Watershed Info No 979

1. Upper Agua Fria Watershed Partnership meets Tuesday, January 15, 2019 10 am at Arcosanti.

From Rte 69, head for Interstate 17. Get off on Arcosanti Road, Exit 263.

From I-17, traveling north, exit at 263 and look for the sign shown to the right. Follow that road.

Contact Mary at earthhouse@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

2. FREE Landscape Design Class With Water in Mind. This free class will be held on January 13th from 10 a.m. to noon at the Glendale Library, located at 5959 W Brown St, Glendale, AZ Register at (623) 930-3760

 

3. Staying Safe: Respirable Crystalline Silica in General Industry
Understanding the OSHA enforcement guidance will help you. It gets to the heart of what OSHA feels are key aspects of how it expects employers to comply.

• Jan 01, 2019

For most OSHA standards, OSHA uses a “Compliance Directive” to help guide Compliance Safety and Health Officers (CSHOs) when inspecting a given workplace. However, OSHA’s 13- page interim enforcement guidance document, effective June 23, 2018, is to be used while the standard’s companion compliance directive is proceeding through the review process (which could literally take years). It should be a similar but more detailed document to assist CSHOs during their inspections.

While we already know this standard has been dramatically impactful to many construction companies all over the United States, there are still plenty of manufacturing facilities that are affected by this standard, either in a small or a big way. If you are not sure if this standard applies to you, I suggest you think about the different work activities at your facility:

• Look at the safety data sheets for your manufacturing process. Is there the potential for crystalline silica to become airborne?

• Are any of the production or maintenance workers actively cutting, drilling, or grinding into concrete/cement, brick, tile, asphalt, or stone type aggregates on a semi-regular basis?

Silicon dioxide is formed into a crystalline structure over millions of years. Thirty percent of all minerals are silicates (minerals containing silica), and geologists estimate that they could comprise up to 90 percent of the earth’s crust.[1] The amount of RCS in any specific dust emission is based upon the silica concentration in the material and the application.

MATERIALS CONTAINING SILICA:

JOBS WHERE SILICA DUST EXPOSURE IS COMMON

Atomized mist creates a wide area of airborne and surface dust control at the point of emission.

• Glass manufacturing/ cutting
• Cement structure construction
• Foundries
• Sand blasting
• Hydraulic fracturing
• Bulk handling of sand, rock, etc.
• Farming
• Quarrying (extraction and blasting)
• Earth moving
• Tunnel construction
• Bulk cargo handling
• Bulk storage
• Concrete and raw material cutting
• Drilling and boring
• Crushing and processing
• Mining

29 CFR 1926.1153§

For more information on silica and the regulations you need to follow, go to:

https://www.osha.gov/dsg/topics/silicacrystalline/construction_info_silica.html

 

4. Solid and Hazardous Waste Programs Workshop – Phoenix

ADEQ Waste Programs Division invites interested community members and business and government personnel to participate in this free workshop. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest requirements and best practices and to earn Professional Development Hours.
Date: Thursday, Feb. 21, 2018
Time: 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Location: ADEQ
1110 W. Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007

Topics:

• Solid Waste
• Hazardous Waste
• Pollution Prevention (P2)

Register for this workshop
View Meeting Agenda
If you have any questions about this workshop, please contact:
Email

 

5.

The conversation about global warming is beginning to shift—and not necessarily in the ways you might imagine, or hope. Last October, while on the electoral campaign trail, I ducked into a conference on climate change in Miami, but it was really more of a “climate changed” gathering. Whereas most climate summits have an almost exclusive focus on cutting carbon pollution, most of the talk in South Florida was about how to adapt to an already changing climate. For many Floridians, especially those in the greater Miami area, the idea that climate change needs to be stopped has been overshadowed by the immediate necessity of staying dry. Rising sea levels are already on Florida’s doorstep—and the state needs to begin preparing now for what’s to come. Soon enough, adaptation will be something we’re all wrestling with, and it’s not entirely obvious how best to do it.

