It seems the Bohemian’s coverage of the excessive levels of bacteria in the Petaluma River Watershed made some waves.

Over the past few weeks, river recreationists have thanked us for highlighting the issue and local officials have sought to clarify certain points highlighted in our initial reporting.

Still other river users asked us to weigh in on whether it is safe to swim in or eat fish from the Petaluma River Watershed.

This article will cover all of those issues below. First, here is a brief recap of the situation.

In order to determine whether fecal matter has seeped into the water, scientists test water for Fecal Indicator Bacteria (FIB). Though the FIB themselves are not dangerous, scientists use these strains of bacteria to test the level of fecal contamination in a water body, which can potentially be dangerous.

That fecal matter can come from a range of warm-blooded creatures, including humans, cows, horses and dogs. Some level of these bacteria is natural, but state and federal agencies have identified unsafe levels.

The main stem of the Petaluma River was first listed as “impaired” by excessive levels of fecal indicator bacteria in 1975.

Over the past several years, scientists from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, one of nine regional boards around the state tasked with overseeing water quality, have tested for indicator bacteria in the Petaluma River Watershed.

The conclusion? In short, the levels exceed allowed amounts of indicator bacteria throughout the Petaluma River Watershed.

On Wednesday, Nov. 13, the regional board unanimously approved a plan, known as the Petaluma River Bacteria Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). The board intends the TMDL to define the level of bacteria—in this case, levels of FIB—and provide a roadmap for solving the problem.

Weighing In

In separate letters to the Bohemian, the City of Petaluma and Friends of the Petaluma River expressed concern that our previous coverage highlighted the city’s sewer treatment plant as a possible source of fecal matter.

The city staffers clarified that the sewage treatment plant itself is not a possible source of contamination, since they treat the sewage there to “exceptionally high standards.”

My original article [‘Waste Deep,’ Nov. 6] included references to possible contamination coming from the city’s sewage facility, rather than the sewer collection system—the pipes that carry the raw sewage to the treatment facility.

As the water board’s report notes, “Wastewater discharges from the [City of Petaluma’s] Ellis Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant are not likely to contribute to FIB impairment of the river because they are disinfected to levels well below the applicable bacterial water quality objectives.”

The Bohemian regrets the error in terminology.

Still, as city staffers acknowledge in their letter, some of the laterals and mains that make up the city’s sewer collection system do sometimes overflow, mostly due to aging infrastructure coping with heavy storms.

The city staffers went on to highlight ongoing efforts to clean up the river and the surrounding watershed.

Those efforts include infrastructure upgrade projects, like “a major sewer replacement project in the City’s older downtown area”; the city’s Sewer Lateral Replacement Grant Program, which offers “financial assistance to property owners for the replacement of their private sewer laterals”; and public education campaigns aimed at curbing pollution from pet waste and stormwater runoff.

In a separate letter, Andy Rodgers, director of the nonprofit Friends of the Petaluma River, encouraged readers to take a broader view of the sources of bacteria, rather than focus on treatment facilities, as I did erroneously.

“Instead of looking at [public sewage treatment] facilities, we need to focus on the non-point sources: homeless encampments, domestic and agricultural animals, failing septic tanks and leach fields, urban runoff and especially elevating the awareness of our citizens and visitors to behave responsibly,” Rodgers wrote.

TMDL Concerns

And that brings us to one criticism of the regional water board’s current plan.

In a letter to the board in early September, staff members from San Francisco Baykeeper, an environmental nonprofit, contended that the board’s proposed plan to clean up the river, known as a TMDL, does not meet the definition laid out in federal regulations.

In short, Baykeeper argues that, although the SF Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board calls its plan a TMDL, the current plan does not meet the requirements needed to use that name.

For instance, Ben Eichenberg, a staff attorney at San Francisco Baykeeper, tells the Bohemian that the current plan does not properly differentiate between the multiple possible sources of fecal matter.

Without that information, it makes it hard to hold any potential sources of bacteria accountable.

“They’re just guessing about what’s causing the pollution,” Eichenberg says. “Based on those guesses they’ve thrown together some ideas to randomly try to fix the pollution without any plan to measure how well the ideas are working.”

Due to that weakness and others in the TMDL, it could “take decades longer to solve the problem,” Eichenberg says.

In their response to Baykeeper’s concerns, Regional Water Board staff repeatedly wrote that they “disagree” with the nonprofit’s interpretations of the requirements of a TMDL.

“This TMDL includes requirements for all sources of bacteria throughout the watershed,” staff wrote in part.

Still, although the regional water board approved the TMDL unanimously on Wednesday, Nov. 13, the current plan isn’t necessarily a done deal.

Eichenberg says the California State Water Resources Control Board and then the Environmental Protection Agency will both review the TMDL before it officially goes into effect. Either agency could potentially make changes.

Community Concerns

Several readers have asked whether or not it is safe to swim in or eat the fish from the waters of the Petaluma River Watershed. This reporter asked the Sonoma County’s Health Officer, Dr. Celeste Philips, to weigh in. Her answers, edited for length, are below:

Is it safe to swim in the river?

“Swimming is not recommended when e.coli levels surpass the [state] exceedance threshold. We advise people to follow these instructions when coming into contact with water in the river,” Dr. Philips says.

