An extensive algae bloom this summer in the San Francisco Bay has killed millions of fish and other marine life, thanks to the area’s old sewage systems, which allowed human waste to flood the fragile ecosystem.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday that “poop and pee” were the cause of the problem:
After an unprecedented harmful algae bloom first turned San Francisco Bay a murky brown color and then littered its shores with dead fish, many people assumed it was yet another climate disaster to add to the list, along with extreme drought, wildfires and heat waves.
While scientists suspect climate change played a role in triggering the bloom, what fueled it is not a mystery. Algae blooms need food to grow, and this one had plenty: nutrients originating in wastewater that the region’s 37 sewage plants pump into the bay.
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A major challenge is that most of the treatment plants date to the 1970s and ’80s, after the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act and other regulations. Previously, municipalities simply pumped raw sewage into the bay.
Michael Shellenberger argued that scientists had overhyped the role of climate change in the algae bloom.
Scientists claimed the algae bloom in the San Francisco Bay, which killed over 10k fish, was due to climate change. But it's now clear that it is due to the failure of local governments to upgrade the region's antiquated sewage treatment plants. https://t.co/Ov1RklIjPN
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) September 6, 2022
However, the media had, in fact, noted that while climate change — via high temperatures and California’s intense drought — could be a factor, the sewage problem was also a cause.
The New York Times reported in August:
A harmful algal bloom known as a red tide is killing off “uncountable” numbers of fish in the San Francisco Bay Area, with residents reporting rust-colored waters, and piles of stinking fish corpses washing ashore.
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Though scientists can’t be certain what caused the algal bloom, experts say it is likely a combination of factors including warm water temperatures and a high concentration of phosphorus and nitrogen — the runoff from urban and agricultural sources as well as dozens of wastewater treatment plants that surround San Francisco Bay.
The Washington Post noted that nutrients from wastewater were possibly fueling the algae blooms:
Jon Rosenfield, a scientist with the San Francisco Baykeeper conservation group, said high levels of nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in wastewater also drive the growth of algae blooms.
…Rosenfield said sewage treatment plants are cleaning the water of solid material and bacteria, but they’re not designed to pull out nitrogen and phosphorus.
Treating the water for nutrients would cost billions of dollars, and those costs would be passed on to residents, White said. She said water districts are funding studies to understand the effects of nutrients that have been present in the water since people settled in the area.
Dead fish have been washing up on local beaches for weeks, causing unpleasant smells in nearby neighborhoods, such as Oakland’s Lake Merritt.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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