Stagnant Lagoons Cause Problems

"... a mixture of non-petroleum-based fats or oils. Non-petroleum oils include synthetic oils, such as silicone fluids, tung oils, and wood-derivative oils such as resin/rosin, animal fats and vegetable oils."

(Below is my opinion piece from the April 9 issue of The Alameda Sun points an accusing finger at Alameda's finger lagoons as the cause of the Bay Area's Seabird Massacre of 2015.)

Built more than fifty years ago, Alameda's Finger Lagoons that stretch from Court Street to Westline Drive have evoked mystic phrases like, "Venice of California." They border some of Alameda's nicest homes. On Google Maps, they look like a thin blue cutworm crawling across the city's main island.

But beauty and cach'e come at a price. The lagoons can be an attractive nuisance. Recently a man was seen dumping a tub of soiled cat litter over the railing of his second floor balcony.

The Finger Lagoons have aesthetic appeal, but for some they have become an ecological nightmare. Global warming has turned stagnant bodies of water into algae farms. Algae love still water, heat and bright sunlight. Last year was the hottest on record in Northern California, with a record number of sunny days as well.

By contrast, the tree-shaded lagoons on Bay Farm Island were designed with 1970s  technology. No fingers impede flow. An aeration system keeps the water oxygenated. The aging lagoons on Alameda Island are not aerated and have little shade. With no aeration system, algae growth in these older lagoons must be controlled with chemicals. It's these chemicals I have a problem with.

Over the past ten years, signs have been posted at Alameda's beaches warning not to go into the water. Some unknown hazard makes peoples' legs sting. Could the mysterious source of that sting be chemicals released from the lagoons?

Our beaches are covered with sand reclaimed from just offshore. Was that sand tested for toxins first? Are tiny children and  mothers safe in that sand?

Last October I observed someone in a Clean Lakes, Inc. truck taking a water sample from a lagoon. According to its web site, Clean Lakes is a global expert in "clarifying" inland waterways with toxic agricultural chemicals. A city engineer told me the company was essentially a lagoon janitorial service. Good thing I'm not that gullible.

The same engineer said the lagoon dredging solids were dumped "at Alameda Point on a toxic hot spot." Well, what about the liquids? You know the ones that went out that pipe into San Francisco Bay?

Last October I observed a plume of grey sludge and debris in San Leandro Bay that I suspect came from dredging the lagoons. This will be hard to prove, but Cal Fish and Wildlife said they would send someone out to take samples. I filed a complaint with the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

We will get to the bottom of this.

Maybe those 1950s-era lagoons should be filled in, made into a park.

#   #   #

Alameda's Tidal Curse

The Sludge Could Have Returned Dozens, if not Hundreds of Times

"What I found sent a chill up my spine.  ...Like a toilet flushing backward, the "bad stuff" kept returning. Alameda's Tidal Curse was a death trap for marine life."

Someone asked, "If the sludge you saw in October was the Bird Goo, how could it take from October to January, ten weeks, to kill the seabirds?"

To answer that question I studied tidal charts for October 12, 2014, the day I observed and reported the plume of sludge. What I found sent a chill up my spine.

The sludge took 3 1/2 hours (from 2:40 to 6:10) to transit from the south shore lagoon portal to just beyond the Park Street bridge. It had twice that distance to cover before tide changed at 9:21. It took the entire six-hour tidal cycle for the sludge to arrive at the mouth of the Oakand-Alameda Estuary, then the gooey mess would have been drawn right back up the same Estuary by the powerful ship channel current--BACK INTO SAN LEANDRO BAY WHERE SEABIRDS WERE ROOSTING FOR THE NIGHT!

Then the tide reversed again, and the process was repeated! For weeks, the deadly sludge I saw would have been transported back and forth along the Estuary between San Francisco Bay and San Leandro Bay, dousing hundreds of migrating seabirds again and again with layer after layer of toxic goo. (See illustration below, Image 1fx)

(click to enlarge photo)

Path of Sludge Ploom

Given the strength of the tide in the Estuary and the distance and speed of the tidewaters, whatever is carried out from San Leandro Bay is most likely to return on the next incoming tide. Then the process is repeated, endlessly.

