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Powtoon Informational Video made by kids

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Powtoon Informational Video made by kids

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Top 10 Worst Environmental Issues Facing Our Planet

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Top environmental issues facing our planet planet earth herald , without a doubt the biggest issue facing the environment is over population of humans. All other major environmental issues flow from the very here are major current environmental problems that our world is facing today.

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Home Water Use Survey | Contra Costa Water District, CA

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Get tips and information from the Contra Costa Water District water conservation team.

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Energy Kids: U.S. Energy Information Administration

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Kids Ocean Day (May)

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The event has two exciting activities for the students. The first activity is a beach cleanup, which emphasizes the positive impact that each student can have on the environment. The second activity is an aerial art project.

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Classroom resources

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Click links to download background information and in-classroom activities and information.

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Education Program

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Water quality in San Francisco Bay is affected by urbanization and industrialization of the Bay Area. View these segments to learn

about the mercury and other toxins that still threaten the water quality of San Francisco Bay.

about the five main threats to water quality in the Bay.

how the future of San Francisco Bay is undetermined due to climate change, sea level rise, oil spills and other events.

Download the Viewing Guide for pre- and post-viewing discussion questions, activities, and additional resources to use with students.

Download the Viewing Guide ›

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Threats to the Bay " Saving The Bay Education

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Water quality in San Francisco Bay is affected by urbanization and industrialization of the Bay Area. View these segments to learn about the mercury and other toxins that still threaten the water quality of San Francisco Bay. about the five main threats to water quality in the Bay.

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Bay Area environmental issues

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Parks - from our great wild national parks to little slivers of green in the city - are essential for both wildlife and for human welfare. The Bay Chapter campaigns to secure funding for the acquisition, improvement, and maintenance of our public lands; and to make sure that our public lands are used in ways consistent with our environmental principles.

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Population growth in the Bay Area is spurring the need for new housing developments, but in water-stressed California this means that regional planners have to be more strategic.

A luxury apartment building is under construction in Mountain View, California. The San Francisco Bay Area's population is expected to grow by 2 million people in the next 25 years, forcing regional planners to try to balance development needs with water resources.Tara Lohan

The San Francisco Bay Area is likely to be a lot more crowded in the near future, adding a projected 2 million people to the 7.5 million who already live here over the next quarter century. Planners traditionally focus on meeting housing and transportation needs as a region grows. But more people also means more demand for water - and choices we make today will determine how far our water goes in the future. Now regional planners have begun to address the disconnect between land use and water supply.

Whether or not we have enough water for growth depends on factors including climate change and the way we grow. "Climate change is a little out of our control, so we should focus on what we can control: the urban form and water efficiency," said Laura Tam, sustainable development policy director of , a nonprofit dedicated to urban planning. "If we can sustain the current rate of water conservation, we could add only a fraction of water use even if we add millions of people to the Bay Area," she explained.

In 2010, California's per capita water use in cities was 178 gallons (674 liters) a day. And by 2015, several years into our recent severe drought, that was down to 130 gallons (492 liters) a day. "One of the most encouraging outcomes of the drought is that we found out how much urban water use is discretionary," Tam said.

Strategies for shrinking the water footprint of new housing include compact development, or urban infill comprising multifamily housing with shared green spaces. "The average urban housing unit is more water-efficient than a suburban house," Tam said. Compact development has less landscaping, which typically accounts for one-third of residential water use statewide. In addition, perhaps one-tenth of California's water supply is lost to leaks, and compact development means shorter pipelines, which inherently reduce the chance of leaks.

Compact development can also help low-income people save money, in part by letting them live closer to work. When low-income people live far from their jobs, transportation costs can be as high as housing costs, according to a 2006 report from the nonprofit Center for Housing Policy. In contrast, living near a city center decreases transportation costs by an average of 40 percent.

Another way to keep growth's water demand in check is water-neutral development. This approach offsets the increased water needs of new housing via a combination of conservation and retrofits to existing developments. "Many old buildings have old fixtures, and the amount of water you can save with new ones is very significant," Tam said. Installing water-efficient fixtures could save 22.5 gallons (85 liters) per person per day, according to a 2014 report by the Pacific Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District requires water offsets when new housing is annexed to its existing service area. So far, the district has struck deals on six water-neutral developments, according to a 2015 report by the Alliance for Water Efficiency. Similarly, some Bay Area cities are requiring water offsets before moving forward on proposed developments, said Nicole Sandkulla, CEO of the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA), which represents 26 water suppliers in Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

The City of Brisbane, for example, is requiring water neutrality for the proposed Baylands development, 4,400 residential units on a former landfill and rail yard near the shores of the Bay. "The city says there's not enough water and asked the developer to come up with it," Sandkulla said. Likewise, Redwood City is requiring water neutrality for the proposed Saltworks development. This controversial project initially entailed up to 12,000 residential units on a former commercial salt production site on the edge of the Bay.

