Tiny plastics pellets a big problem in coastal cleanup

On September 15, tens of thousands of volunteers will participate in California Coastal Cleanup Day, donning work gloves to gather up the tonnage of manmade debris along California’s coastal regions and inland waterways.

They’ll certainly find the usual trash along the beach: cigarette filters, beverage bottles, candy wrappers, plastic utensils. But even the most conscientious of beachcombers are destined to fail in one regard — picking the beach clean of nurdles.

Nestled amongst the grains of sand are a seemingly infinite number of tiny plastic pellets, also known as “mermaid tears,” that are used in the manufacturing of plastic. Given their size — five millimeters wide at most — nurdles are likely to evade coastal cleanup buckets. So what do we do about it?

“That is the tricky part,” said State Water Resources Control Board environmental scientist Dylan Seidner.

The problems with plastics in the ocean are well- documented. Photos of seals and other marine life ensnared in six pack soda rings circulate widely, while the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become a cause célèbre. Nurdles are too tiny to be the subjects of heart-wrenching photography, but they are nevertheless dangerous to marine life.

Nurdles frequently spill during production and transport, and reach the San Francisco Bay via storm drains. There they can absorb and concentrate toxic pollutants such as PCB and DDT (both of which were banned decades ago but still exist in the environment), exacerbating the harm to marine animals that mistake them for food.

Nurdles also degrade into smaller particles over time, making them increasingly difficult to remove, but may never fully degrade, meaning they could be a permanent presence in marine environments. The EPA’s aquatic debris studies report nurdles as one of the most common items found in U.S. harbors; 250,000 nurdles were found in a single sample from one of the 14 harbors they surveyed.

The California State Water Resources Control Board has tried to curb nurdle pollution. Last October, the agency alongside the U.S. EPA and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered four San Leandro- based plastic manufacturers to clean up nurdle spills along the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline. The cleanup involved the use of floating pool skimmers with fine mesh screens to harvest the minute pellets, and was carried out at the lunar high tide, when plastic debris floats to the water’s surface.

But it isn’t always possible to identify the culprit and even when it is, the cleanup task is costly and often ineffective. Seidner acknowledged that there is an element of futility to cleaning up nurdles.

“I don’t think we can know if every single last pellet was picked up,” he said. “The cleanup part is not as financially feasible as the prevention part.”

The good news is that nurdle spillages can be easily avoided if the manufacturers and transporters make basic improvements in material handling and housekeeping techniques and educate their employees. The State Water Resources Control Board and its partner agencies are issuing guidelines and carrying out inspections of California- based plastics companies.

Seidner said it is helpful for people to be aware of the unintended side effects of their plastic consumption, but there isn’t much else Coastal Cleanup volunteers, or other Bay Area residents can do to address the problem — at least for now.

“Here is the bottom line, the facilities should be taking care of this,” he said. “They should be aware that whatever plastic migrates from their manufacturing site to a waterway is affecting the environment.”

Which doesn’t mean Coastal Cleanup Day is a futile effort for volunteers. They clean up the big stuff, but the plastics industry also has an important role to play in keeping the oceans clean.

CALIFORNIA COASTAL CLEANUP EVENTS

>> Get involved in the 2012 California Coastal Cleanup Day on Saturday, September 15. Here is just a sample of events going on in the Bay Area:

Damon Slough, Oakland: 9am-12pm, Oakland Coliseum, 7000 Stadium Way. Bring your own bucket, gloves and whatever pick-up tools. They’ll be handing out prizes for the most unusual item found and the best dressed bucket contest. More info.

Sonoma Valley: 9am-12pm, picnic afterwards. Various locations in Sonoma County. Join the Sonoma Ecology Center and its partners to clean up sections of Sonoma Creek and Nathanson Creek. After a morning of hard work, celebrate with fellow volunteers at a free picnic.

35+ sites in Marin: 9am-12pm. Various locations. The Bay Model is hosting cleanup at some of the most stunning beaches in the Bay Area, including a kayak/canoe cleanup in Drake’s Estero. So check out this site and follow the link to your favorite Marin beach. The Bay Model invites volunteers back to the center for a celebration from 12-3pm, 2100 Bridgeway, Sausalito.