Like a toilet flushing backward, the "bad stuff" kept returning. Alameda's Tidal Curse was a death trap for marine life.

The sludge's mass gradually diminished over time as some got deposited along the shoreline and bits were carried out into San Francisco Bay. But how long did that take, how many cycles? And how toxic were/are the residues to the seaweed and other marine life (fishes, barnacles, mussels, shrimps, crabs?)

San Leandro Bay's formerly robust marine life is feeding habitat for thousands of seabirds and their entire food chain. As food supply diminishes, so goes the seabird population.


The streaks of foam I saw April 12 (See Continuing Evidence of a Lethal Surfactant), if they are remnants of the initial October 2014 plume, could have returned hundreds of times during the intervening six months.

Migrant seabirds came here to fatten up for their return flight north, only to be drenched daily with a mixture of viscous chemical compounds we now know to be drilling mud (click here for April 19 blog identifying the Goo as drilling mud) and a lethal surfactant that got pushed farther and farther inland with each cycle.

Each successive dousing of surfactant would deposit another layer, to the point where death from hypothermia would result. A surfactant that might normally be considered harmless in a single dose would be lethal. (Click here for a detailed explanation of surfactants.)


Due to this Tidal Curse phenomenon, massive and lasting damage has likely been wreaked on the Estuary and San Leandro Bay as the tides have come and gone and layer after layer of toxic chemicals were deposited on rocks and seaweed and all forms of marine life and habitat, from pilings to bird feathers.

The chemical properties of a surfactant make it the ultimate toxin in a marine environment because surfactant molecules seek always to get between water and on-aqueous matter. Since essentially no marine life or habitat can escape a surfactant, its killing power is incalculable.

Continuing Evidence of a Lethal Surfactant

"When I think of the hundreds of birds killed, it is chilling to see this foam entering San Leandro Bay again, exactly six months later."

New Goo, or Remnants of the October Spill?

Either a surfactant is continuing to be released into the waters around Alameda or the foamy stuff in these photos is the remains of the initial plume I observed October 12, six months ago. Either way, the material needs to be sampled and tested. I have reported it but didn't call 911 because the volume wasn't massive. Should I have, given the previous responses to my calls?

Yesterday, April 12, I spotted this clear evidence of a surfactant along the northern (Oakland) shore of the Oakland-Alameda Estuary. Grey foam on saltwater usually indicates the presence of surfactant. For over a mile from the Fruitvale Bridge to San Leandro Bay, this unnatural-looking material (see Site 3 photo) clung to the shoreline and swirled in eddies on the slow incoming tide.

Using a reclaimed plastic pop bottle, I took a sample of several ounces and will hand it over to a  Hazardous Materials Specialist at Alameda County Department of Environmental Health today.

Following are my photos of yesterday's discovery.




Site 1 faces west and is the spot where I first noticed these new dregs of foam Sunday, April 12, six months to the day since the October spill. Here, a hundred or so yards east of the Fruitvale Bridge, a thin trail of greyish-tan foam drifts lazily in an eddy.

Site 2 is a few yards east of Site 1. It faces east and shows another eddy with foam, and a duck heading right for it.

Site 3 is a close-up of the foam in Site 2. All the sites have identical material--bubbles in a matrix of greyish-tan liquid. With few exceptions, the bubbles are strikingly uniform in diameter and highly resilient. They don't burst easily when touched by a solid object. Instead, they attempt to attach.

Ponder what this material would do to feathers. Repeated exposures would create layer upon layer of gummy film as each successive layer dried in the sun.

Site 4 is east of the High Street Bridge, a few hundred yards east of Site 3.

Site 5 is farther east. The control tower at Oakland Airport can be seen just beyond San Leandro Bay.

Site 6 is near the mouth to San Leandro Bay, facing the tip of Alameda Island.

Seabirds can be seen foraging among the foam.

Site 7 is at the mouth of San Leandro Bay.