Dr. Philips’ other advisories include: Do not swallow water; Do not drink river water or use it for cooking; Adults and children should wash hands/shower and towel dry after swimming; Rinse off pets after they come into contact with the water and do not swim when sick.

Is it safe to eat fish from the river?

Dr. Philips notes that the California Office of Environmental Health Assessment does not list the Petaluma River on its California Fish Advisory Map, which offers “current information regarding fish consumption advisories for freshwater bodies throughout the State.”

“That said, we advise that for fish caught in the Petaluma River that people throw away the guts and clean fillets with tap water or bottled water before cooking,” Dr. Philips adds.

On the big day, there were two kinds of stuffing, the cook warned—one with cannabis and the other without—though she couldn’t remember which was which. Yes, the cook was stoned.

This happened last year. Guests to that Thanksgiving dinner near the Russian River had better be very careful—or not at all, she said. I didn’t take any chances. I helped myself to both stuffings, and dark meat, cranberries, mashed potatoes, yams and a river of gravy. I’d carved the turkey before I’d had anything to smoke or eat that might have led to intoxication. Best not to take chances with a sharp knife, even if you’re an expert carver. My mother taught me how to carve a turkey and I’ve never forgotten how. Both of my parents—who lived not far from the cozy house where I celebrated Thanksgiving in 2018—smoked the marijuana, which my father grew in the back 40, and kept a secret from my mother.

For the last 20 years or so I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving with more or less the same people. Not everyone smokes weed. But most of the guests do, including the host who, like my father, grows his own. Some years ago, when I first began to explore the weed world as a journalist, I asked him whether there was organized crime in the Sonoma County cannabis world. “Well, I’d hate to be an unorganized criminal,” he said.

This Thanksgiving, he has a lot to be thankful for, including a bumper crop, though I know a half-dozen West County residents who didn’t get to harvest their weed because county officials swooped down and confiscated their crops. Another grower was the victim of a home invasion and a robbery in the middle of the night. The thieves got away with his weed, which he had harvested, cured and dried.

What surprises me most of all are the folks from out-of-state who arrived shortly before Thanksgiving this November, bought all the weed they could buy with cash and shipped it back to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas. Their friends and family members, I’m told, also had a lot to be thankful for.

How much longer the so-called black market can go on, I don’t know. But as long as growers and traffickers can make big money out-of-state it will go on big time. Anyone who talks about the cannabis industry as post-capitalist is as phony as the Republicans who claim their president did nothing wrong with, to, or about the Ukrainians. Hey, we live in a quid-pro-quo world. You scratch my cannabis back and I’ll scratch yours.

Trawling for Thanksgiving quotes, Bohemian-contributor and Petaluma Argus-Courier community-editor David Templeton emailed a questionnaire to the usual suspects. He topped it with “What are you most thankful for right now?” I have yet to reply because A) I’m on my own damn deadline and B) the question gives me psychic hives.

I begrudge Templeton nothing, but the query registers as a threat to the heap of social anxiety that cringes just below my well-hewn persona. Perhaps it’s too personal or too undeveloped to express, or maybe I haven’t taken the time to cook up a pithy, on-brand answer—something affably wry with just enough poignancy to suggest I’m human.

This isn’t the first time I’ve failed this test. Remember Cafe Gratitude, the vegan cafe on Marin’s Miracle Mile? They were known for a peculiar ritual that arrived with the bill—the server would ask, in that sanctimonious tone peculiar to aughts-era millennials, “What are you grateful for?”

Sudden, self-righteous rage was harder to come by back then so I suppose I should’ve been grateful for that. As with Templeton now, I hadn’t worked up a bit back then, so I improvised something about my disdain for ending sentences in a preposition.

“There’s no ‘attitude’ in ‘gratitude,'” they replied.

I had to write it down on the napkin to make sure. Damn it, they were right. Cafe Gratitude shuttered all of its Bay Area eateries by 2015. The owners retreated to Los Angeles and a year later endured death threats from vegans after they decided to start eating meat again. No one got hurt (except, apparently, some animals) and Cafe Gratitude continues to thrive as a vegan hub in several LowCal locations.

I was curious as to whether the proprietors brought their post-meal question ritual to Los Angeles, so I called the location in my old neighborhood, Venice. When asked, Jalysa kindly informed me that their location asks a different question every day. At the time of this reporting, the query was “What are you overcoming today?” I suppose I’m overcoming my ingratitude today, Jalysa. Here’s why:

According to PsychologyToday.com, that online enclave where armchair psychologists can diagnose their exes’ borderline personality disorders, one will also learn that “Psychologists find that…feeling grateful boosts happiness and fosters both physical and psychological health, even among those already struggling with mental health problems.” Which is to say me and my entire readership. So, in our mutual self-interest, I’ll start:

I’m grateful someone put the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving playlist on Spotify.

I was playing “Charlie’s Blues” while writing these very words when my partner Karen asked, “Are you on hold?”

“Good grief,” I sighed. But, yeah, some Vince Guaraldi jazz does sound like on-hold music.

Grateful or grating? I dunno. Now you, dear reader—what are you grateful for?