Moreover, the City of East Palo Alto is so tight on water that a building moratorium is in effect through the summer of 2018. And, said Sandkulla, other BAWSCA cities are short on the water needed to supply new development mandates proposed by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) under the forthcoming Plan Bay Area 2040. "ABAG is looking to push more people into the West Bay urban corridor, but some cities don't have enough water," she said. "ABAG needs to check in with water suppliers earlier - the focus has been on housing and transportation, but the other finite resource we have to address is water."

In a letter to regional authorities last October, Sandkulla wrote, "We strongly urge you to work with local water suppliers to consider the long-term water supply reliability implications of your regional land use planning effort."

ABAG's current regional housing plan states that "local jurisdictions consider infrastructure requirements, including water and sewer capacity, when developing their general plans and neighborhood plans," but then adds that "this information is not used to limit a jurisdiction's housing allocation." In addition, there is little mention of the water supply in the current Plan Bay Area, which was adopted in 2013, said ABAG resilience planner Michael Germeraad.

But he does see signs of better coordination between land use planning and the water supply. "In the past, there was less pressure on discussions of growth and water," Germeraad said, adding, "Now, we're moving towards considering water earlier in the process."

ABAG's 2015 annual meeting focused on actions cities and counties can take for drought resilience, and in 2016 the agency began facilitating meetings between elected officials and water utilities to discuss growth. "Understanding the water supply could inform the development process - for example, we could build differently to reduce water consumption of new units," said Germeraad, citing built-in dual-pipe systems for drinking water and gray water as an example.

The need to plan our future water use is further intensified by climate change. In the years to come, the Sierra Nevada snowpack that provides much of the Bay Area's water will likely be smaller, and the snow that does accumulate will likely melt before the end of the dry season, when we need it most. And, Germeraad pointed out, if our water supply drops as our population grows, "the water that we do have will be shared by more people."
This story first appeared in the Bay Area Monitor. Never miss an update. Sign up here for our Water Deeply newsletter to receive weekly updates, special reports and featured insights on one of the most critical issues of our time.

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How the San Francisco Bay Area Is Balancing New Development and Water

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Population growth in the Bay Area is spurring the need for new housing developments, but in water-stressed California this means that regional planners have to be more strategic. The San Francisco Bay Area is likely to be a lot more crowded in the near future, adding a projected 2 million people to the 7.5 million who already live here over the next quarter century.

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Sediment-laden water has helped the Bay escape the worst effects of nutrient pollution so far, but that's changing and it could hasten the growth of algae dangerous to the ecosystem and humans.

Changes in the amount of sediment coming into San Francisco Bay mean there is an increasing risk of nutrient pollution, which can be dangerous for people and the ecosystem.Florence Low/California Department of Water Resources

Nutrients - such as nitrogen - are essential to life, but an overabundance can mean trouble for waterways. Take Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, which are infamous for "dead zones" where closely packed bodies of fish float to the surface or wash ashore by the thousands. These dead zones are caused by nutrient pollution, which makes algae grow too fast. The resulting algal blooms ultimately kill fish and other aquatic creatures by using up the oxygen they breathe.

Nitrogen is high in the San Francisco Bay as well, but so far the Bay has escaped the catastrophic effects of nutrient pollution. That may be about to change, however.

"Nutrients are one of the more substantial problems the San Francisco Bay may face over the long term," said the San Francisco Estuary Institute 's David Senn, lead scientist for the Bay Area Nutrient Management Program.

Besides causing dead zones, some algae produce toxins that kill fish and other aquatic life directly. These harmful algal blooms can also cause health problems in people - including rashes, respiratory issues and liver illness - who swim in or accidentally swallow the water.

Why has the Bay been immune to nutrient pollution? "There's inherent protection in the system," Senn said, explaining that "one of the things keeping a lid on algae is sediment suspended in the water." Algae need both nutrients and sunlight to grow, and sediment makes water cloudy, blocking the light.