That pin at about 1 o'clock is the tower at Oakland airport.

When I think of the hundreds of birds killed, it is chilling to see this foam on the shores of San Leandro Bay again, exactly six months later.

How many times has the tide returned, delivering this deadly foam?

Update:
I dropped off my sample at the County Environmental office around 5PM.

Meet the Victims of the Mystery Goo Seabird Massacre

Empty Air

Beautiful creatures
caked with sludge,

unable to forage or fly,

shivering among the rocks and reeds

for hours until they die.

In the winter months, San Leandro Bay becomes a haven for thousands of migrating flocks, from Canada, Alaska, wherever the compass needle points north. They come because it's warm and wet and there's food. They must restore body fat for their return in spring.

Imagine these beautiful creatures threatened by careless or uninformed municipal workers whose focus is only on keeping lagoon water clear and safe. "Those birds are really pretty resilient," one recently said.

This is the scenario that I believe led to the toxic spill I and a friend witnessed and tried to report. Week's later hundreds of waterfowl like these were dead or injured. This blog attempts to link these two events and show how it happened, to help guide the efforts of investigative agencies like California Fish and Wildlife, Cal-EPA and the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Most of the affected birds were surf scoters, buffleheads, coots and grebes, all of the birds pictured frequent the areas where the lethal "grey goo" did its damage--concentrated in the waters surrounding Alameda Island.

We must find out who did this and hold them accountable. For if we don't, it can happen again.

(click photos to enlarge)

Great blue heron (click to enlarge)

Avocet

Bufflehead

Goldeneye

Surf scoter

Greater scaup

Snowy egret

Horned grebe

Western grebe

Night Heron

Loon

Stilts

Snowy plover

Black-bellied plover

Brown pelican

Coot

Common tern

Clapper rail (c/o Wikipedia)

Surf scoter (male)

What is a Surfactant?

"Think laundry detergent, dish soap."

A mysterious Grey Goo killed or injured five hundred beautiful seabirds in early 2015, many of them from the north on their annual migratory stopover .My research suggests the goo is an emulsion or colloidal suspension* created by the use of an industrial surfactant in Alameda's aging finger lagoons to clarify the water after dredging.

SURFace, ACTive and AgeNT
The term "surfactant" comes from the words, SURFace, ACTive and AgeNT. A surfactant is a chemical substance, usually a liquid, that, among other things, changes the surface tension of water. Common examples would be laundry detergent and household dish-washing soap, which emulsify oils and fats so they can be carried away down the drain.

Surfactants are used in some municipal sewage plants to clarify contaminated water. Surfactants can be used in oil spill clean-up. Oil and water do not mix, but oil can be emulsified by adding a surfactant. It's similar to dunking a greasy skillet into soapy dishwater. Emulsification occurs when surfactant molecules break the oil (or grease) into tiny particles by tightly surrounding them.

A foaming industrial surfactant uses a chemical binding process called "ionic attraction" to attach in a similar way to particles suspended in dirty water. The remaining emulsion or colloidal suspension* can then be skimmed off.

Water Treatment Skimmer

Drill-down with Google Maps on a sewage treatment plant. Those open round vessels with arms extending across are skimmers. (See example at left.)

In the photo at right, it looks as if the lagoons have been turned itno a gigantic laundry tub.

The grey areas (see arrows) denote interaction of the foam with targeted particles (contaminants) stirred up by dredging. This grey material, technically an emulsion or colloidal suspension, is what I suspect to be the bird-killing Grey Mystery Goo reported in the news.

If I am right, the Mystery Goo is essentially an emulsion or colloidal suspension* created by interaction between an industrial surfactant and the contaminants (dissolved and undissolved solids) clouding the water due to the mechanical disturbance of dredging.

The contaminants could also include drilling mud (a fluid used in earth-boring), a form of which was found to match the laboratory analysis of the Bird Goo.

Harmless, but Lethal
Most surfactants are normally harmless to humans, but they can be lethal to waterfowl, especially when dosed repeatedly (See "Continuing Evidence of a Lethal Surfactant" ), because they cut through (emulsify) natural body oils that allow feathers to insulate them from the cold.

