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Today in S.C.V. History December 21
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The city of Santa Clarita is seeking enthusiastic individuals with a passion for swimming, exceptional customer service and community engagement to join the lifeguard team.
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California State Parks is calling all outdoor enthusiasts to step into the new year with a breath of fresh air. On Wednesday, Jan. 1, State Parks will host its highly anticipated First Day Hikes, offering over 90 guided hikes at more than 70 of California’s most iconic and breathtaking parks.
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The South Coast Air Quality Management District has issued a residential No Burn Day Alert on Saturday, Dec. 21, for all those living in the South Coast Air Basin, which includes the Santa Clarita Valley.
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The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is urging residents to avoid consuming or feeding to their pets raw milk due to the ongoing spread of H5 bird flu in dairy cows.
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The Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival is hosting a call for vendors for its return April 12 and 13, 2025.
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The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is reminding residents to remain vigilant as the holidays approach and to use the preventive tools available to protect the county’s most vulnerable populations from COVID-19.
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The Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley will host a free Lifeforward workshop "All About Communication" on Saturday, Jan. 18, 9:30 a.m.-12 p.m. at the Valencia United Methodist Church, 25718 McBean Parkway. Valencia, CA 91355.
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Start the new year off with a InfluenceHER Building Transformative Mutual Mentorship meeting Tuesday, Jan. 14 at Kindred Spirits, 24510 Town Center Drive Valencia, CA 91355.
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The Sundance Institute has unveiled the eagerly anticipated program for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, the country’s premier stage for independent cinema.
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Every year at my Foster Youth Holiday Party, it seems like the presents and kids’ smiles get bigger and bigger!
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Annett Davis, the head coach of both the women's volleyball team and the beach volleyball team at The Masters University, has decided to step down as the head coach of the women's indoor volleyball team.
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The William S. Hart Union High School District has announced Naomi Kim, a senior at West Ranch High School, has earned the Congressional Award’s highest award: The Gold Medal.
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As families prepare to celebrate the holidays, the California Highway Patrol reminds everyone to prioritize safety on the road. To keep travelers safe throughout the busy holiday season, the CHP is initiating the first of two statewide Maximum Enforcement Periods this month to reduce traffic incidents by targeting unsafe driving behaviors and assisting motorists.
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The city of Santa Clarita has announced that renovations are coming to the Santa Clarita Public Library Valencia Branch. The Valencia Branch will be temporarily closed from Dec. 21 through Jan. 1, for a flooring renovation project.
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Matias Castro a graduate of Golden Valley High School, three-time participant in the William S. Hart Union High School District Honor Band and current first-year student at University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music has been named a 2025 YoungArts winner with distinction in Jazz Alto Saxophone, the highest honor of the organization.
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There was no gold, frankincense or the anointing oil myrrh, but the hot sausage, pancakes and special gifts offered at the recent “Breakfast with Santa” held in Valencia were treats for dozens of children and their parents. It was a reminder of the meaning of this special holiday season.
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1892 - Benjamin Harrison establishes 555,520-acre San Gabriel Timberland Reserve (Angeles National Forest). First forest reserve in California, second in U.S. [story]
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Yes I Can Unity Through Music & Education, a nonprofit organization that provides career-skills training and employment services to adults with disabilities, presented certificates of recognition to Remo Inc. and Migrate Sound for the commitment to creating career opportunities for neurodiverse talent.
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The MAIN and Outpost Media has announced the premiere of The Wolves, 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17, thru Sunday, Jan. 26, at the MAIN located at 24266 Main St., Santa Clarita, CA 91321.
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The Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees, which oversees College of the Canyons, swore in recently elected board members, named its new officers, received recognitions for service and set its 2025 meeting schedule at the board’s business and organizational meeting held on Wednesday, Dec. 18.
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Reflecting on this past year, there are so many things to be thankful for. Whether it is our health, happiness or the ability to live in a community as special as ours, I believe many of our residents would agree that Santa Clarita is a place where wonderful memories have been made and a unique place to call home.
