Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

Keeping Watch for Clean Water

Archives for February 7, 2023

Every Yard Counts in Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change

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The Santa Barbara Channel is vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate. Your yard can help protect it. 

The Santa Barbara Channel is one of the most biologically productive ecosystems found on Earth. However, changing oceanographic processes, warming water temperatures, ocean acidification, and sea level rise produced by a changing climate are already affecting the health of marine ecosystems.  

We’ve seen recently how coastal runoff from intense rains and flooding flushes trash and debris into the Santa Barbara Channel, degrading water quality. We’ve also seen how high nutrient levels from coastal runoff contribute to harmful algal blooms. Yet our community can minimize some of these impacts by making a few changes in their own yards.  

By conserving water and managing runoff, focusing on soil health, and reducing emissions from lawn care equipment, each of us can lessen our yard’s climate impact while conserving resources and enhancing habitat. Here are a few ideas to implement in your landscaped space. 

Replace Your Lawn

Fertilizing, mowing, blowing, and irrigating a lawn leads to a sizable climate footprint. In 2011, an Environmental Protection Agency report found that gas-powered lawn and garden equipment emitted approximately 6.3 million tons of volatile organic compounds and criteria pollutants (carbon, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter), and 20.4 million tons of carbon dioxide. By planting a variety of native, drought-tolerant plants, trees, shrubs, and ground covers that don’t require high maintenance, you can reduce your landscape’s water use, while providing habitat for birds, pollinators, and beneficial insects. You can make the transition gradually over time by replacing a different patch of turf each year. In addition, many municipalities offer rebates when you replace your lawn with water-wise plants. 

Focus on Soil Health

Healthy soils are the base of thriving ecosystems. Soils rich with organic matter support healthy populations of beneficial organisms while retaining moisture and helping sequester carbon. 

Avoid using synthetic fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers are not only extremely energy-intensive to manufacture, but they also provide more nitrogen than plants can absorb, contributing to polluted runoff and hazardous algae blooms in the ocean, lakes, and rivers that collect runoff. 

Alternatively, composting food and yard waste is a great way to build healthy soil in your yard. Organic material will improve the fertility, soil structure, and water-holding capacity of your landscape. Planting a cover crop is another way to support healthy soil since plants can help hold soil prevent runoff during heavy rains, protect soil from evaporation during droughts, and capture nutrients to prevent nutrient loss in runoff.  

Be Water Wise

Long periods of drought followed by heavy rains make it increasingly important for each of us to manage and use water wisely. Collecting water from your roof in rain barrels, a cistern, or storage tanks can help you to retain water for future use.  

It’s also a good idea to consider the permeability of your landscape and make the most of downpours by diverting stormwater to designated areas in your yard where it can infiltrate and recharge groundwater resources.  

When irrigation is necessary, drip systems tend to waste less water to evaporation and runoff than conventional sprinklers. Mulching around the base of plants can also help prevent moisture loss while nourishing the soil. 

Use People Power

Reduce your yard’s greenhouse gas emissions by limiting the gas-powered equipment you use to maintain it. Lawn and garden equipment like lawnmowers and leaf blowers account for up five percent of total air pollution in the United States. In fact, according to the EPA, one gas mower spews 88 lbs. of greenhouse gas CO2, and 34 lbs. of other pollutants into the air every year. For a climate-smart alternative, choose hand tools like reel mowers, shovels, and brooms. 

Resources: 

Santa Barbara County 
 
WaterWise Santa Barbara Landscape Rebate Program 

Green Gardener Program 

WaterWise Garden Contest 

Ventura County 

Ventura Water Turf Replacement Rebate 

Ventura Water Conservation Resources 

Drip Irrigation Retrofit Program 

Leveraging the Law to Protect Ocean Environments from the Effects of Finfish Aquaculture 

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Channelkeeper recently joined the Center for Food Safety, other environmental organizations, fishing groups, and the Quinault Indian Nation in suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over its issuance of Nationwide Permit 56, which authorizes the development of finfish farming structures in state and federal waters. We are challenging that the Nationwide Permit was approved without a thorough analysis of its potential detrimental impacts on our ocean ecosystems, water quality, public health, fishing communities, and endangered and threatened species. 

Nationwide Permit 56 allows the installation of cages, net pens, anchors, floats, buoys, and other structures in marine and estuarine waters over the outer continental shelf. It’s the primary program that will be used to permit all future finfish aquaculture development in federal waters throughout the United States. However, the groups who have filed the legal action are concerned that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers skirted mandatory environmental review processes when it issued this permit.  We claim that the agency failed to consult, as required by law, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, as about potential effects on threatened and endangered species protected under the Endangered Species Act, nor consult on the impacts to Essential Fish Habitat under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Further, the Army Corps lacks the legal authority to take this step in the first place without new authority from Congress, which it has not gotten. 

The Nationwide Permit 56 originated from a Trump-era executive order promoting the rapid expansion of industrial marine aquaculture facilities under the guise of addressing pandemic-related food insecurity. Federal officials have begun identifying locations as potential sites for commercial aquaculture operations. The Santa Barbara Channel—along with areas in the Gulf of Mexico and waters off Marina del Rey, California—was selected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as one of the first areas to assess for future aquaculture development. The Santa Barbara Channel currently has two active aquaculture projects along the coastline.  

Certain types of aquaculture projects, such as those for shellfish and seaweed, generally may have benefits that outweigh the drawbacks. However, offshore aquaculture operations for finfish (such as tuna or tilapia) present significant risks to the environment. These include, but are not limited to: 

  • water quality impairment from dead fish, fecal waste, and antibiotics; 
  •  spread of disease that can impact populations of wild fish caught by commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishermen; 
  • escape of farmed fish into the natural environment, risking the genetic integrity of wild populations; and 
  • depletion of small fish populations that are used as feed for farmed fish and thus, less available for wild fish, birds, and marine life. 

In addition, there is currently no regulatory program in place to adequately oversee aquaculture operations in federal waters or strong standards to protect the marine environment from the impacts of finfish aquaculture.  

By signing on to this lawsuit, Channelkeeper hopes to ensure that all appropriate precautions and measures are in place to protect the Santa Barbara Channel from the potentially destructive impacts of industrial, offshore finfish aquaculture.   

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