Ocean Beach, San Francisco: 10am-12pm. Ocean Beach, Stairwell 17. join Team Ocean Beach for a morning of beachcombing. They do it once a month, so you might find yourself a regular volunteer gig. More info.

Paths with a purpose

On Sunday, La Loma Path was added to the network of approximately 140 walkways that meander between houses and streets in the Berkeley hills.

The network of green passageways make a perfect outing when there’s no time to head to Tilden or Wildcat Canyon. The bramble of unruly plants are refreshingly wild compared to the pruned shrubbery and disciplined yard plants that typically characterize suburban topography. August is when blackberries reign supreme, a tasty treat for the pathway adventurer.

La Loma is the latest addition to the network, which was developed at the turn of the nineteenth century and has been slowly expanding since 1998 with the efforts of the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association.

“We are really trying to encourage people to use them as green space,” says association president Keith Skinner.

A path revival
To do so, they have been creating new paths that were penciled into original city plans but never constructed, reviving some of the moribund paths, and, in their spare time, organizing hikes through the ivy-strewn corridors.

“We always think strategically when considering paths for development in terms of the benefit they deliver to walkers and the neighborhood,” Skinner said.

La Loma 1_AEF — La Loma is the newest path to be added to the network. Photo by Alicia Freese.

The BPWA selected La Loma as its next project because it would link pedestrians from Selby Trail in Tilden Park to Glendale-La Loma Park. La Loma consists of 161 wood tie steps, salvaged from a disassembled railroad, and connects Glendale Avenue to Campus Drive. It is the 30th path built by the BPWA.

The blueprints for more than a dozen other plans will likely never been realized because of engineering challenges, as well as geological and man-made obstructions

The paths, which are public property, are clustered in Berkeley’s hillier neighborhoods; Northbrae and Thousand Oaks have the highest concentrations. Nearly all of them are labeled with street signs, and some are paved for public safety. Their canopies of tangled overgrowth blot out sunlight and, momentarily, the aura of suburbia.

At one point, the BPWA experimented with planting native plants along the paths, but blackberries and ivy soon overtook them and since then, it’s let nature do its own landscape architecture. As a result, the paths have a distinctly feral quality to them, though the feeling is sometimes interrupted by an occasional discarded garden implement or rogue lily plant, reminding you that civilization is just over the fence.

“It was serendipity that these paths developed into a park-like experience,” said Paul Grunland, a member of the Berkeley Historical Society who studies the paths.

Earthquake’s aftermath
The 1906 earthquake sparked an exodus of San Francisco residents to the East Bay, causing housing developments to encroach upon the hills. Rather than follow the San Francisco model and stamp a grid system onto steep terrain, developers created streets parallel to the contours of hills. This layout, though aesthetically pleasing, would have been cumbersome to navigate on foot.

To address this, one of the primary engineers, Charles Huggins, designed a series of pathways that allowed pedestrians to traverse the winding streets, creating a more direct route to the trains and streetcars that transported commuters into San Francisco. The advent of the automobile changed all that.

“Soon everyone had a car and the paths became obsolete,” Grunland said.

It’s possible the pathways would have remained derelict relics of a pre-automobile era had another natural catastrophe not revealed a different purpose for them.

Switchback, Lower Covert — The Wildcat Path. Photo by Colleen Neff.

In 1991, the Oakland-Berkeley Hills Fire ravaged 1,520 acres and claimed 25 lives and 3,200 residences. It quickly became evident that the paths could serve as both escape routes for residents and as access points for firefighters, where downed power lines and other debris had obstructed many of the streets.
For instance, fire department records recount running 2,500 feet of hoselay along Eucalyptus Path, which runs behind the Claremont Hotel, linking Alvarado Place to Alvarado Road, to reach houses made inaccessible by obstructions in the street.