When those natural oils are stripped away, the birds die of hypothermia. It is a slow, hideous way to die because of the lengthy suffering it entails.

The chemical properties of a surfactant make it the ultimate toxin in a marine environment because surfactant molecules seek always to get between water and on-aqueous matter. Since essentially no marine life or habitat can escape a surfactant, its killing power is incalculable.

The world's favorite emulsion is ice cream. This was not ice cream.


Breaking News:
It is revealed in an April 19 blog post here that the Goo matches a viscous solution used in well-drilling generically called "drilling mud." (Click here to read the blog about drilling mud matching the Goo 100%.) The drilling mud and the surfactant are comprised 80% of matching materials (tung oil, seed oil, animal fats and silicone.) A foaming agent would emulsify the surfactant and drilling mud, creating a sludge that would float through the lagoon portal out into San Francisco Bay.


Below are several web links to sites that explain surfactants and the process of emulsification.

Web Sites: 
Key Center for Polymer Colloids
"Surfactants": http://discovery.kcpc.usyd.edu.au//9.5.5-short/9.5.5_introsurfactants.html

Youtube Videos:
"32-6 surfactant energy...": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYLbca-hI5E

"What are emulsions": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC_czAL24zY

"Surfactant. How does a Surfactant Work?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGtGmScZzw

"How Surfactants Help You Clean": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HwSJLO_cVs

"Warning: Dispersant/surfactant eats through...": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt7pC8yzvok


*Wikipedia: "An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible (unmixable or unblendable) ...A colloid is a substance in which microscopically dispersed insoluble particles are suspended throughout another substance.Sometimes the dispersed substance alone is called the colloid;^[1] the term colloidal suspension refers unambiguously to the overall mixture,,."

"A foaming agent is a material that facilitates formation of foam such as a surfactant or a blowing agent. A surfactant, when present in small amounts, reduces surface tension of a liquid (reduces the work needed to create the foam) or increases its colloidal stability by inhibiting coalescence of bubbles."


Other References:
Bätje, M., and H. Michaelis. 1986. Phaeocystis pouchetii blooms in the East Frisian coastal waters (German Bight, North Sea). Marine Biology 93:21-27.
Courtemanch, D. 2004. Foam—A cause for concern? http://www.state.me.us/dep/blwq/doclake/foam.htm

Eckhardt, B.W., and T.R. Moore. 1990. Controls on dissolved organic carbon concentrations in streams, southern Quebec. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 47:1537-1544.

Fact Sheet: Foam. 2004. Indiana Department of Environmental Management, Office of Water Quality Assessment Branch.
http://www.in.gov/idem/macs/factsheets/media/foam.html

Fendinger, J.J., D.J. Versteeg, E Weeg, S. Dyer, and R.A. Rapaport. 1994. Environmental behavior and fate of anionic surfactants. In, Environmental Chemistry of Lakes and Reservoirs, L.A. Baker (ed.). American Chemical Society, Washington D.C.

Fuller, D. 2003. The occurrence of foam on lakes and streams. Great Lakes Environmental Directory, 394 Lake Ave. S. Suite #222, Duluth, MN 55802. http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/zarticles/012903_great_lakes1.htm

Gergel, S.E., M.G. Turner, and T. K. Kratz. 1999. Dissolved organic carbon as an indicator of the scale of watershed influence on Lakes and Rivers. Ecological Applications 9:1377-1390.

Maryland Department of Natural Resources. 2004. Harmful Algae Blooms in Maryland. 
http://mddnr.chesapeakebay.net/hab/news_083104.cfm


Wegner, C., and M. Haburger. 2002. Occurrence of stable foam in the Upper Rhine River caused by plant-derived surfactants. Environmental Science and Technology 36:3250-3256.

