Category Archives: drinking water

Update: Benicia Public Works restores water service near East 5th Street

Benicia Public Works crews worked around the clock to repair water main line break near St. Dominic’s School

A Benicia Public Works staff member assists in repairing a damaged pipe.
Benicia Public Works crews worked day and night to ensure St. Dominic’s School and the 800 and 900 blocks near East 5th Street have access to running water. | Uncredited image from Benicia City Government tweet.

By Nathalie Christian, May 18, 2023.

On the morning of May 17, 2023,  Benicia City Government reported via social media that a leak occurring in a water main around the 800 and 900 blocks of East 5th Street had left many residences and St. Dominic’s School without running water.

On Thursday, May 18, Public Works Director Kyle Ochenduzsko provided the Benicia Independent with following update via the Benicia City Government’s Twitter account:

Yesterday morning, a water main line break was detected on East 5th Street. City of Benicia Public Works crews worked around the clock to repair the line and restore water to affected residents this morning. Thank you to our dedicated crews!

Thank you, Benicia Public Works crews and staff!

Water main break leaves Benicia residents without running water (Update!)

Benicia Public Works Director promises to restore water service at St. Dominic’s and impacted homes, even if it takes all night

Map of impacted residences and buildings
This map shows impacted homes and businesses left without running water, as shared by the City’s Instagram post. | Uncredited image

By Nathalie Christian, May 17, 2023; updated May 18.

From the Benicia City Government’s Instagram account:

Early this morning, there was a water main break near the 800 and 900 blocks of East 5th Street. St. Dominic’s School and homes in the area are currently without water (see map of affected area). St. Dominic’s is closed for the day and parents have been notified. Public Works has begun working on the repair to restore water service as soon as possible. The repair is estimated to take several hours depending on the severity of the break. We will update the community when we have more information.

Responding to a request for an update, Public Works Director Kyle Ochenduzsko shared the following:

Crews are still working on the leaking pipe. Unfortunately, I do not have an estimated time to fix. If need be, our crews are prepared and ready to be working throughout the night to restore water as soon as possible.

As someone who has personally seen Mr. Ochenduzsko and his team in action, working tirelessly to fix a water issue that impacted my own home, I have full confidence that this issue will be resolved as swiftly as humanly and safely possible.

Benicia’s Public Works Department has consistently gone above and beyond to ensure essential infrastructure and services are safe and operational for Benicia residents. They deserve our support during trying times like these.

Status update

At 10:25 am on Thursday, May 18, Mr. Ochenduzsko provided the Benicia Independent with following update, available through Benicia City Government’s Twitter account:

Yesterday morning, a water main line break was detected on East 5th Street. City of Benicia Public Works crews worked around the clock to repair the line and restore water to affected residents this morning. Thank you to our dedicated crews!

Thank you, Benicia Public Works crews and staff!

A separate post announcing this update will be created and shared shortly.

Benicia Drinking Water Emergency – City working on a temporary bypass line

Water Transmission Line Incident Update

April 5, 2023

Benicia Proclaims Local Emergency; Announces Testing of Bypass Line for Damaged Water Transmission Pipeline

The City of Benicia proclaimed a local emergency following the break in its water transmission line when a hillside in Fairfield collapsed during recent rain storms.

The declaration of a local emergency will enable the city to use all resources necessary to repair the damaged water transmission pipeline. “It’s important for us to take this action so that the city can receive funding through the California Disaster Assistance Act and any other State and Federal funding that may be available,” said Mario Giuliani, interim city manager.

Benicia Public Works and various contractors are working on a temporary bypass line to regain access to the city’s primary water sources which are delivered via the damaged line. Designing the bypass began last week upon notification of the damage. Construction for the bypass line began on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 and is expected to be ready for testing on Friday, April 7. If testing is successful, then water transmission from Cordelia to the City of Benicia will be partially restored. While testing is scheduled to begin on Friday, it could take several days to fully assess the viability of the temporary system. Construction is now underway 24-hours a day until testing is complete.

