A month after the 2017 Tubbs fire, Santa Rosa residents finally returned to one of the few homes still standing in the fields of destruction. They turned on the kitchen faucet and smelled gasoline.
This was the instant red flag of Santa Rosa Water, and I sent technicians straight away to test the tap. In the water, they found benzene, a known carcinogen. This is a discovery that sent shockwaves through the world of scientific and water safety.
In Santa Rosa, contamination investigations expand from a single household to the entire burn area.
The problem resurfaces in California Paradise as catastrophic urban wildfires continued to increase the frequency of the American West. In Colorado. In Hawaii. And finally, at Palisade and Altadena in the Pacific Ocean in LA. Meanwhile, scientists, regulators and local utilities competed to figure out what was going on and how to keep residents safe.
By the time Eaton and Palisades fired, scientists and states were able to pass a playbook on how to restore safe water for their customers to affected utilities. Lessons learned helped the Los Angeles Water and Power Department serving Palisades in the Pacific, just two months after the fire broke out, compared to a year at Santa Rosa.
However, the Altadena utility is still fighting to restore safe water. And, like the Tubbs fire, recovery still maintains scientific debate and the unpleasant unknown.
Edith de Guzman, who studies UCLA’s horizontal and climate adaptation policies, said: “It has the effect of not being really sure how to measure or monitor it.”
Benzene was not the only contaminant in Santa Rosa and La Postfire water. Scientists are still debating which chemicals should be tested, and which chemicals will not be checked given the cost of analyzing dozens of chemicals and the process in a timely manner.
And while scientists have studied the risk of long-term exposure to trace amounts of contaminants like benzene in drinking water, little is known about the short-term risk of high exposure through daily activities such as dishwasher washing machines.
The dangers of benzene
After smoke settled in Altadena and Palisades in the Pacific, local water operators quickly issued “don’t drink” and “don’t boil” orders under the advice of state regulators.
The order is designed to limit the dangerous exposure to benzene found in everything from plastic to processed construction wood to wildfire smoke. For decades, drinking or breathing it increases the risk of other blood cancers.
Boiled water can kill a typical non-fire contamination suspect, a pathogen, but it does not work with benzene. Also, if the boiling point is lower than water, benzene can easily enter the air when the water is heated.
As a result, the state has developed best practices to keep residents safe, such as drinking and boiling water, avoiding hot showers, hot tubs and clothes dryers.
However, scientists warn that these recommendations are not yet based on comprehensive science. The federal study links long-term small exposures of contaminants to cancer risk. Few studies explore the possibility of short, intense home exposure.
“There are currently no chemical modeling, mathematical modeling, or exposure assessments conducted to determine the answers to (these) questions,” said Andrew Welton, professor of civil environmental engineering at Purdue University and a leading researcher in the field of water safety after a fire.
In California, the maximum acceptable level of benzene in drinking water is one billionth of parts, but to be confident and confident that there is no long-term chronic health impact, the concentration should be at 0.15 ppb. In the short term, the Environmental Protection Agency believes it will be at risk.
In the aftermath of the recent fire, LA County utilities have discovered levels of 190 ppb in Altadena and 71.3 ppb in Palisades. However, after Tubus fired, Santa Rosa discovered that the level had risen.
After Santa Rosa Water first tested the customer’s kitchen faucet, the utility began a complete investigation into the contamination of the affected drinking water, along with the split of drinking water and EPA, with results different from those seen previously.
Santa Rosa Water Director Jennifer Burke said: “Nothing was found anywhere.”
What Santa Rosa Water discovered was the fact that it was not in literature, but in its own backyard, but potentially dangerous chemicals that could be lurking under the water. This discovery has since helped guide recovery after wildfire.
Other toxins
Santa Rosa Water first tried to figure out how contaminants like benzene entered the water. The utility looked into whether a nearby underground gasoline storage facility could have been breached. Later, the hypothesis emerged that later came backed up in the lab and test data of data from the western water system would later emerge.
Part of Santa Rosa’s water system lost pressure during the flames as firefighters used fire hydrants, residents ran hoses to protect their property, and damaged connections erupted onto the streets. As water levels fell and elevation increased, there was a gap in the system. To fill the voids of pressure that experts theorized, open connections began to inhale toxic ash, soot and smoke into the pipe.
That meant that contamination could quickly spread well beyond one home. And wildfire smoke is more than just benzene. Among them are all household toxic chemicals that can burn. It is a reality that brings difficult work for scientists and utilities.