How a Toxic Spill Can Be Invisible

Two different fire departments responded to my 911 call, and neither one saw anything requiring action. What was I to make of that? I thought I had done everything right in phoning 911, giving my cell number and hanging around a couple of blocks away. How could they not see what I had seen? I thought Alameda FD was a no-show, but learned later from the fire chief that wasn't the case. After dark, Oakland FD came, but all they had were flashlights. It would have taken a floodlight aimed down the estuary to make out what was left of the plume.

I owe an apology to Alameda's firefighters for doubting them. After meeting with Acting Chief Doug Long, I now have a clearer picture of the mechanics and limitations of their procedures and equipment.

Even under ideal conditions, there was almost a stealth nature to the material in the plume. The grey color of the material made it difficult to distinguish from the water.

Examine closely Image 1kc, at right, taken within Alameda's lagoon community sometime after the lagoons were dredged and before November 20, 2014, when the photo was posted on Facebook.

The white foam and adjacent grey floating material I believe to be the unknown surfactant mentioned above.

The grey areas dispersed among and bordering the white foam are what I believe was the plume I reported in my 911 calls.

Note how hard it is to make out the grey areas because they are so similar to the surrounding water. Note the low light and the textured nature of the water caused by wind or light rain. In such low/flat-light textured conditions the "grey goo" is almost indistinguishable from the water.

Why was I able to see the plume so clearly? Because the conditions at the time were ideal. It was bright and sunny and there was not even a breeze when I first noticed the plume of sludge. The water's surface was like a mirror except for the plume, which I only noticed because there was a texture to it and it was moving directly toward me at a snail's pace for over an hour before I got a good look at it. I had plenty of time to study it, to track it on foot and ponder the significance of what I was seeing. Even so, it was two months later before it sunk in that what I had seen was likely the toxic spill that killed three hundred seabirds.

The conditions for AFD were entirely different. During the two-and-a-half hours that passed since I first spotted the plume hundreds of yards away, the wind had come up, the tidal current had strengthened creating ripples, and the plume was in the shade that had crept out along the north shore of Alameda Island as the afternoon wore on.

Why didn't AFD call me? Because the driver didn't have my cell number. Either it wasn't passed to the driver or the truck wasn't equipped with a wireless monitor. For firefighters, time is critical. They rush to get out the door and on site as fast as possible. A piece of paper with a number on it doesn't always end up in the right hands. Arriving on site, the responders expected to "see something" that was almost impossible to see. And there was nobody around, or so they thought, to point anything out.

Meantime, another hour passed before Oakland FD was on site. By then the plume had broken up substantially and the conditions had worsened. The outgoing tide was ripping along, making the water choppy. They would had to have aimed a floodlight down the estuary to see what was left of plume, but by then the water was choppy. I was beginning to feel dumb for even calling them because there was so little evidence.

The next day I wanted to do something, but I was short of time. I had heard that the lagoons were being dredged, and it clicked in my head that the lagoon portal was just west of the Otis Street Bridge, where I'd first seen the plume. So I squandered what time I had on driving around looking for a dredging crew. One of the workers said the dredgings were carried away on a truck. Where, he didn't know.

So I dropped it. I figured the plume was from some other source, and what evidence there was was out floating in the Pacific Ocean by then. I wrote a rant on Facebook and dropped any notion of folowing up. I had plenty going on in my life to sweat over some junk that was out past the Golden Gate Bridge. Was I wrong!

As I said, only after I heard about the bird-killing grey good did I realize what an opportunity I had missed to prevent hundreds of beautiful seabirds from death and misery.

Again, my apologies to Alameda's firefighters. After I heard about the goo and that there was no record of my 911 calls, I assumed someone was covering up for someone at City Hall. I was angry about the birds. Angry that I might have been fooled. Angry that someone who didn't care about a few hundred birds was getting away with an environmental crime. Nobody thinks clearly when they're angry.

I'm sorry guys. It won't happen again.

There's still work to be done, though, to find out what happened and how to correct it. Maybe we can all learn from this. Next time, even if I have to run to my car and back for my phone and a coat. Even if I have to see a lady safely to her car and run back. I'm going to return to where I made the call so I can direct the responders right to the problem.