people actually get to install simple, low-tech graywater systems in someone’s home. The total cost of all the supplies needed adds up to no more than $150. The old code required that all systems be high-tech — replete with filters, pumps, and tanks — and buried at least nine inches underground. As a result, a legal system can range in cost from about $2,500 to $4,500. With the costs of permits, inspections, geotechnical studies of groundwater levels, soil percolation tests, and professional plans, the total cost can add up to $20,000.

The new code will allow homeowners to install single fixture systems (which collect graywater from one plumbing fixture) as well as clothes washer systems without obtaining permits, as long as they follow 12 simple requirements, such as the prohibition of ponding or run-off and the disposal of home waste products. In general, graywater users should use all natural products that do not contain boron or salts and install a two-way valve than can divert water to the sewer if needed.

Allen, who has been participating in the stakeholder’s meetings in Sacramento, believes the new code will allow cities, water districts, and organizations to promote and provide workshops on simple, low-tech systems. People won’t feel like they have to hide it, she said. And professionals, who have long been burdened by the requirements for legal systems and often denied permits, will be able to install such systems.

Before 1992, there was no mention of graywater in California’s plumbing code. All wastewater from homes was to be disposed of by sewer or septic tank. But during droughts in the 1970s and 80s, Santa Barbara residents began finding makeshift ways to reuse their graywater as a way to save water — filling up buckets with shower water, reusing dishwater. In 1987, the city became the first in the nation to legalize and create graywater standards. Several other cities and counties in California followed suit, but there lacked a statewide set of regulations. And despite local attempts to introduce graywater reuse, regulations were so inaccessible that according to Art Ludwig — graywater historian, inventor, and author of Create an Oasis with Graywater — in Santa Barbara, only 10 systems have been granted permits in the past 20 years.

In 1992, AB 3518 (Sher) directed the Department of Water Resources to write a statewide irrigation code as part of the California Plumbing Code. As the result of AB 313 (McDonald), the code was revised in 1997 to include multifamily, commercial, and institutional buildings in the reuse of graywater. But since the beginning, health officials were focused on the public health risks of graywater reuse, and local governments were afraid of liability.

“I originally wanted the code to be rational enough for normal people to be able to obtain a permit,” said ReWater Systems designer Steve Bilson, who sponsored both assembly bills. “There’s always been this bias that graywater is dangerous. The science just does not prove that.”

Bilson lives in San Diego, which he says is one of the least water conservative cities on the planet. For three and a half years, he has been trying to obtain a permit for a residential graywater system, and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Applicants in the Bay Area have not necessarily had it any easier. “I would still consider it to be very difficult to obtain a permit in Northern California,” said John Russell, landscape architect and founder of WaterSprout, which specializes in graywater and rainwater catchment systems installation. “Up until very recently San Francisco was not permitting systems period. Berkeley, Oakland, Palo Alto, and Marin have been somewhat receptive. All of Contra Costa County has been very anti-graywater.” Despite the difficulty in graywater permitting and the recent struggles of the landscaping industry, WaterSprout has been so successful in the past year and a half that Russell installs almost exclusively graywater and rainwater catchment systems. Russell recently began his first commercial installation job installing a rainwater catchment system on Alcatraz Island to water its historic gardens without barging potable water over from San Francisco.

When Arizona became the first state to create what Art Ludwig calls a “graywater revolution” in 2001 — granting general permits to all residential graywater systems that do not exceed 400 gallons per day as long as they follow 13 simple rules — graywater reuse became a more acceptable conservation measure. The Arizona model — followed by New Mexico, Texas, Montana, and Nevada — sparked a movement among environmentalists to rethink California’s graywater code, and provided a successful example for the state to consider.

“Before it was legal, 13 percent — about 35,000 households — of single family homeowners in southern Arizona were already using graywater. We know that percentage has grown,” said Val Little, executive director of Water Conservation Alliance of Southern Arizona (Water CASA), a consortium of water providers and users that initiated research into graywater reuse 11 years ago. The overwhelming number of illegal systems pressured water providers to revise the code.

In 2004, Water CASA worked with legislators to implement a tax credit program as an incentive for homeowners to install graywater systems. “Last year, Tucson implemented a requirement that all new single family households built after July of 2010 be plumbed to capture graywater. Other towns are doing the same thing,” said Little. “Within the next year or two, I think there will be a national policy for graywater.”

In early 2008, Carrie Cornwell, chief consultant for the state Senate’s Transportation and Housing Committee at Senator Lowenthal’s office, pushed for the revision of California’s graywater code. “The Department of Water Resources said they didn’t have the resources or the money. That would have killed the bill,” said Cornwell. “My feeling is that they care about really big supply issues when it comes to water, and graywater is not a really big supply issue.” The Department of Housing and Community Development, which has been developing green building standards, agreed to take over the graywater code for residential landscape irrigation from the Department of Water Resources.