“We are growing up and chasing the increasingly complicated reality of life in the modern world, where we are constantly creating all these new chemicals,” Deguzman said.
In the complex oceans of chemicals scattered across burn areas after the fire, water safety experts have settled on some of the most concerning pollutants based on risks to humans and the Tux and Camp fires in California, the Marshall Fire in Colorado, and the Maui Fire in Hawaii.
Among previous fires, some experts argue that testing alone with benzene is sufficient, saying that the chemical is most often above the safety level in post-fire systems, serving as a good “indicator” for whether other chemicals are present.
However, even after the fire has started, it is an increasingly rare position, even if benzene is not present, attaching evidence of other contaminants hiding in the water system.
In most cases, the utility argues that it should test not only benzene, but at least the rest of its close relatives called volatile organic compounds or VOCs. Others say that VOC’s less aggressive cousins, semi-volatile organic compounds, or SVOCs should also be tested.
Because it has a higher boiling point than VOCs, SVOCs are less likely to evaporate, but they still pose inhalation and intake risks. SVOCs are not necessarily less toxic to humans.
Some VOCs and SVOCs are inherently harmless, like chemicals responsible for the smell of wood and car cleanliness. Others, like benzene, are toxic to humans.
“We’re excited to help you get a better understanding of the situation,” said Chad Seidel, Environmental Engineering Research Affiliate at the University of Colorado Boulder and president of Corona Environmental Consulting, who helped recover from the Marshall Fire. “I’d say this, it’s dramatically better than where it wasn’t that long ago, for example, no one was doing this, five or more years ago.”
In fact, many post-fire water safety experts argue that utilities cannot rely solely on benzene, in order to confidently say that water is safe for customers.
“There is no evidence that benzene is an indicator of pollution. …It’s simply not,” Welton said. “Unfortunately, that misinformation continues to travel and move towards decision-makers’ opinions.”
In 2023, the California Legislature only requires benzene testing, but the state’s drinking water department recommends utility testing for all VOCs. Sometimes the state calls benzene a “indicator” for other contaminants.
For Paradise Irrigation Districts, testing the full suite of VOC can take a little time and cost a lot, but that was a pretty obvious choice (even in the pushback from the drinking water and EPA split at the time).
“We decided to go beyond that,” said Kevin Phillips, district manager for Paradise Irrigation District.
However, many customers have lived with cold showers and bottled water for several months, and are unhappy with the long process, and it is unclear whether the water is safe or not. That’s why many water safety experts and utilities who have experienced post-fire recovery have urged LA utilities to remain as transparent as possible.
“The last thing every water system wants is to create a city myth that water in this particular water system is unsafe,” said Kurt Coire, director of public works in Louisville, Colorado. “It can always be stuck with you. If you can’t become transparent and create trust through recovery, I think it’s a loss to the community.
Paradise Irrigation District has created an interactive online map for the entire system, as well as locations for all the tests that were taken. The Los Angeles Water and Power Department listed the number of VOC detections and levels detected for each zone in the Palisade Fire Area, a month and a half after the fire.
Meanwhile, the small Altadena utility, with limited personnel and resources, regularly posts joint updates to its website that outlines recent tests, affected roads, and the highest benzene levels found.
However, none of the LA utilities post complete test data with exact locations. Gregory Pierce, director of UCLA Water Resources Group, said part of the communication problem is the lack of guidance and support from the state.
That said, thanks to a much better understanding of the issue of water pollution than previous fires, LA Utility was optimistic about returning its services much faster than it was a decade ago.
How to recover your water system
Once we understood the problems with Santa Rosa water in hand, it started by actively washing the system. They open the fire hydrant and valves and hope that the released water will take the contaminants. It worked in many areas within the burn area, but the most intense hit areas were difficult. By the time the city flushed, benzene was tied to a pipe.
Santa Rosa was forced to replace the service line not only with the service line but also with parts of the main line along the street.
LA Utility has bet on flushing alone. This is a strategy that appears to be part of knowing that they knew the steps to take faster than previous wildfire utility companies.
Palisades has already restored its full service. The Altadena utility has made great strides and hopes to be able to recover safe water much faster than it was in the year that took Santa Rosa and Paradise for eight months.
On the month anniversary of the fire, LADWP hesitated and optimistically said it hopes to restore safe drinking water to Palisade by the end of February. I managed to do so on my two-month anniversary. This is just a week behind the estimate.
“How can I bring my customers home with the utilities I need? Pulling these things off is a heroic effort,” Seidel said. “I praise those who are happy to trample on what is necessary to do those things. It’s not easy.”
