Event Date
Join us for Conflicts and Tradeoffs in Water Quality Management: When Solving One Problem Creates Another.
James Downing is a Senior Water Resources Specialist with the Santa Clara Valley Water District (Valley Water).
The Santa Clara Valley Water District (Valley Water) is the primary water resource management agency for Santa Clara County. It manages wholesale water supply, flood risk reduction, and watershed stewardship throughout the county. With this broad range of responsibilities, conflicts often complicate resource management decisions. For many years, Valley Water has piloted line diffuser hypolimnetic oxygenation to create hypolimnetic redox conditions unfavorable to mercury methylation. This has had unintended consequences of advective mixing, which has in turn resulted in temperature, turbidity, and algae increases, complicating overall water quality management for beneficial uses. This will be discussed in the context of the regulatory and other drivers, historical and current intervention strategies, positive and negative consequences of management actions, partnerships with universities, State and federal agencies, and private entities, and the important role of the public in enabling these often novel approaches to compliance resource management.