Video: Shasta Dam Increase Threatens To Flood Native American Burial Grounds

https://vimeo.com/115447062

Caleen Sisk is the leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.

Water Hyacinth Thrives in Drought Stricken Delta

by Ted Andersen on December 22, 2014

Visit www.baynature.org to view the story
http://baynature.org/articles/water-hyacinth-thrives-drought-stricken-delta/

A mechanical harvester starts from east end of Stockton Yacht Club mowing down the hyacinth. Photo: Roger Kelly

Forty-nine-year-old Roger Kelly is a Stockton lifer, born and raised in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. River culture is in his blood, and whether alone or taking the helm as a boat club commodore, he is a fixture on the water.

But for Kelly, a growing menace this year has pushed him off the water and left his boat in the weeds. The scourge is an invasive plant known commonly as the water hyacinth. Having no natural controls, it has proliferated, choking boat navigation and marinas in much of the Delta’s 1,000 miles of waterways.

The plant is hardly new, and usually cold winter temperatures and heavy rain are the answer to seasonally killing it off in the winter months. But this year an unwieldy combination of drought conditions and nutrient-loaded water has created a perfect storm for its growth. State and local agencies have dumped millions into control efforts, but the species has grown so dense in areas that it has become a threat not only to boat safety but also to the ecological balance of the Delta.

In November, the California Division of Boating and Waterways moved to address the problem with a program of spraying herbicide and in December through mechanical harvesting, but has had limited results. The state senator who represents the Stockton area recently met with a number of local stakeholder organizations, state agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and NASA (which creates aerial survey maps of the water hyacinth) to discuss solutions to the weed’s infestation.

“Every year I can remember seeing a little bit of hyacinth, but it seems like in the last four or five years it’s gotten much worse,” said Kelly, whose home sits on the bank of the Calaveras River. “This year by far is the worst that anybody has seen it.”

San Joaquin River at Connections Slough. Photo: Roger Kelly.

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) floats on top of fresh water and is characterized by thick, shiny green leaves and lavender flowers. Native to the Amazon basin, it was originally introduced from South America to the U.S. at the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans. From there it invaded the Mississippi River, flourished in Floridian waters and eventually made its way into the warm flows of California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta about a century ago.

The sub-tropical species is extremely prolific and can double in size in fewer than two weeks of hot weather, creating a dense mat of floating vegetation of up to six feet thick. The plant reproduces both sexually and asexually, cloning itself and also dropping seeds into the soil that can linger for years.

Ecologically, blankets of hyacinth can limit the amount of sunlight that reaches other plants below the surface, interrupting photosynthesis and killing plants and microorganisms important to wildlife. Dead fish have also been seen on the hyacinth, victims of suffocation after jumping on top of the green thickets and being unable to return to the water.

The ecological imbalance caused by the plant has also led to new pest control problems. A new federally funded Area-Wide Pest Management Project grant headed by the USDA-ARS, which includes cooperation from the San Joaquin and Contra Costa Mosquito Vector Control Districts, is examining how the hyacinth acts as a breeding ground for mosquitos.

“They’ve seen an association between dense populations of water hyacinth and mosquitos nearby,” said Patrick Moran, research entomologist with the USDA’s Western Regional Research Center in Albany, CA. “One of the things we are studying is whether or not the water hyacinth makes it difficult for predators to get to the mosquito larvae.”

Like many invasive plant species, Eichhornia crassipes is notably attractive. Photo: confierconifer/Flickr

This year was particularly bad for water hyacinth control because of the severe drought and more nutrient-rich water. The high temperatures and low water flows accelerated the plant’s growth, and more stagnant water has led to a higher concentration of farming fertilizers and treated municipal sewage that isn’t being flushed out of the system, according to the Delta Stewardship Council’s Rainer Hoenicke, deputy executive director of the organization’s science program. The Sacramento wastewater treatment plant, which serves 1.4 million customers, has become a contributing factor to the water hyacinths growth rates.

“It’s the cascading effects of a drought that results in higher temperatures and less nutrient dilution and they are going hog wild,” Hoenicke said.

Over the decades, authorities have conjured up a host of far-fetched and ineffective control measures ranging from dousing the plant with oil to introducing African hippopotami to eat it. The congressional hippo bill failed to pass in the early 1900s and the animals never made their way to America, but the idea of importing a non-native species to combat another one did.

