monitoring – Enviro Updates

Tom Gogola, NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote Tuesday to spend up to $400,000 to install rain and stream gauges throughout the county, a move undertaken out of a growing concern over landslides on eroded hilltops and mountains scorched in October’s wildfires.
The fear, says Supervisor James Gore, is “melting mountains” around the region. County officials are rightly concerned, he says, over the possibility that the regional drinking water supply might be compromised in the event of massive rain-driven landslides.
Extensive mudslides have the potential to impact drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in the North Bay, says Gore, if muddy water clogs the county’s filtration system.
On Tuesday, the supervisors authorized the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) to execute a year-long contract with an as-yet-undetermined consultant under a program called the Burn Area Watershed Protection: Flood Warning Monitoring Network. The consultant will work with SCWA to install 11 stream gauges and 11 rain gauges, and associated tech, “as part of a post-fire early warning and monitoring system, to protect the public and property during storm events.” The agency already has a handful of the gauges spread around the region. New gauges would be installed along Mark West Creek and elsewhere around the county. A Cal Fire post-mortem of the Nuns and Tubbs zones found a “higher potential for landslides, debris flows, and flash floods that could be a risk to public safety and property.”

J.D. Morris, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The section of Sonoma County government responsible for everything from monitoring the Russian River for toxic algae blooms to inspecting the safety of local restaurants is overworked and insufficiently staffed, challenges that hamper its effectiveness, according to a recently released civil grand jury report.
In its latest annual analysis published late last month, the 19-member civilian panel determined the county’s Department of Health Services’ Environmental Health and Safety section faced a staffing squeeze, particularly for middle management jobs, and relied too much on trainees to play key roles, among other findings. The little known but critically important government section has found it difficult to recruit and retain qualified employees, placing too great a burden on current staff members who suffer from “reduced job satisfaction” as well as “low morale,” the report said.
Matthew Stone, the grand jury foreman, said the report’s findings continue to show that the county has yet to fully recover from its recession-era belt tightening. “They’ve got a whole bunch of sort of big-picture priorities, but they’ve been starving their foot soldiers a little bit,” Stone said. “And that’s a concern.”
The section faces budget restrictions and hiring difficulties that, in the grand jury’s estimation, result in some positions being underfilled, meaning the job is held by a trainee rather than a more senior staff member.
Read more at: Civil grand jury says Sonoma County’s Environmental Health staff overworked | The Press Democrat

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Tag: monitoring

By a landslide

Civil grand jury says Sonoma County’s Environmental Health staff overworked