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A three day SoCal Winter Break Lacrosse Camp will be held Wednesday Jan.8 through Friday, Jan 10 at West Ranch High School.
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43 Comments
http://mileycyrustapte.blogspot.com/
Deep well injection is the method used to dispose of fracking waste, and it has been positively tied to earthquakes. Do you think the waste itself causes the earthquake, or might it be the presence of the well?
Since you think it is such a good idea, lets just put one in your backyard and find out.
Don’t know about you, but I’ve got one (actually more) in my backyard. We’ve used deep-well injection in the SCV for more than 50 years (still do) and they’ve never triggered an earthquake.
Give it time. The fact that you have not had an earthquake doesn’t mean that you won’t have one, and it also doesn’t mean that other people haven’t had them or won’t in the future. Generalizing from one data point is really invalid.
LOL
Why am I not seeing the humor in this ?
You have to laugh because the argument is so incredibly stupid (Leon speaking, naturally). Maybe you can afford the extra $1,000 per year, but nobody else can. You have two choices. Either every homeowner and renter can pay an additional $200 (approx.) per year for deep-well injection, or everyone can pay an additional $1,000+ per year for them to build a $500 million to $750 million chloride treatment plant. (Oh, they don’t tell you that part, right?) Those are your two and only two choices. Because if everybody stops DWI, they will have to build the treatment plant. And what if they don’t build the treatment plant? The state will put the sanitation district into receivership and build the plant for us and tax us $1,000+ a year for it. Because at the end of the day, there is NO GETTING AROUND complying with the Federal Clean Water Act. The feds (via the state) will make it so. And BTW it will put every mom-and-pop restaurant out of business because they have to pay proportionally more.
I’m sort of skeptical about the idea that this is a binary choice. I believe we have to comply with the Clean Water act (and of course we should), but I am not so sure that there isn’t an alternative to deep-well injection. Even if there is NO viable alternative, I think the real issue is where the wells are actually situated. If they have to go somewhere, perhaps they can be built somewhere that geologists can tell us is at least relatively safe. Having said all that, how much does an earthquake cost as opposed to the cost of a chloride treatment plant ?
Well, I suppose the answer is that earthquakes are covered by FEMA (which isn’t funded quite as directly by the victims), but a chloride treatment plant isn’t …. but that doesn’t obviate the fact in the history of human existence, no man-made activity has ever triggered an earthquake. (You said you wanted a bigger data set.)
@scvtv
SCVNews.com wrote: “in the history of human existence, no man-made activity has ever triggered an earthquake.”
http://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1951/report.pdf
As far back as 1990, the US Geological Survey said:
“Within the United States, injection of fluid into deep wells has triggered documented earthquakes in Colorado, Texas, New York, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Ohio and possibly in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi.”
Note: This report was written in 1990. In the last few years, deep well injection of large volumes of fluid has been scientifically linked to earthquakes as high as magnitude 5.7 in Oklahoma as well.
That’s stupid, and if USGS used that terminology, shame on them. Human activity can cause a seismic event, but it cannot trigger an earthquake any more than it can cause a volcano to erupt, or a solar eclipse. By definition, an earthquake is a natural (i.e., not man-made) occurrence.
@scvtv
SCVNews.com wrote: “in the history of human existence, no man-made activity has ever triggered an earthquake.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/us/as-quakes-rattle-oklahoma-fingers-point-to-oil-and-gas-industry.html
‘At a packed town hall meeting days later, Ms. Cooper said, state officials called the shocks, including a 5.7 tremor that was Oklahoma’s largest ever, “an act of nature, and it was nobody’s fault.”’
‘Many scientists disagree. They say those quakes, and thousands of others before and since, are mainly the work of humans, caused by wells used to bury vast amounts of wastewater from oil and gas exploration deep in the earth near fault zones. And they warn that continuing to entomb such huge quantities risks more dangerous tremors — if not here, then elsewhere in the state’s sprawling well fields.’
