Water Quality
The State of California Regional Water Quality Control Board considers the most significant water quality parameters in Sonoma Creek to be: turbidity, pathogens and nitrates. Turbidity is an issue because of historical problems of erosion of stream banks, especially in the presence of ongoing land development in Sonoma Valley. Increased sedimentation has a variety of adverse impacts including direct harm to aquatic organisms and the more specific impact of altering streambed gravels to reduce productivity of spawning habitats; additionally sedimentation of pools decreases the efficacy of anadromous fish summering habitat by increasing critical summer water temperatures in these pools. Pathogens appear to be linked to septic tank or leach field failures in some of the rural reaches, particularly in the upper valley sections. Nitrates enter the stream system from excess fertilizers applied to land uses in the drainage basin and may also be present in septic wastes improperly entering the creek. Sediment and nitrates may also enter the stream through urban stormwater runoff in the city of Sonoma reach.
Read more about this topic: Sonoma Creek
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or quality:
“Panache upon panache, his tails deploy
Upward and outward, in green-vented forms,
His tip a drop of water full of storms.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.... It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)