“This is a highly complex project,” said Public Works Director Kyle Ochenduszko. “The bypass line is unique to the pipeline system and ever evolving circumstances. While we are confident that the bypass line will be successful, this is a situation with many variables,” he explained.

The bypass line is a temporary solution that will provide the community water while the primary pipeline is being repaired.

The bypass line will deliver water at a lower capacity than the main line. Benicia’s water source will still be coming from Lake Herman until the bypass line has been successfully tested. Benicia residents and businesses are still under 40 percent mandatory water conservation until further notice.

A special webpage has been established to provide a one-stop source for information about this incident. The site can be found at www.ci.benicia.ca.us/WaterTransmissionLine.

Social media posts, email notifications and other communications materials are being regularly distributed to residents and businesses as information becomes available. To sign up for emergency alerts, visit AlertSolano.com. To sign up for email notifications, visit www.ci.benicia.ca.us/announcements.

DESMOGBLOG: Science advisors tell EPA not to downplay fracking-related water contamination

Repost from DeSmogBlog

EPA’s Science Advisors Tell Agency Not to Downplay Fracking-Related Water Contamination

By Sharon Kelly, August 14, 2016 – 17:12

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisors finished their review of EPA‘s national study on fracking and sternly rebuked the EPA for claiming that its draft study had found no evidence of “widespread, systemic” impacts to drinking water.

The EPA had not provided the evidence to support that claim, the Science Advisory Board (SAB) peer review panel found. The phrase was widely quoted in the press, but appeared only in a press release and the Executive Summary of EPA‘s draft study of the impacts of fracking on drinking water.

Environmentalists challenged EPA‘s summary of the data, arguing that the agency’s conclusion wrongly ignored the thousands of spills, leaks, and other problems described in the body of the draft report.

The science advisory panel, in a letter signed by 26 of the 30 panelists, agreed. “The SAB is concerned that these major findings as presented within the Executive Summary are ambiguous and appear inconsistent with the observations, data, and levels of uncertainty presented and discussed in the body of the draft Assessment Report,” the SAB wrote.

The SAB finds that the EPA did not support quantitatively its conclusion about lack of evidence for widespread, systemic impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources,” the SAB wrote, “and did not clearly describe the system(s) of interest (e.g., groundwater, surface water), the scale of impacts (i.e., local or regional), nor the definitions of ‘systemic’ and ‘widespread.’”

The SAB‘s 180-page letter makes clear that if the Obama administration claims that fracking has not led to “widespread, systemic impacts” to water, it bears the burden of proving that their assessment is actually supported by evidence.

The SAB concludes that if the EPA retains this conclusion, the EPA should provide quantitative analysis that supports its conclusion that hydraulic fracturing has not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources,” the reviewers wrote.

Environmental advocates welcomed the science panel’s findings as vindication.

EPA didn’t provide/have a scientific basis for its controversial line, and today EPA SAB is calling them out for that,” Dr. Hugh MacMillan, a senior researcher for Food and Water Watch, told DeSmog in an email.

The controversial language from EPA‘s 998-page draft fracking study‘s Executive Summary had said: “We did not find evidence that these mechanisms [which included wastewater spills or treatment problems as well as underground water contamination] have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”

The EPA was asked by Congress to investigate fracking’s impacts on drinking water back in 2009.

That “widespread, systemic” language matters beyond headlines. When state and federal regulators decide whether fracking requires regulation or restrictions like bans, it matters enormously whether the EPA says that problems with fracking are severe enough to require action.

“This, of course, goes to the very heart of the issue, because it’s one thing if, occasionally, there have been some unfortunate accidents — but another if there is something inherent to the entire process of unconventional gas development that harms drinking water,” the Washington Post explained in its coverage of the SAB‘s scathing letter.