Forty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used helicopters to drop two types of water hyacinth weevils — small crop pests known as Neochetina eichhorniae and Neochetina bruchi — to remote areas of Louisiana to destroy the plant by eating it, and the N. bruchi weevil was later imported to Northern California for the same purpose. The program ceased in the 1980s, and while the weevil still exists in the Delta today, so do larger concentrations of water hyacinth.

San Joaquin River. Photo: Roger Kelly.

Now a similar project is taking shape at the USDA-ARS’ center in Albany. With respect to the weevil, researchers are looking into the possibility of importing an Argentinian version, according to Moran, an entomology specialist, from regions where the insect thrives in a climate similar to that of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, as opposed to the more tropical version imported in the past.

“The hypothesis that we are pursuing is that there could be the same species but a different collection of the weevil that might be better adapted to the conditions here in the Delta,” Moran said. “We are also planning to release a new insect, the water hyacinth planthopper Megamelus scutellaris, which was previously released at a couple of sites by the [California Department of Food and Agriculture].”

The Division of Boating and Waterways is also part of the multi-agency project and is spearheading the control effort, which has included herbicidal spraying of more than 2,400 acres of water hyacinth in 2014 and mechanical removal of the weed near Stockton. But herbicides are limited in their effectiveness because rain can dilute their potency and year-round spraying could harm migratory fish. During the spray season between March and November there are also restrictions on chemicals that can be used in certain areas.

The control program is an ongoing battle with no end in sight. Seeds from water hyacinth have established themselves in the sediment and will continue to germinate even if all surface plants are removed from the water. These seeds have been reported to survive up to two decades in dried mud, according to Vicky Waters, deputy public information officer at California State Parks, which oversees the Division of Boating and Waterways.

“There is no known eradication method for the water hyacinth in the world,” she said.

The stem of the San Joaquin River as it meanders through the Delta. Photo: Roger Kelly

Meanwhile, Mother Nature is most effective at destroying the plant. Cold temperatures mixed with heavy winter rains usually push water hyacinth into the saltwater portions of the Delta, where it dies, but changes in climate this year have not made this possible. This has resulted in economic losses and political turmoil over public safety.

Recreational boating generates about half a billion dollars worth of business in Northern California, said Bill Wells, California Delta Chambers and Visitor’s Bureau executive director, and boating clubs and guide fishing have been particularly hit hard. In late fall, water hyacinth had inundated downtown Stockton and strangled the port to such an extent that it also forced the city to cancel the 35^th annual Delta Reflections Lighted Boat Parade, previously scheduled for December 6.

Wells said the situation has created a “national security” risk, especially for fog or nighttime navigation. For boats using radar, dense areas of the weed in the rivers show up as solid landmasses.

“There are a million facets to the problem and it’s very serious,” Wells said.

In times of great fiscal pressure on the state government, budgeting for water hyacinth control has also been an issue. The Division of Boating and Waterways Aquatic Weed Control Program spent more than $7 million last fiscal year and allocated more than $9 million for 2014-2015.

On December 15, State Senator Cathleen Galgiani hosted a town hall meeting with a panel of experts from the Division of Boating and Waterways, California Delta Chambers and Visitor’s Bureau, the Port of Stockton, USDA-ARS and NASA-Ames Research Center to discuss both the water hyacinth and another invasive weed, Egeria densa, which, like a freshwater seaweed, has spread beneath the surface of the water. The tag team combination of these two South American infestations — the water hyacinth on top and Egeria densa below — has created what has been called a “green menace” in the Delta.

On a December afternoon, as Roger Kelly sat inside his home on the bank of the Calaveras River, he could hear the machines removing the plant. He went down to the river to film a vessel slicing and dicing up the green weeds.

Flood program aims to keep shorelines above water

Homes along the San Francisco Bay Trail in Richmond are among those most at risk
 to flooding due to sea level rise and marshland erosion. (photo by Ted Andersen)

By Theodore AndersenPosted December 2, 2014 7:56 am

When the rains come and the tides rise, they take a toll on the Bay Area’s more than half-a-century-old storm channels, and one day, places like Richmond may be in peril.

The combination of heavy storms and inadequate runoff channels have at times covered blocks in up to five feet of water, drowning streets, yards and cars. Even worse, because sea levels are rising, homes on the bay waterfront are at risk of being overtaken due to a lack of marshland barrier in tidal areas.