‘“As long as you keep injecting wastewater along that fault zone, according to my calculations, you’re going to continue to have earthquakes,” said Arthur F. McGarr, the chief of the induced seismicity project at the federal Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, Calif., who has researched the Prague quakes. “I’d be a little worried if I lived there. In fact, I’d be very worried.”’
That’s stupid. Human activity can cause a seismic event, but it cannot trigger an earthquake any more than it can cause a volcano to erupt, or a solar eclipse. By definition, an earthquake is a natural (i.e., not man-made) occurrence.
@scvtv
SCVNews.com wrote: “That’s stupid. Human activity can cause a seismic event, but it cannot trigger an earthquake any more than it can cause a volcano to erupt, or a solar eclipse. By definition, an earthquake is a natural (i.e., not man-made) occurrence.”
http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/man-made-earthquakes/
The US Geological Survey says:
“Although it may seem like science fiction, man-made earthquakes have been a reality for decades. It has long been understood that earthquakes can be induced by impoundment of water in reservoirs, surface and underground mining, withdrawal of fluids and gas from the subsurface, and injection of fluids into underground formations.”
We have yet to see any solutions presented by the people who oppose DWI. DWI will cost every homeowner (and renter) about $200 more per year in sewer fees, which we pay through property taxes. The alternative, a $500 million to $750 million chloride treatment plant, will cost every homeowner and renter $1,000 per year, or more, in additional sewer fees, and it will put most mom & pop restaurants out of business because they pay proportionally more. While it’s nice to think you and a handful of others can afford that, most SCV residents cannot. If you were to stop DWI, you would price most residents out of their homes. The state WILL come in and force us to build the treatment plant – or put the san district into receivership an do it itself – because at the end of the day, we WILL be forced to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. At the end of the day, ground disturbance through DWI, if any, (probably none), is irrelevant.
Leon, please tell me what the difference is between an earthquake and a “seismic event” – you are hung up in the semantics here. It seems very clear based on substantial scientific data that DWI causes “seismic events”.
Do you live in a fantasy world where human activity can cause something on the scale of the Sylmar or Northridge earthquake? As for ground disturbance, we create it all the time. Put a Richter scale on the floor of your home and jump up and down next to it. You will see that you are creating ever-so-slightly detectable earth movement.
I suspect that the actual magnitude of a human-caused “seismic event” has yet to be determined, so I am not sure why you are now alleging that it would be minimal. You might be right – but you might also be wrong.
@scvtv
You are confusing science with CEA (California Earthquake Authority) insurance.
Scientists say man-made earthquakes are a reality.
The CEA says they will not cover earthquake damage that is even partially man-made.
Those who say “DWI causes earthquakes” are using scare tactics to make people believe DWI can magically “trigger” something like a Northridge earthquake. And that is a lie.
How do you know it’s a lie ? If you combine DWI with a known fault, it seems to me that almost anything can result, ranging from nothing to extremely bad.
@scvtv
Yes, we do have a engineering solution to the chloride problem which would cost approximately $2 to $4 more per month per home than deep well injection, but would also have the benefit of giving the Santa Clarita Valley up to 480,000 gallons of pure distilled water a day, up to 175 million gallons of pure distilled water a year. Minerals could be added to this pure distilled water for drinking, if we needed it for that purpose.
Then you ought to submit a column laying out the proposal with facts & figures.
That is a REALLY great benefit. I would gladly pay a bit more for some decent water that isn’t so hard it bounces off my floor!