For decades, climate change policy has focused on mitigation—that is, cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, our mitigation accomplishments have been, at best, mixed, which means that we are now in the position of racing to make up for lost time. According to the UN’s scientific experts, the world must cut climate-polluting emissions to 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030—and by 2050 it must reduce them to zero. To do that, we’ll need to, among other things, stop burning coal and natural gas, leave fossil fuel reserves in the ground, protect our forests and our soil, aggressively develop renewable energy sources, and electrify our transportation sector. It’s a daunting list, but not impossible

But with deadly wildfires raging and extreme storms punishing our coastal communities, we can no longer assume that mitigation will be enough. Like Floridians, we’re all going to have to think about how we will adapt to the changes underway. Some actions, such as moving people out of harm’s way along coasts and floodplains and protecting wildlife corridors so that climatestressed species can safely migrate, are just common sense, even if they’re difficult steps to take. Same with. finding ways to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere. By far the best method is to restore and preserve natural systems that suck up and sequester CO2.

Regenerative agriculture, planting more trees, and protecting existing forests worldwide can all help draw down dangerous CO2 levels. Scientists, meanwhile, are beginning to investigate high-tech industrial methods for drawing down carbon. Such technology is a long way from being deployed, but if it is proved to be safe and economic, we’d be foolish not to use it—and even more foolish to rely on it alone.

How we choose to adapt to rising temperatures will have consequences, and it’s not too soon to start thinking them through. For starters, not everyone has the same resources for adapting. That could lead to a world where only the affluent have the means to drink clean water, breathe clean air, and eat healthy food. Nations that can better afford to adapt (the same wealthy nations that are primarily responsible for this crisis) might selfishly choose inequitable adaptation strategies. Or they might shift their resources and political will from mitigation (which benefits everyone,
including the poorer nations that had little to do with creating this mess) to a narrow focus on adaptation (to save their own skins). An emphasis on pie-in-the-sky techno-fixes could also lead to a “moral hazard”—the danger that placing our faith in tomorrow’s potential solutions will reduce our will to solve the fundamental problem today. The last thing we want is for people to give up on taking action to stop climate change because they assume we can figure out ways to adapt to it.

We’ll have to build windmills and solar farms even as we’re constructing seawalls and restoring shoreline wetlands. We must simultaneously construct a world that’s powered by 100 percent clean energy and prepare for the consequences of having taken too long to get there.

This article appeared in the January/February 2019 edition with the headline “Making Up for Lost Time.”

 

6.

REGISTRATION OPENS JANUARY 14, 2019

During our annual conference AZ Water provides value to our members by offering a three-day program designed to provide professional development, continuing education, and technology transfer to support our vision of “a vibrant Arizona through safe, reliable water”. Attendees at our conference have the following opportunities:

• Earn up to 16.5 professional development hours from over 170 technical presentations and panel discussions
• Enjoy over 12 hours of dedicated time learning from our exhibitors
• Observe the presentation of over 20 awards
• A chance to participate in contests and networking events

Preview our 2019 EXHIBITOR PROSPECTUS and SPONOSR PROSPECTUS before registering. Sponsors should register early as many of our sponsorship opportunities are exclusive with limited capabilities and the sponsor deadline to provide advertisements and logos for the conference brochure is January 26, 2019.

Take a look at our preliminary SCHEDULE-AT-A-GLANCE

Need Help Gaining Approval to attend the 2019 Annual Conference & Exhibition? Due to reduced budgets and increased expenditure scrutiny, the AZ Water Association recognizes it is no easy task to secure approval for a training event. Here are several tips to guide you in your request for approval to attend next year’s Conference:

• Your organization is investing in you; provide details about what you will bring back from the event.
• What sessions will you attend and what immediate impact will they have on your work?
• What vendors will you visit on the exhibit floor and how will this help your organization?
• Which experts will you have access to and what knowledge would you bring back to share with your organization?
• With the huge variety of focus areas, the AZ Water Annual Conference & Exhibition is a great way to earn CEU’s and PDH’s.

We will be returning to the Phoenix Convention Center where all conference technical sessions and exhibits will be held at the South Building. The South Building offers a single level, self-contained experience for our conference participants, which translates to no need for elevators or long walkways between sessions or events. Conference parking will be available at the East Parking Garage and AZ Water has made arrangements for each attendee to receive a FREE parking voucher with conference registration.

CONFERENCE HOTEL
Hyatt Regency Phoenix
122 N. 2nd St., Phoenix, AZ 85004