“The big difference is that the old code was written as a disposal code,” said Bilson. “We needed an irrigation code.” The first graywater code was written with the preservation of septic tanks in mind as well as the diversion of water from the sewage system, focusing on disposal rather than reuse through landscape irrigation. According to John Russell, the old code was adopted directly from the septic code, which requires water to settle into a gravel trench 17 inches underground. “For septic systems, you want to get rid of the water and make sure it doesn’t surface at all, but with graywater, we actually want it to stick around,” said Russell. The subsurface drip irrigation system — considered the best option for irrigation under the old code — requires a depth of nine inches, as well as filters, tanks, and pumps to prevent clogging. But most of the microbial ecosystems that filter graywater are in the top six to eight inches of soil.

The revision to the code makes graywater installation a lot easier and cheaper by permitting water tubing to be placed only two inches under mulch, rock, or soil. “Mulch is much more garden-friendly material because it breaks down into compost and it provides nutrients over time, whereas gravel just sits there and provides no nutrients to the landscape,” said Russell.

“At EBMUD, 65 percent of water is used for residential use,” said Dick Bennett, water conservation specialist at the East Bay Municipal Utility District — the water provider that serves 1.3 million people in 22 cities in the counties of Alameda and Contra Costa. “We’ve offered incentives for graywater reuse, but we’ve only had 10 systems over the last 15 years — it’s way too expensive,” said Bennett. “Under the new regulations, we can offer incentives to non-permitted systems.”

But the new code clearly states that jurisdictions “may, after a public hearing and enactment of an ordinance or resolution, further restrict or prohibit the use of graywater systems.” Even San Francisco — now taking the lead on water recycling, stormwater management, and rainwater catchment — could be taking up a stricter interpretation of the state graywater code. Michael Mitchell, senior plumbing inspector with the San Francisco Plumbing Inspection Division, says the city is discussing amendments to the new code that will require permits for all systems, even single-fixture systems and washing machine systems. The main concerns lie with alteration of piping and potential open sewer lines.

Since the graywater code revisions began, Laura Allen, along with other individuals and groups, formed the Greywater Alliance. One of its goals is to pass city ordinances that will direct the plumbing department to interpret graywater regulations in a graywater friendly manner and create a streamlined permitting process in Oakland and Berkeley.

“Right now, I try to get a graywater system permitted in Oakland and I ended up going to the building department and the first four responses of five people were ‘what’s graywater?’” said Nik Bertulis, a member of the DIG Cooperative, a worker-owned ecological design company that installed the first permitted graywater systems in San Francisco and Berkeley, including the Eco House. “There’s bureaucratic ignorance and we need literacy about environmental issues for us to be able to move forward as a society.”

While graywater legislation for residential landscape use is moving forward, Elizabeth Dougherty, organizer of the Northern California chapter of the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, says our conservation and reuse potential will not be complete until we achieve greater commercial and institutional graywater reuse and develop statewide standards for residential indoor use of graywater, which is currently left up to local jurisdictions. For now, places that lack backyards, like the majority of San Francisco, might be out of luck when it comes to graywater reuse. The city’s main focus is not irrigation, according to Rosey Jencks, urban watershed management program planner at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, but it might be too early to interpret indoor graywater reuse. First, it needs to come from the state, she said. “But we’re definitely going to be really interested in following that.”

“What’s happening is paradigm shift. People are going to become increasingly aware that there are multiple sources of water. We use our water once and throw it away. We could afford to throw away this water but we can’t anymore,” said Bilson. He points out that in the 1990s, when cities began to put out compost bins, everybody became a little more organic. He hopes to see cities take similar initiative with graywater incentive programs.

SPECIAL NOTE: This article was produced with the help of Spot.Us (an open source project that supports community-funded journalism) and was made possible in part by the donations of Spot.Us members. Visit www.spot.us for more details.

This Article was published by USA Today regarding health issues on Synthetic Lawns installed through out the United States. Any one in the Bay Area, East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, or Peninsula should read this before deciding whether an artificial lawn is the right choice for them.

I highly recommend installing Native Sod Lawn over Artificial Lawn for a variety of reasons in Marin, Tiburon, Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Mateo, San Jose, Saratoga, Danville, San Ramon, Las Altos, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek, Blackhawk, Fremont, Belvedeere, Campbell, Millbrae, Sonoma, and Napa Valley . Native Sod requires 50-90% less water, and along with being extremely drought tolerant, requires little to no maintenance and puts oxygen back into the environment, not toxins and pollutants like Artificial Turf.