The EPA‘s study had long been under fire for apparent coziness between researchers and the shale industry. Repeatedly, news outlets obtained drafts of the EPA‘s study plans that showed a powerful industry influence over the study and a steady narrowing of the study’s scope — which would mean that real-world problems would not make it into EPA‘s on-paper review of fracking’s potential hazards.

“'[Y]ou guys are part of the team here,’ one EPA representative wrote to Chesapeake Energy as they together edited study planning documents in October 2013, ‘please write things in as you see fit,’” DeSmog previously reported.

The SAB science advisory panel, which worked for over a year on reviewing EPA‘s draft study, included scientists from academia, government, and the industry. Four of the 30 advisors dissented, writing their own opinion. “While the report could have articulated the agency’s statistical assessment more clearly, there has not been any facts or evidence demonstrating a systemic or widespread impact to existing drinking water resources or other water resources,” the four dissenters wrote.

So what is in the body of EPA‘s study that was left out of its executive summary? DeSmog reviewed and found that the EPA described numerous problems, including the following:

Meanwhile, accidents keep on happening, both above-ground and under, by the hundreds or thousands. One in a dozen spills by drillers wasn’t contained before it hit drinking water sources – and the spills that hit water supplies tended to be much larger spills than those that didn’t (p. 38). Although gas wells are generally depicted as having numerous layers of concrete and steel casings to prevent the gas, wastewater and chemicals inside the well from interacting with the environment outside it, two thirds of wells had no cement along some portions of their bores (p. 275), an EPA review found. And conditions underground, which can leave wells under high pressure, high temperatures or in “corrosive environments” sometimes caused well casings to have “life expectancies” that run out in under a decade (p. 281) – but the oil and gas industry has told investors that shale wells are expected to keep pumping for 30 years or more.

In its letter yesterday, the SAB peer-review panel also took the EPA to task for neglecting some of the nation’s highest-profile cases of water contamination, like Pavillion, WY, Parker County, TX and Dimock, PA. People from those towns whose water was contaminated had testified before the SAB in November, questioning the panel about the EPA‘s apparent decision to ignore what had happened to their communities.

“I feel that the EPA abandoned me,” Steven Lipsky, of Parker County, Texas, who faces a defamation lawsuit from driller Range Resources after EPA dropped its investigation into the flammable water at his home, told the SAB in November.

In its peer review, the SAB called on EPA to include those three high-profile incidents and questioned the EPA‘s decision to zoom out the lens by focusing on “widespread” problems. ” These local-level potential impacts have the potential to be severe, and the final Assessment Report needs to better characterize and recognize the importance of local impacts, especially since locally important impacts are unlikely to be captured in a national -level summary of impacts,” the SABtold EPA.

On Thursday, oil and gas advocates sought to closely parse the SAB‘s language, suggesting that the EPA did not necessarily have to change its language. “The panel does not ask EPA to modify or eliminate its topline finding of ‘no widespread, systemic impacts’ to groundwater from fracking – it asks EPA to provide more details or a ‘quantitative analysis’ of how the agency came to that conclusion,” Energy in Depth wrote in a blog post on the study.

Dr. David Dzombak, a member of the SAB who helped prepare the SAB‘s opinion told reporters that the SAB was backing a call for the EPA to drop the “widespread, systemic” phrasing.

One option for the agency would be to drop that conclusion,” he told StateImpact. “The SAB is asking here for clarification of an ambiguous statement.”

In a statement, the EPA said it would take its peer-reviewer’s comments into consideration as it moved to finalize its study draft. “EPA will use the SAB’s final comments and suggestions, along with relevant literature published since the release of the draft assessment, and public comments received by the agency, to revise and finalize the assessment,” the EPA said.

Environmental groups called on the EPA to listen closely to the SAB‘s recommendations and to take action to address the problems that the EPA‘s draft study described.

“The science is in. EPA knows that fracking pollutes drinking water,” said Lauren Pagel, Policy Director for Earthworks. “Now is the time for us to move away from this dirty fossil fuel and replace it with clean energy that does not harm public health.”