Stanford hydrologist Newsha Ajami, an appointee to California’s regional water quality board, discusses how wildfires affect water quality, and how we can better prepare for and react to the challenges.
A wildfire’s path of destruction is not limited to things that burn – water is at risk too. When fires jump from forests and grasslands to urban areas, they incinerate household and industrial items such as computers and cars, leaving behind a stew of chemicals and heavy metals. Rain can wash this into streams, rivers and municipal water treatment systems unprepared to deal with the toxic deluge. Heavy sediment loads from wildfire-related erosion can also clog water systems and strain treatment requirements.
The challenges aren’t limited to fire-prone regions. Ash and smoke particles can carry harmful chemicals hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. Even the way we fight fires can taint our water, a fact made clear this past April when chemical-laden retardants apparently killed hundreds of fish in Berkeley, California. While the retardants had not been used to fight a wildfire, studies have shown commonly used fire retardants can be lethal to aquatic life.
As an appointee to the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board, Newsha Ajami has worked with local, state and federal agencies to monitor and ensure water quality in areas affected by wildfires. Ajami is director of urban water policy at Stanford’s Water in the West program, and co-leads the Urban Water Systems & Institutions Thrust at Re-Inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt), a National Science Foundation engineering research center based at Stanford. She discussed wildfire’s threat to water quality with Stanford Report.
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