But a possible remedy is now in the works: a joint federal and local program called Flood Control 2.0. More than two years in the making, the multi-partner $2.5-million effort is EPA funded and focused on restoring stream and wetland habitats and improving shoreline resilience. Led by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, a 20-year-old coalition of public agencies and non-profits, Flood Control 2.0 also aims to redesign and fortify the flood channels that carry storm water from creeks and streams into the bay for better water flow and ecological use.

“There is a way to provide flood control to keep people’s houses safe and to provide habitat,” said Brenda Goeden, sediment program manager at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, one of the project partners.

The San Francisco Estuary Partnership’s Flood 2.0 project aims not only to protect coastline development but also to rebuild sensitive wildlife habitat. (photo by Ted Andersen)

Most of the flood control channels around the Bay Area were built between 1930 and 1950 and no longer work well. The culprit is sediment buildup that has forced the Army Corps of Engineers and its partners to raise the banks of the levees, resulting in a greater gap between the flowing water and the adjacent low-lying bay lands. And higher levees and lower flood plains can be a dangerous combination, the flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina being a tragic example.

One aspect of improving storm channels involves removing accumulated sand and mud and using it to bolster marshes. The points where creeks enter the bay are ecologically important for delivering this sediment from local watersheds into marshes to sustain the tidal flats as sea level rises. These areas that once provided habitat for birds and fish have largely been converted to narrow concrete flood control channels that do not distribute mud and sand the way they once did.

At present, Flood Control 2.0 is limited to three pilot locations: San Francisquito Creek, which flows by Menlo Park and Palo Alto, and lower Novato and Walnut creeks. Efforts are expected to eventually include comprehensive data and recommendations for all the storm channels in the Bay Area, according to Scott Dusterhoff, lead geomorphologist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, one of the project partners based in Richmond.

Since dredging is an expensive and continual process for flood control managers, the project includes developing a regional sediment management plan, Goeden said. But more work this year is focused solely on planning and assessing the needs of flood channels rather than rebuilding them.

“It’s an examination of how we work things,” Goeden said, referring to what will happen in the coming months and years. “It’s not going to do anything for this year’s flood control issues.”

Bay marshes not only act as important buffers to rising sea levels, but they also can store carbon from the air and filter pollution before it gets to the bay, according to the estuary institute’s Dusterhoff. Using dredged sediment from storm channels to build these areas up will be crucial to protecting both shoreline property and wildlife habitat.

“We have to find ways to get back bayland area any way we can,” he said. “As sea level rises, if we don’t do anything, baylands will continue disappearing.”

Wiener Amasses Huge War Chest

Incumbent leads challengers by 250K

By Ted Andersen

With just days remaining before the November 4 elections, the race for the Castro’s top politician has become a financial runaway.

Four candidates for District 8 supervisor are currently vying to unseat incumbent Scott Wiener, but the story of campaign contributions remains very one-sided. Wiener has raised $258,545, while Michael Petrelis, currently in second place, has only $2,931, according to data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission. In third place, John Nulty has $2,114, while both George Davis and Tom Basso show zero balances on the commission’s website.

Wiener, who employs a campaign manager and an accountant but does not have a paid fundraiser, attributes his campaign’s financial success to a broad support base from inside the district, something he says he has cultivated through years working within the community.

“I started raising money a year ago. At that time I had no idea if I was going to have one opponent or ten, if they would be strong opponents or weak opponents,” he said. “Since I began my campaign, I’ve had dozens of house parties, largely hosted by residents of the district. People have donated at those house parties after hearing what I had to say.”

Nulty, a native of District 8, said raising cash has been an onerous process involving complicated workshops with the SF Ethics Commission.

“We didn’t know it would be this hard to get money,” Nulty said. “Literally, you have to pay for an accountant because you need somebody who knows and will stand beside you if you get audited.”

Davis attributed Wiener’s lopsided advantage to simply being in a position of power.

“He lined up the money,” Davis said. “He went through his list of contributors. They want influence and he has stacked up all the money.”

State law requires name, address, occupation and employer information for each campaign contributor. This has opened Wiener up to criticism by political opponents who charge that the bulk of his money comes from employees of the real estate, law and architectural sectors.

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, an online collective documenting dispossession in the Bay Area, is one of the detractors. Earlier in the campaign, the organization put out a data-visualization graphic showing 50 percent of Wiener’s contributions coming from individuals working in real estate, law, technology, architecture and interior design.