But this protection may not last much longer. "The Bay is changing," Senn said. Notably, sediment has decreased by as much as half in recent decades. Since the Gold Rush, sediment from pulverized rock has come down from the Sierra Nevada foothills and into the Bay. And now the last of that sediment is washing away. As the water in the Bay becomes clearer, algae get more light and can use the extra nitrogen in the water to grow more.

Most of this excess nitrogen comes from the 37 major wastewater treatment plants that discharge into the Bay. Sewage is full of ammonia - which contains nitrogen - and it goes straight through most treatment plants here. "The plants are treating waste from more than 7 million people, and most do not treat nutrients," Senn said, adding that "nutrient concentrations here can be two or more times higher than in areas where they are a problem."

Nutrients are challenging to regulate, however. This is partly because, unlike toxicants, nutrients are needed and too little is as dangerous as too much. "They fuel the base of the food web," said Naomi Feger, a planner with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. Another complication is that the impact of nutrients varies with environmental factors such as water depth and tidal mixing, which in turn vary across the Bay. "It's not just the concentration, it's also the conditions - the science will identify the parts of the Bay that are more vulnerable," she said.

For now, rather than setting a cap on nitrogen, the Water Board wants to help keep anthropogenic sources out of the Bay. Some wastewater treatment plants are using or testing natural approaches for removing nitrogen. "Marshes process nutrients," Feger explained, adding that "the Petaluma treatment plant has a created wetland and gets good nitrogen reduction." Another example is the Oro Loma wastewater treatment plant in San Lorenzo, where effluent irrigates a "living levee" that slopes gradually from wetlands to uplands and is planted with native vegetation. Baykeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to stopping pollution in the Bay, is looking to see where else these approaches could be implemented, said Feger.

In addition, under a nutrient permit established by the Water Board in 2014, water agencies are required to explore ways of reducing the nitrogen in wastewater treatment plant effluent. The Bay Area Clean Water Agencies (BACWA) expects to submit a report detailing options and costs in the fall, said BACWA executive director David Williams.

According to the upcoming report, nitrogen could be reduced about 10 percent by optimizing current wastewater treatment plants. "They can use existing tanks to convert ammonia to nitrate, which is a form of lesser concern," said Williams, who formerly was the director of wastewater of the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Then bacteria would convert nitrate to nitrogen gas, which would go "back into the atmosphere where it belongs," he said, noting that the air we breathe is 80 percent nitrogen. Altogether, this would cost upward of $220 million total.

Alternatively, nitrogen could be reduced about 17 percent by concentrating the nitrogen-containing organic material - such as feces and food scraps - and then treating this sidestream separately from the rest of the wastewater. The first step would be coarse screening to remove things like diapers, rags and two-by-fours, Williams said, adding, "You'd be surprised what gets into wastewater." The resulting organic sludge would then go into a tank with microbes, yielding methane that would be burned for energy, as well as biosolids that could be used as fertilizer. The sidestream approach would cost about $660 million total.

The most effective nitrogen reduction method is also the most expensive. Upgrading wastewater treatment plants would lower nitrogen by 65 percent to 85 percent, depending on the type of upgrade, at a cost of $8 to $10 billion total, respectively. As in the first option, microbes would convert ammonia into nitrate, which would then be converted to nitrogen gas. The difference is that the upgrades would treat the nitrogen in organic sludge more completely.

Williams likes the local, collaborative approach to keeping nutrient pollution at bay. "The rest of the country has reverted to litigation to solve these issues, but we have a good process here," he said. He also recognizes the need to regulate nutrients in the Bay: "It's common sense - we can't continue to have ever-increasing nitrogen. We will need to limit it."
This story first appeared in the Bay Area Monitor.

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Why Nutrient Pollution May Become a Threat to San Francisco Bay Health

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Sediment-laden water has helped the Bay escape the worst effects of nutrient pollution so far, but that's changing and it could hasten the growth of algae dangerous to the ecosystem and humans. Nutrients - such as nitrogen - are essential to life, but an overabundance can mean trouble for waterways.

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Population growth, increasing water demand, loss of habitat and water pollution

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Challenges facing the San Francisco Bay Delta Watershed, including population growth, increasing water demand, water exports, loss of habitat, climate change, and water pollution.