UCI Wading Into Environmental Issues
By ROGER BLOOM
A new player,or perhaps referee,has emerged in the environmental debates long dominated by citizen groups, developers and government agencies in Orange County.
In the past two years, scientists from the University of California, Irvine, who have taken their research and analytical tools into the field locally for decades, have moved to the center of some of the county’s hottest issues. And they say they intend to stay there.
“It’s a hugely important development,” said Chris Evans, executive director of San Clemente-based Surfrider Foun-dation USA, a national environmental group involved in OC issues.
One of the issues the Surfrider Foundation tracks is high ocean bacteria counts off Huntington Beach, which have forced the city to close its beaches several times.
UCI researchers led by Dr. Stanley Grant measured bacteria counts off Huntington Beach and channels leading to it, finding evidence in 2000 that sewage from an Orange County Sanitation District outfall could be a source of the bacteria.
That has led the sanitation district to take a closer look at the outfall and take some preventive steps, including a controversial plan announced last week to chlorinate its effluent.
Another study that generated headlines, led by Dr. Sunny Jiang, found indications last year that potentially harmful human viruses may be entering Aliso Creek. That result inflamed debate over runoff into the creek, and spurred Laguna Niguel to divert its runoff into a sewer treatment system as an interim measure and test an ultraviolet treatment as a permanent fix.
Both Grant and Jiang are doing follow-up studies.
Meanwhile, UCI has taken the lead in the creation of the Center for Urban Water Research, a UC systemwide institute based at the Irvine campus under the direction of Dr. Betty Olson and now in its second year.
And Grant has been working to create an independent group called the Clean Beach Center, to bring together researchers from throughout the state.
The UCI activity is being hailed by virtually all sides in the contentious local environmental debate, who seem to agree that good science can lead to better policies.
“The more science we get, the better off we’re going to be,” said Dan Winton, a real estate attorney in the OC office of Phoenix-based Snell & Wilmer LLP and chairman of the Orange County Business Council’s regulatory committee. “Without science, we don’t know if the benefits being sought with regulations will be achieved. That’s where UCI comes into the picture.”
And Dr. Robert Ghirelli, the sanitation district’s director of technical services and a frequent target of environmentalists, said, “It’s good to meld the scientific talent at UCI with the real-world business of a public agency like ours. They have some real smart people over there who know how to look at information in different ways than we might here, and it has been beneficial.”
In fact, Ghirelli said, the district has donated equipment and provided lab space to UCI researchers. It also has given Grant some funding to look at 40 years of district testing data “to try to tease out any trends” that might shed light on the Huntington Beach situation.
Grant said a paper outlining the findings of his team’s analysis has been submitted, but the results are embargoed until its publication.
UCI’s involvement in environmental issues, especially water issues, isn’t new. Olson is a longstanding UCI faculty member who also is a member of the board of the Santa Margarita Water District and was on the board of the Irvine Ranch Water District in the ’80s. Winton said UCI scientists were helpful in the ’90s on a task force looking at the Air Quality Management District’s ride-sharing regulations.
Indeed, Grant began his studies of the ocean off Huntington Beach back in 1995 as a field exercise for undergraduate students. Most of his serious research in the ’90s was “pretty arcane,no reporter would be interested.”
“Then,” he said, “1999 happened.”
That summer, a wave of beach closings caused by high bacteria counts severely affected local businesses and drew a flood of press coverage. Suddenly, Grant’s fieldwork project was highly relevant.
“Now,” he said, “it has kind of taken over my time, and the arcane stuff has faded away.”
“It turns out Huntington Beach is a good field lab for studying all the ills associated with the impacts of coastal communities on the ocean,” Grant said, adding with a laugh, “That’s good for me, but bad for everyone else.”
The news coverage generated by Grant’s and Jiang’s studies has raised the campus’ profile. And it’s likely to remain high, Olson said.
The new research center, which Olson is heading on an interim basis pending the recruitment of a new faculty member, is set to specifically tackle projects that affect public policy.
“We are faculty involved in issues of great importance to society in general,” she said. “We are looking for things that will be put into practice in the field in about five years.”
The goal for the center: to grow it into a nationally recognized public-policy research institution, Olson said. It now has about 25 affiliated faculty, including environmental scientists, policy specialists and an economist, she said. It has received funding from three water utilities, while the Metropolitan Water District is considering funding some research.
There are potential pitfalls.
Jiang said that her findings were misinterpreted by some. She was studying 11 river systems in Southern California, including Aliso Creek, and found genetic markers for a couple of human viruses,hepatitis A and enterovirus,in a pipe in Laguna Niguel that feeds into the creek.
The finding of the markers in the pipe doesn’t necessarily mean there are functioning viruses capable of infecting humans in the creek. And, she said, the Aliso Creek findings were not unusual among the 11 rivers she tested.
“Aliso Creek is not any different than the others,” she said. “We frequently find traces of human viruses.”
The press dust-up surrounding her findings was something of a surprise, she said. But Jiang said she intends to carry on with her research and let others debate.
“I know there are a lot of political implications, because a lot of people are calling me,” she said. “The environment is now something everybody cares about, especially in California. But I treat Aliso Creek like any other river in Southern California.”
Grant, too, said he has seen individuals and groups take liberties with his results, for political purposes.
“There are interest groups who want to see an outcome,” he said. “Whatever fits into that scenario is admissible, and what doesn’t fit isn’t admissible. But life’s not that simple. In the end, I think the results carry the day.”
It is that let-the-facts-speak attitude of UCI researchers that has kept them viewed in large part as above the fray as their findings touch on contentious issues. Olson said she wants to keep that credibility as the new Center for Urban Water Research wades deeper into policy issues.
“I just don’t want it to become politicized,” she said, adding that she thinks the center’s goals are “very positive and hopeful.”
And Olson is no stranger to walking the line between policy research and politics.
“I’ve done publicly relevant research for decades,” she said, “and I’m still here.”
Cicerone on Bush’s Global Warming Plan
UCI Chancellor Ralph Cicerone, who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel that reported to President Bush on global warming last year, was one very interested party when the president two weeks ago announ-ced his plan to address climate change.
President Bush last year rejected the Kyoto Protocol on global warming as harmful to the U.S. economy because of its aggressive targets for reducing emissions of warming gases, especially carbon dioxide. The centerpiece of the president’s plan is a system of voluntary goals for slowing the growth of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., and a reliance on a measurement of emissions per unit of economic output, rather than on total emissions overall.
Both aspects of the plan have been heavily criticized by supporters of the Kyoto Protocol.
Cicerone said he sees the president’s plan as positive because it “emphasizes a long-term commitment with multiyear targets.”
He also said the emissions-per-economic-output measurement is a useful one.
“Experts have been doing this for a long time,” Cicerone said. “This shows the White House is working with the experts on this issue.”
However, Cicerone said, “overall, this looks like an overly timid approach that won’t get us very far.”
The voluntary targets, he said, appear to reflect increased efficiencies that have occurred in the past decade “because people found it valuable to do it” and would be expected to continue without any nudge from federal policy. And “there’s not much organization to back it up,” he said.
“Also, I’d like the country to be in more of a leadership position, so we could claim the high ground and have access to markets in the future,” he said. “There’s going to be a big market for energy-efficient technology, but it looks like that will be coming from Germany and Japan.”
Even so, Cicerone said, “The president’s leadership can make a difference. If the president is going to remind us every three months about our national goal, it will work.”
,Roger Bloom