Artificial turf: Health hazard?
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By Michael McCarthy and Steve Berkowitz, USA TODAY
Since the 1960s, artificial turf has been installed on sports fields across the nation, touted as a more durable and cost-effective alternative to grass. Early synthetic surfaces — such as the short-bladed AstroTurf — have given way in recent years to longer-bladed versions designed to be softer and help prevent injuries.
But there are increasing concerns that some synthetic fields — particularly fraying AstroTurf surfaces that have been in place for years — are contaminated with lead and could pose a health hazard to children, athletes and others who use them.

A half-dozen artificial fields in New York and New Jersey as much as a decade old or more have been closed because of concern about high levels of lead in the turf fibers.

The threat of lead contamination in old turf has given a fresh platform to those raising red flags about newer types of artificial turf. These surfaces often include bits of recycled tires — known as “crumb rubber” — among the turf blades to provide a cushioned surface. They have been installed at thousands of schools, public parks and indoor sports facilities across the country, and more are scheduled.

The questions about both types of artificial turf have created ripples nationwide, prompting a federal investigation of artificial surfaces and raising anxiety among health and elected officials, some of whom want to ban new installations until government agencies study the potential health risks and environmental hazards.

“They’re in high schools, university stadiums, public parks. So it’s a public health issue,” says Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who helped prompt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to get involved. “It is more than the lead issue. It’s the crumb rubber” in the new types of turf.

Says New Jersey Assemblyman John Rooney, “A little foresight is worth a hell of a lot of regret down the road.”

The artificial turf industry has been trying to reassure current and prospective customers its products are safe while pointing out the newer generation of turf helps find a use for millions of used tires.

So far, the concern about lead is focused mostly on older, nylon fields built by AstroTurf’s former U.S. owner, Southwest Recreational Industries, which went out of business in 2004. During a news conference Monday in New York, the current marketers of AstroTurf said their products and those marketed by Southwest Recreational Industries are safe.

“In the last couple of weeks, the science (showing turf is safe) is being trumped by the perception, the fears, the uncertainty and doubts,” said Jon Pritchett, chief executive officer of GeneralSports Venue (GSV), the exclusive licensee for AstroTurf in the USA.

The closed fields include four New Jersey surfaces — in Jersey City, Newark, Hoboken and at the College of New Jersey in Ewing — as well as a high school field in Cicero, N.Y., that were found to contain high levels of lead. Another closed high school field in Liverpool, N.Y. is being tested.

New Jersey health officials discovered the lead, used in pigment to color some fields, in the turf fibers. Kids and athletes could be exposed by inhaling or swallowing lead-laced turf fibers or “dust” kicked up by those playing on the fields, state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz says.

There have been no known cases of illness attributed to the fields, but at least four of the closed fields will be torn up and replaced with new artificial surfaces.

Elsewhere, towns have begun limiting access to artificial turf fields by young children, who are most at risk from exposure to lead, which can cause brain damage and even death.

In Montville, N.J., for example, kids under 7 will not be permitted to play on two artificial turf fields that registered unsafe lead levels, pending further testing, township administrator Frank Bastone says.

Children under 6 are “most at risk from exposure to lead,” says Dale Kemery of the EPA, which along with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has launched an investigation of artificial turf fields.

Old turf triggers questions

The original AstroTurf installed at the Astrodome in Houston in 1966 was a hard, carpet-like surface. It quickly spread throughout the NFL and Major League Baseball because it gave multi-use stadiums a consistent playing surface and was easier and cheaper to maintain than grass.

Today, those old rugs have largely fallen by the wayside in stadiums used by professional and college teams. The carpets have been replaced in such arenas by natural grass and newer, more sophisticated types of artificial turf.

However, at some smaller stadiums used by high schools, on playgrounds and other places, old AstroTurf remains.

The newer fields usually are made from polyethylene and polypropylene, plastics commonly used to make everything from grocery bags to food containers, as well as nylon or a mix of materials. The fields mimic the look, feel and footing of natural turf, and they often feature longer strands of plastic “grass” and crumb rubber from recycled car and truck tires. These tiny bits of infill provide a springy cushion for kids and weekend warriors and can be kicked up just like dirt on a natural grass field.

The national investigation by the CPSC and the EPA will focus on all kinds of turf, not just nylon, CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese says. The agency already is collecting turf samples and expects to issue a report by early summer. “Our focus is on the risk to exposure from lead,” Vallese says.

Meanwhile, the concern over fake turf has triggered efforts by legislators in five states to get studies of potential health and environmental hazards done. Several schools and municipalities nationwide also are testing their fields.

There are 3,500 full-size, artificial fields in the USA, estimates Rick Doyle, president of the Synthetic Turf Council, a trade group. Such turf accounts for 900 to 1,000 installations a year but does not include smaller surfaces such as practice fields and playgrounds.

DeLauro and other officials worry about kids and athletes inhaling or swallowing the small rubber pellets. Environmentalists also have cited the pellets as a concern, questioning whether compounds from recycled tire rubber can run off the turf and pollute rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater.