It turns out that any deep well injection site planned for the Santa Clarita Valley area to deal with chloride compliance will have up to 500,000 gallons of brine waste injected into it per day. This means that up to 182,500,000 gallons of brine waste will be injected deep under the Santa Clarita Valley per year. That amount, 180 million gallons per year, makes it one of the largest deep well disposal sites of its kind in the nation. Dr. Art McGarr, world-renowned geophysicist with the US Geological Survey, provided computation for the maximum magnitude earthquakes that could be caused by injecting 180 million gallons of fluid per year. This analysis was based on the equations in Dr. McGarr’s groundbreaking “Maximum magnitude earthquakes induced by fluid injection” paper, published just last year in 2014 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JB010597/abstract). The results are sobering. With 180 million gallons of fluid injected per year, in 1 year, the maximum magnitude of an induced earthquake would be 4.8; in 20 years, magnitude 5.7; and in 50 years, magnitude 6.0. What is even more alarming is that these magnitudes do not include any natural seismic activity, at all.
Oil wells are common in California, but these are not a real concern. The reason is that the typical amount of net fluid being injected or extracted from each of these oil wells is not anywhere near 180 million gallons per year. As a comparison, one of Santa Clarita Valley’s most famous oil field waste injection wells, Sedlacek Well #8, only had 1.4 million gallons of fluid injected into it in all of 2014. The volume of fluid being injected into this oil well is less than 1% of what would be injected into the Santa Clarita Valley area deep well injection site for brine waste.
Hi Leon. This is Allan Cameron. I am disappointed in you my friend. You are not known for repeating something as fact that you yourself have not verified as being correct. The “We must comply with the Clean Water Act, or ‘The State’ will ‘put us into receivership’, build a huge plant for hunddreds of millions of dollars, and we will be stuch with the bill” has been repeated hundreds of times during the sorry history of “Chloridegate”. The statement is utterly false. The truth? Just how many times in California history has ANY political jurisdiction among the 483 cities, 58 counties and thousands of permitted dischargers, EVER been “taken over” by the State, placed in “Receivership” for a water quality/pollution violation? The answer: NEVER! Not one time. My source for this astonishing, absolutely true fact? All of the legal entities that would ever do such an enforcement action, all through out California Government. I spoke with each of them directly and personally. Despite this fact, endless Sanitation District expensive “pass outs” have continued to repeat this distortion. The “fines” endless mantra is also not at all based in fact.
Alan, pal o’ mine, get real. How many school districts have been placed into receivership? I’ve lost count. Please tell me you weren’t one of those people who said we’d never get fined if we failed to comply with RWQCB’s demands. Because we already WERE FINED. You think they won’t fine us again? BTW – did you know there are people in Stevenson Ranch who don’t know it’s THEIR MONEY that the san district uses to pay the fines, and that THEIR TAXES are going up?
Also repeated endlessly is the comment that “If we do not willingly pay for and do Chloridegate, we WILL BE FINED by the Water Board, for a lot of money.” An example of “fines” is then given. This would be the 225,000 dollar fine paid about two years ago. The truth about that is this. That fine was proposed by Water Board staff. After the fine proposal was sent to the Sanitation District, the Sewage People had a choice. There were at least three levels of administrative appeal available at that point to contest the fine, just within the local Water Board structure. The third level would have resulted in a full blown public hearing before the local Regional Water Quality Control Board. If the Sanitation District had only asked, such a Water Board hearing could have happened in Santa Clarita. (This Board has been to Simi twice and Glendale once in about the last year). If the Public Hearing before the Water Board went against us, there were at least three more appeals available to save us our tax money. All during all of these appeals, any payment of the fine would have been suspended. So, what actually was done with our 225,000 dollars? The Sanitation District staff just agreed to pay it. They did nothing to save us our tax money. The Sanitation District staff, and the Water Board staff just placed a line item on an enforcement report that a fine had been proposed, and that the “finee” had said yes. So, how many time has the Public Board of the Regional Water Quality Control Board EVER had an agenda item before it about fining Santa Clarita? Please see next post.
fun stuff but no time. write a column.
Hi Leon. About “school districts” being placed in receivership”. Yes, quite a few school districts. Look for the details old pal. NONE of these school districts were placed “in receivership” because of a water quality or pollution issue, NONE. Again, in the history of California, NO GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR PERMITTED DISCHARGER has had that happen. NONE, NOT EVER!!!! It is well past time that the truth be told.
