McWilliam , Cameron. “What’S in Your Drinking Water? If You Live in One of These States, It Might Soon Be Recycled Sewage.” Brownandcaldwell, 4 Oct. 2022, brownandcaldwell.com/2022/10/hayward-protects-san-francisco-bay/. Accessed 29 Jan. 2023.
Hayward California is upgrading its WPCF or Water Pollution Control Facility to improve water quality while also limiting nutrients sent into the San Francisco Bay. This new system will incorporate “biological nutrient removal, primarily nitrogen”. The City enlisted Brown and Caldwell to help design systems that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are more easily expandable. The project should be finished by the end of summer 2024 and the City is hoping others will follow suit using nutrient removal.
I think that this article is extremely important because of how it connects to the article talking about algal bloom. This article not only talks about moving toward improved water quality and a lower amount of wastewater but also talks about reducing nutrients in water that is dumped into the San Francisco Bay, exactly where the algal bloom had previously occurred. I believe that in order to avoid large incidents like the bloom from the original article more water pollution systems need to incorporate some form of nutrient removal. When more cities follow in Hayward’s footsteps we will have greatly reduced the amount of damage we are causing to the creek as well as the ocean and other lakes.
It is a good sign that officials are limiting the amount of nutrients that go into the bay. Avoiding toxic algal blooms is also critical to the crabbing and fishing industries in the local area. I wonder the damage that has been caused to these industries from algal blooms, and I also wonder if the decision was more motivated out of an economic necessity.
I think economic necessity had a big part to play I think its the main motivation for most of these decisions.