Of Wiener’s 850 individual contributors listed on the Ethics Commission website, many do actually work in these sectors. Wiener said that the Mapping Project’s allegation against him is still biased and misleading.

“Someone who does landscaping architecture would be included in all of that,” he said. “The anti-eviction mapping project is an organization with a very specific agenda as far as going after certain politicians and not scrutinizing other politicians.” He cited the absence on its website of District 9 Supervisor David Campos, who is currently running for state assembly, as an example of a candidate who has also received significant money from individuals working in the real estate industry.

“It’s not the case that my contributions are primarily from realtors and lawyers,” Wiener stated. “That’s false.”

There is a $500 limit on direct contributions to political candidates, according to the SF Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code. There is also a ban on direct corporate contributions, said San Francisco Ethics Commission Director John St. Croix, though this does not include sole proprietorships or LLCs.

However, an independent expenditure committee — for example, a political action committee that pools money together outside of the control of any candidate — has no financial contribution limit, St. Croix said. This is often referred to as “soft money.”

An example of soft money is when, in the 2010 election, San Francisco landlord Tom Coates gave $200,000 to an independent expenditure campaign dedicated to influencing leaders of numerous city districts, including Wiener’s District 8, to vote for killing rent control. Wiener insisted that accusations of him directly taking this money for his campaign were untrue. “I was a vocal opponent of Prop 98, which would have repealed rent control,” he stated.

Wiener currently has an $83,980 surplus in his campaign account. He said he expects the amount to shrink in the days leading up to the election, but with his sizeable lead over the competition, it’s likely most of it will still remain unspent. If reelected, Wiener said, he could still use that money for officer-holder duties, such as sponsoring a table at a non-profit event or funding a contingent at the SF Pride parade. Leftover campaign money, however, cannot be spent on personal items that do not relate to the office.

There are eleven members of the Board of Supervisors. Supervisors are currently paid $108,049 per year and serve four-year terms. The boundary of District 8 runs along Valencia Street, separating it from District 9.

Michael Petrelis did not respond to phone calls or emails for comment.

Local Effects of Proposition 1 Water Bond Measure Remain Murky

Mokelumne Aqueduct 1 carries 40 million gallons of raw water daily from the Mokelumne River watershed to the East Bay area for treatment. If Proposition 1 passes, money from the bond could go toward aqueduct upgrades. Photo courtesy of East Bay Municipal Utility District.

By Theodore AndersenPosted 1 hour ago

The bond measure known on Tuesday’s ballot as Proposition 1 may look to many like a clear way to address California’s water problems, but its potential local effects remain murky.

While the measure would authorize $7.12 billion in general state bonds for a range of water supply projects—including everything from raising the heights of many reservoir dams to organizing drought relief and emergency water supplies to recycling urban runoff—hidden costs and other barriers may stand in the way of the East Bay drawing from the well of money.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District, or EBMUD, has four major project areas that could receive money if Proposition 1 passes: recycling water, conservation, surface storage and groundwater storage, said Alexander Coates, the district’s general manager. But the state isn’t going to rain money; every local district must pay 50 percent of the costs. And this could pose a challenge for cash-strapped districts with ambitious plans.

Funding exclusions are also a problem. The measure sets aside $520 million in “beneficial use” funds that could go to improve water quality for low-income communities. Although Oakland and Richmond both have economically depressed neighborhoods, it is possible that neither city would see any of the money.

“Disadvantaged” and “severely disadvantaged” communities are defined as areas with a median household income less than 80 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the statewide median. U.S. Census data lists Richmond’s median income at 89 percent of the statewide level and Oakland’s at 84 percent, suggesting that neither city could qualify for low-income community money for water projects the way the bond is written. By contrast, cities such as Stockton or Fresno could qualify for disadvantaged status but not for the higher priority of severely disadvantaged.

In September, EBMUD voted to support the measure, but even so, some of the district’s projects may run into funding obstacles. According to Abby Figueroa, senior public information representative at EBMUD, the district is unlikely to be eligible for funding for water quality or flood management projects unless other districts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area qualify for it.

An example is EBMUD’s aqueducts, which are in need of upgrades. The aqueducts, which carry drinking water from the Mokelumne River watershed in the Sierra Nevada foothills to Oakland and across several districts, are structurally vulnerable at connection points from Stockton to Walnut Creek. If EBMUD collaborated with the districts whose projects were awarded money, a portion of their budgets could go to pay for upgrades. But getting all of the districts to agree on a plan may not be easy.