Alan, write a column. I could not POSSIBLY care less about DWI. Only thing that drives me up the wall is when people say the asteroid is going to fall out of the sky and hit us if we do or don’t take some particular action. All I know is, if you end up costing me $1,000+ a year, I’m going to have to figure out a way to get even :)
BTW what I *do* care about is running those San District board meetings because that’s what you said you wanted.
Boys, boys, boys. Yes, I use the term because that’s how you are acting.
We have lots of options. We can declare the SCV to be “South Norton” and secede from the Union.
We can use eminent domain to run a brine line to the Pacific Ocean (and tell Ventura County to go fish – for saltwater fish).
Back to South Norton – we can tell Sacramento to send us extra Delta Water to mix with our salty excrement(Castaic Lake is full of extremely nasty and corrosive water that the State says is “drinkable”); I can tell you from experience that state water turns brass into clay and eats Stainless steel.
Reality says that none of us plebes has a chance in Hades of changing the courts, or the State from the path they have chosen. Unless you have at least two judges in your pocket (local and State) you won’t get anywhere.
Roll over my friends. Take it like a Man. Fight like Hell for mitigation and cost control. But trying to find an honest and fair solution to this problem is like trying to get the electorate to pay attention. Unless you are going to spend Warren Buffet money, you may as well just move out of town.
By the way, as long as we’re talking water, WTF happened with CLWA taking over SCWC and Valencia Water Co?
It may be legal, or it may not; just because a judge says so doesn’t mean enough money couldn’t over turn it. There is way too much legal precedent to think that there is nothing going on here. And now that we’re semi-officially in a 100+ year drought (aka the kind that chased the Anasazi out of Mesa Verde and the rest of the lower plateau settlements), just exactly where does the CLWA expect to get water?
0% transfers from the San Joaquin Valley means excessive pumping from the aquifer of the last un-dammed major river in Southern California. Soon, it will be drinking water for millions versus steelhead spawning grounds.
Wanna know who will win? Go fish.
CLWA took over SCWC years ago, and the court case over VWC ended this year (in CLWA’s favor).
Hi Leon. There were (are) two, not just one lawsuit against the Valencia Water Company attempted purchase by the Castaic Lake Water Agency. The “purchase” question is far from resolved. One of the two suits was from SCOPE. That loss is being appealed. The second suit is from the Newhall County Water District. That NCWD suit is based on different causes of action, compared to the SCOPE suit. The NCWD suit has not yet gone to trial. So the Valencia “issue” is far, FAR from resolved.
jimvs. If you wish to be taken seriously, use your name. Leon, the chances of you (or anyone else) being charged $1,000 because they defeated Chloridegate are also zero. Lets say that all the many actions, currently in the pipeline all fail. (Which they won’t). There are already actions in place to take the independent Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District into Chapter 9 Bankruptcy. The great news about that, is that it can (and will) be done whether or not the Directors agree. But that is an extreme solution which will not be necessary, because of other dynamics that guarantee victory over the “chloridegate” scam. Please see next post.
The folks who are going to totally defeat Chloridegate are not going to cost you money. Just the opposite. The victory will save you and everyone else a fortune. A false number, constantly told, is that the cost of “chloridegate” is down to “only” about 140 million dollars. That quote is then always followed by “only about 2 to 4 dollars a month for a homeowner”. Both statements are false, as far as what people really would have to pay. First of all, the 140 million dollar cost quote DOES NOT include finance/interest charges, and the huge costs for maintenance and engineering. When prodded, the Sewage People will then quote a number a bit higher than 200 million dollars. However, that number is based upon the Sewage People getting an ultra low interest loan from the State Revolving Fund, which charges half the State Bond interest rate. Obtaining such a loan is far from assured, and has not happened yet. There are many barriers to such a loan being issued.
1. The State Revolving Fund has a 50 million dollar cap on the maximum amount it may legally lend to any one government agency.