In many cases, though, the paths were too overgrown and derelict to be fully capitalized on, which prompted the city of Berkeley to commission a private company to outline the improvements necessary to make the pathways more functional as alternate routes in the event of another natural disaster. The consultants proposed a plan for path renovation that called for a liberal quantity of concrete and came with a prohibitive price tag.

“The city didn’t buy it,” Skinner says.

A new vision
The Berkeley Path Wanderers Association put forth a different vision for renovation of the paths, one that could be carried within a more modest budget. Using salvaged wood ties from railroads to build steps, they implemented a “rustic path” concept that made the paths walkable again but reduced the need for concrete. They have also distributed paper copies of the pathways map to fire department officials and Skinner worked with a GIS analyst to incorporate the paths into a GIS model, making it possible for the city to map hypothetical pedestrian escape routes in the event of another natural disaster.

“People have found a higher purpose for the paths,” said Grunland.

If you’re interested in a guided walk through the paths, the BPWA hosts quite a number of events, including some unexpected themes, such as “Poetry on the Paths” and “Hula and Hike.” Or check out the group’s list of self-guided hikes. And maps of the paths are also available.

Building’s artificial wetlands mimic nature

The San Francisco Public Utility Commission recently opened a new headquarters in downtown San Francisco that it’s touting as the “greenest building in America.”

The building has all the flashy features of green architecture: vertical wind turbines, solar panels, exterior venetian blinds, and a tapestry comprised of 15,000 five square inch polycarbonate panels that flutter and shimmer in the wind.

But below ground and out of public view is one the building’s most overlooked features. A million-dollar wastewater recycling apparatus is dropping the 13-story building’s water consumption down 60 percent, compared to similarly sized buildings, by mimicking the way wetlands filter contaminants from water.

“It is truly a living building,” says SFPUC’s spokesperson Tyrone Jue.

The artificial wetlands — trademarked as the “Living Machine” — recycle 5,000 gallons of water a day, thereby lowering per capita water usage from 12 gallons down to 2. Wastewater flows through a series of wetland cells — tanks with gravel — that flood and drain periodically throughout the day. The process works very much like fast moving tides; there are, in fact, 18 “tides” a day at SFPUC headquarters. According to the Virginia-based Living Machine company website: “the system turbo-charges nature’s own processes.”

The tides work together with the specially-engineered gravel to create a similar type of micro-ecosystem found in wetlands. Tank-dwelling microorganisms purify contaminants from the building’s wastewater, allowing it to be reused for toilet flushing and irrigation. As a safeguard, the effluent is also disinfected with chlorine and ultraviolet light in a “polishing pond,” located directly below some scraggly ferns in the building’s lobby.

The system takes a bit of pressure off the city’s centralized sewage system and ultimately reduces the amount of wastewater that reaches the San Francisco Bay. For the SFPUC, which runs the city’s sewage system, that’s added incentive to replicate on-site wastewater systems elsewhere in the city. It appears that the commission has worked out some of the kinks in the city’s approval process, and may serve as a model for others to follow.

In June, San Francisco board of supervisors President David Chiu introduced a bill (called the Non Potable Ordinance) to streamline approvals of new wastewater systems. And the SFPUC is making financing possible by offering commercial and residential developers grants of up to $250,000 for on-site wastewater recycling systems.

But is a million-dollar system, such as the Living Machine, worth it to reuse toilet water? And, equally important, is this pricey technology appropriate for developments working within more modest budgets?

“The Living Machine is very cost-effective and very feasible for just about any type of development,” said Will Kirksey, Living Machine’s global development officer.

Kirksey said the company recently installed one at an affordable housing development on San Juan island in Washington. He explained that the price tag for SFPUC’s Machine was higher due to the difficulties of installing it in a very urban setting.

Jue admitted that for the Commission, “this will never cancel out from a return on investment standpoint.”

But in part that’s because water is priced so low. The average San Franciscan uses more than 100 gallons a day and pays a fraction of a penny for a gallon. But the Bay Area’s water resources may not always be as generous, at which point artificial wetlands might seem as necessary as the real ones.

The SF PUC is giving public tours of its new headquarters.

Alicia Freese is a Bay Nature editorial intern.