Some colleges, including Ohio State and Western Carolina, are having their synthetic fields tested.

Separate bills in the New York, New Jersey and California legislatures would ban the installation of new fields until the completion of comprehensive health and environmental studies.

Connecticut Senate Minority Leader John McKinney said Wednesday that he is working with the commissioners of the state’s departments of public health and environmental protection to find a way to use existing funds for a study. In New York City, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum has called for an “immediate moratorium” on turf installations until the city completes a study on their “adverse” health effects.

Responding to a request from California State Sen. Abel Maldonado, Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office says it will study whether signs should be posted near synthetic fields warning that users could be exposed to toxic chemicals. The California Integrated Waste Management Board has told Maldonado it plans to evaluate whether crumb rubber fields release dangerous chemicals — or cause abrasions and bacterial infections more serious than those occurring on a natural surface. A bill by Minnesota State Rep. Phyllis Kahn also calls for a health study on the impacts of crumb rubber use.

Risks overblown, industry says

The artificial turf industry says the controversy is based mostly on scientifically flawed attacks and sensationalized claims of the risks associated with turf. At least one coach agrees that the issue has been blown out of proportion.

“Nobody talks about all the radon in the soil, and there are kids playing on that every day, breathing it in,” says Mark Zimmerman, an assistant football coach at McQueen High School in Reno.

One artificial turf maker is changing its manufacturing process to remove potential toxins.

Stephen P. Noe, president and CEO of Sportexe Construction Services, which has installed more than 200 full-size fields in the last three years, recently posted a note on the company’s website saying “a few colors” of its products “were produced using low levels of lead chromate-based pigments. … Going forward Sportexe will not be offering these heavy metal based color choices. We intend to substitute alternative colors based on non-heavy metal based pigments. … Although we do not see a health risk in the current products, we believe that this is the best decision for all of our constituents.”

GeneralSports Venue owner Michael Dennis says he has a contract to rip up the closed field in Newark and replace it with a new “PureGrass” system with lead-free nylon fibers. The company also will install a lead-free artificial baseball field in the city.

Shira Miller, a spokeswoman for the Synthetic Turf Council, said via e-mail Wednesday that manufacturers have been coming together to share information about standards and, “The STC welcomes the involvement of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and other groups since we are confident their scrutiny will answer the question of safety issues once and for all.”

FieldTurf Tarkett dominates the artificial turf industry with 1,900 U.S. fields. Ten NFL teams play their home games on the company’s products. The Montreal-based company has won the contract to replace the closed field at Hoboken’s Frank Sinatra Park. The polyethylene FieldTurf surfaces checked by New Jersey health officials contained trace amounts of lead and were deemed not harmful.

FieldTurf executives are frustrated that their polyethylene products keep getting lumped in with nylon fields built by a company that’s no longer in business.

“Our fields were tested and found to be about 50 times below what the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission allows in Mr. Potato Head or in Lego,” CEO Joe Fields said in a statement.

That’s good news, New York state Sen. Jim Alesi says. But he wants more proof before accepting the opinion of manufacturers or industry-paid scientists. “We need to have someone that’s not selling us the product tell us that it’s safe,” he says. “If what they’re saying is believable, then there’s nothing wrong with the old Ronald Reagan approach: trust but verify.”

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation has launched a study to “assess the potential environmental impact from crumb rubber as an infill material,” spokeswoman Lori O’Connell says.

The upfront costs to install a synthetic field run from $400,000 to several million dollars. But the fields can last 10 years or more and withstand the kind of non-stop pounding that would turn a natural grass field into dirt.

The operator of at least one of the fields closed recently says he has “no choice” but to replace it with another synthetic surface. Densely populated urban areas have to use artificial fields, says Bob Hurley, director of parks and recreation for Jersey City, which has shut down its 11-year-old AstroTurf field in Cochrane Stadium at Caven Point after finding lead during testing.

The fake grass allows local teams to “play twice as many” football, baseball and soccer games, says Hurley, a well-known high school boys basketball coach at St. Anthony. “If it rains, half an hour later everything has soaked through and we’re able to play.”

Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey, says public officials and educators should be in the business of protecting children, he says, not squeezing in as many games as possible.

Says New York City’s Gotbaum: “If there’s no potential long-term or short-term effects that aren’t too serious, we’ll be the first to get out there and say, ‘Hey, it’s OK. Everybody get out and play.’ I’ll be the first person to do that. But I’m not there yet.”

Contributing: Tom Ankner; Tehani Schneider and Abbott Koloff of the (Morristown, N.J.) Daily Record; Chris Joyner of The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger; Matthew Daneman of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle; Jordan Schrader of the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times; Jeff Martin of the (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader; Jeff Delong of the Reno Gazette-Journal