2. The State Revolving Fund demands that the borrower be highly credit worthy, and have a high credit rating. “Our” Sanitation District has no credit rating at all.
3. The State Revolving Fund is dedicated to “rural infrastructure” programs. Santa Clarita Valley is no longer rural, and has not been for several decades, according to the legal definitions in place. If the Sewage People have to resort to bond financing, or to Certificates of Participation, the interest charges would be 100 percent higher than those being quoted, raising the project costs to about 240 million dollars. But wait, there’s more.
The sewage people are 100 percent silent on the binding facts of the two approved “One Valley, One Vision” General Plans. These two plans, along with the zoning changes that came with them, allow the population of the SCV to more than double from its current level of 250,000. This, of course, means that the treatment capacity of the “Chloride Remediation Project” would have to double as well. That would bring the cost of this project to nearly half a billion dollars. Of course, it is not often (if ever) fully disclosed that because places like restaurants and supermarkets generate hugely more sewage than a “home”, they will pay hugely more for “chloridegate”. Of course, this means that the cost of food will rise for every person in Santa Clarita. The exact costs have never been discussed or disclosed. So Leon, the defeat of “Chloridegate” will save you, not cost you. As for the “fine” situation: “know ye the truth, and the truth shall set you free”.
Hi Leon. On two occasions, both in noticed Public Hearings, Sam Unger, the Executive Director of the Regional Water Control Board for Los Angeles/Ventura, and the Regional Water Qualtiy Control Board itself, when questioned, quietly revealed some facts about “fines” that should have been front page news, but were not revealed by any news “outlet” at all. Here are those facts. The Sewage People have said, hundreds of times, that the SCV must comply with “Chloridegate”, or “we” WILL BE FINED,SEVERLY, FOR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! MAYBE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! So just what is the truth of those statements? Undertaking such an unprecedented fine protocol would take planning, notice, scheduling, administrative resources, and far more. How many times has the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the only entity that could levy such fines had “fining Santa Clarita” as an agenda item before it? How many workshops, study sessions, budget sessions, informal discussions, notices and briefings from the Executive Director to the Board, much less full blown Public Hearings on the “fines” question have there ever been? (Wait for it). NONE! NOT EVER. Since this statement is a complete contradiction of what the Sewage People have said hundreds of times, how do I know this to be true. Easy. I got Sam Unger, and the Water Board to say so. On the record. On a recorded medium. I have the recordings. So you can hear the truth for yourself, you should listen. Sam Unger himself confirmed the truth, in response to a question from me, in the Santa Clarita City Council Chambers, in a hearing. Last August, I attended a Regional Water Quality Control Board hearing in Los Angeles, and bluntly asked the entire Board when and if they committed to fining Santa Clarita. They confirmed that they had never done so. So, what about the 225,000 dollar fine? See next post.
Again, as to the 225,000 dollar fine, the truth about that is listed in an older post “above” this one. That fine was NEVER the subject of any hearing. The Sewage People just paid our money, quietly, with no appeals. So, how about the 850,000 dollar fine paid directly to the Water Board by the City of Santa Clarita (Sewage People not involved) regarding the Shangri-La shear key de-watering wells? That, indeed, needs to be the subject of a column. One “teaser”. That money was paid with no appeal being filed on behalf of the true “stakeholders”…the rate/tax payers.
Allan, your math is incorrect.
The cost of DWI (deep well injection) according to the 2013 EIR is not $2 to $4 per month. The cost of a non-DWI solution, would be $2 to $4 per month per household more than DWI .
The cost of DWI+sewage, according to the 2013 EIR is a $410 per year per household in 2012 dollars, which is $34.17 per month in 2012 dollars.
This includes interest on the $130 million capital cost of DWI, and $4.2 million in O&M cost.
Hi “stop DWI”. The math you critique is not mine. It comes from the Sanitation District. I concur that it is incorrect. I was merely quoting it.