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Water Conservation
When it comes to pollution, what comes around goes around your watershed. That's a region as small as your backyard or as big as any major river basin where all land drains to a particular body of water or common point. In a watershed, a creek that's clean at one end could be polluted downstream by drainage from other waters. What do you clean up first, the creek or the nearby lake it drains into and pollutes?
Instead of focusing resources on one particular water quality problem, watershed management is a holistic approach. Watershed management, integrating programs to manage lakes, rivers, oceans, and groundwater, provides a strong framework for future watershed protection. Decisions are based on all the water resources, all the water uses, and all the threats to water quality throughout a common geographical area, including surface water, groundwater and wetlands.
Of course, protecting and preserving water quality costs money. However, it makes little sense to build an expensive plant to treat a community's wastewater, yet fail to prevent pollution of a river by pesticides or highway runoff in the same watershed. Through watershed management we can evaluate needs and address the most serious issues first.
Limited resources can be tailored and allocated to match individual watershed and nonprofit sectors agree that watershed management is today's best approach for preserving tomorrow's precious water resources.
To conserve water, those within the Soquel Creek Water District are offered free water saving devices. Click here for information
The Seawater Reverse Osmosis Cooperative Desalination Program Website. This program is evaluating the potential Desalination Plant in Santa Cruz to provide needed water supply during droughts, protect underground water aquifers, and improve water supply reliability for Santa Cruz and Soquel Creek Water District water users. The City of Santa Cruz Water Department (SCWD) and Soquel Creek Water District (SqCWD) identified desalination as the best option for delivering an additional flexible and reliable water source. To take advantage of the benefits derived from a cooperative facility, SCWD and SqCWD have joined together to address their different needs and share in the program costs. While SCWD will address its drought protection needs under such a partnership, SqCWD will utilize the potential desalination plant to protect their ground water resources from saltwater intrusion. SCWD and SqCWD will continue to use conservation and curtailment requirements to maximize efficient use of water resources. Click here for more information
Monterey Bay Aquarium Ocean Action Team
Act NOW to reduce plastic bag pollution
Each year, thousands of seabirds, marine mammals and sea turtles die from eating plastic or getting caught up in it.
Californians use approximately 19 billion single-use plastic bags each year, many of which become litter and eventually marine debris, polluting our beaches and oceans and threatening our ocean wildlife.
California Assembly Bill 2058 requires that grocery stores reduce their use of plastic bags by 70% by the year 2010.
If this statewide goal is not met, the bill would impose a 25-cent fee on plastic carryout bags, to be paid by the consumer. A similar program in Ireland cut plastic bag usage by 90% in just three years after a point-of-sale fee for carryout bags took effect.
This bill not only would remove millions of harmful bags from the litter stream, it also funds local trash abatement programs in communities throughout the state.
What you can do
This bill comes before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Monday June 23rd. Please voice your support for this bill today by using the online letter.
There are simple things we can do every day to help ocean wildlife live long, healthy lives. All the world's rivers and oceans are connected, so plastics that end up in the waterways or storm drains wherever you live can find their way to the ocean. You can help. Remember to reduce, reuse, recycle and otherwise properly dispose of your plastics.