Page 8 - Sonoma County Gazette 3-19
P. 8

ADVOCATE cont’d from page 1
    Low flow causes the river water to warm, encourgaing growth of invasive species
continuing efforts to increase awareness of the role of endocrine disrupting chemicals on human health and aquatic life.
“Brenda has been an active participant and advocate for water quality in the Russian River for years,” said Josh Curtin, the board’s assistant executive officer. “She’s provided extensive input to our Board, and we’ve have made changes because of the things she’s brought up. We really appreciate Brenda.”
 It all started, Adelman said, in 1979 when she joined a group of fellow townspeople concerned about the skyrocketing cost of a county proposal to build a wastewater treatment plant in Guerneville.
Then in 1985, amidst heavy rainfall, one million gallons of raw sewage spilled from Santa Rosa’s overflowing treatment ponds into the Laguna de Santa Rosa, which
empties into the Russian
 8 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 3/19
River. That was followed by the city’s intentional, but illegal four-day release of 750 million gallons of treated wastewater.
Downstream, River communities were traumatized. The River
might be Santa Rosa’s
sewer pipe, but it was the source of their drinking water.
Summer recreation compromised by poor water quality
  “There was a lot of fear. People were afraid of the drinking water supply, even the emergency drinking water that Santa Rosa provided,” Adelman said. “Everyone was outraged.”
Santa Rosa was penalized for the spill and ordered by the state to find a weather-independent method of wastewater disposal. For 16 years, the city explored a series of projects in various parts of the county that also called for increasing discharge in the Russian River.
Adelman and her group, the Russian River Water Protection Committee, fought on. They were not the only group opposing the discharges, but they were the most persistent. She read and researched her way through four multi-volume environmental impact reports with thousands of pages of scientific data and spent hundreds of hours attending and speaking at meetings.
power. City and county officials credited Adelman for stalling the city long enough that a more environmentally sound project could be found.
  Algae feeds on nutrient-rich water
She launched letter writing campaigns, presented papers, galvanized community groups, published articles, developed
a 1,000-person mailing list, and gave interviews, gradually developing an
extensive knowledge of water quality that won the respect of the professionals. Finally, in 2002, Santa Rosa chose to send most of its wastewater to the Geysers to recharge the dwindling steam fields that produce geothermal
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