Other requirements for securing grant money may be hurdles for the Bay Area at large. One section of the bond provides $200 million for stormwater management projects, funding that municipalities throughout the state would compete for. But to qualify, projects must be part of a so-called “Integrated Regional Water Management Plan,” according to Matthew Fabry, coordinator for the San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program. Joining the Bay Area’s version of this management plan could become an onerous process.

“The IRWMP has typically required project proponents to pony up a chunk of change to pay costs of a consultant preparing documents, so many agencies, especially stormwater, have had limited participation,” Fabry wrote in an email.

Water experts seem to vacillate between optimism and ambivalence over the ballot measure. At an October 23 forum at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said Proposition 1 is no immediate cure for California’s water problems because the money won’t be spent any time soon. He said setting funding aside to increase dam heights for nearly empty reservoirs doesn’t address the current drought problems.

Still, $725 million of the bond goes for water recycling and advanced water treatment technology projects, something Gleick said he supported, along with more funding for groundwater storage and stormwater capture, a method for taking urban runoff and using it, for example, to recharge ground water.

“We have a lot to do, and at best, this is a piece of the puzzle,” he said.

During the audience comment period that followed, Gleick was asked whether he thought the language of Proposition 1 was left vague in part to coerce voters into entrusting state officials with the leeway to spend at their own discretion. “I think that is an astute observation,” Gleick said.

San Mateo pollution coordinator Fabry suggested that basic political reasoning accounts for the lack of detail. In an email he wrote, “I believe they intentionally left this bond measure somewhat vague in terms of how money would be distributed, leaving it to future competitive processes, as opposed to specifically calling out projects that get labeled as ‘pork.’”

Backed by Governor Jerry Brown and a number of large institutions like the California Farm Bureau Federation, the California Alliance for Jobs and Western Growers Service Corporation, the measure’s support base has raised significantly more campaign cash than the opposition, which includes a number of small-scale farms. Proposition 1 is consistently polling at over 50 percent in election surveys throughout the state and is expected to pass on November 4.

Read our additional coverage of Proposition 1 here.

Filed under: Economy, Election 2014, Environment, Featured, Front, Politics

Tagged: ebmud, Election 2014, Proposition 1, water

As drought worsens, water agencies eye desalination to quench Bay Area’s thirst

                                  The Mallard Slough site is closed off to the public. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

By Ted Andersen

Thirty miles east of Richmond, just beyond railroad tracks, sits a windswept field on the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta alive with darting ground squirrels and swaying cattails. This is Mallard Slough, a plot of marshland near Bay Point that holds more potential than its undeveloped landscape suggests.

As California’s persisting drought intensifies, Bay Area counties have been working together to find new sources of fresh water. One idea is desalination, the process of separating salt from brackish or ocean water to create drinking water. Desalination has grown in popularity among state and local bodies throughout the past decade, with 17 plants currently in the planning stages up and down California’s coastline.

Mallard Slough is one of them.

For more than 10 years, officials in Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco, and Santa Clara counties have been eyeing potential locations for a $200-million facility. Officials have studied other locations as well — one along Ocean Beach in San Francisco and another near the Bay Bridge in Oakland — but the inter-district prefeasibility studies that began in 2003 and continued into 2007 found Mallard Slough to be the only realistic site. If constructed, the facility would draw from Suisun Bay and could supply supplemental drinking water to East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), which serves the city of Richmond as well as more than 1.2 million other water customers in the East Bay. The planning process will continue into 2015, when other details will be hashed out.

Feasibility studies carried out by Bay Area water districts between 2003-2007 determined that Mallard Slough could host a desalination plant. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

“We did not identify how much [water] would go here and how much could go there; we mainly looked at maximum output,” said Jeff Quimby, planning manager with the Contra Costa Water District. “If the project went forward we would need to look at who it would benefit.”

Bay Area water agencies have received about $3.3 million in state grants for technical studies so far, $1 million of which went to fund a small-scale pilot project operated at the slough’s pump station from 2008 to 2009. The testing was completed in June 2010, and concluded that desalination is possible at the location. The plant’s output could be as much as 50 million gallons of water per day.

Desalination is an expensive and energy intensive process, costing anywhere from $1,900 to $3,000 per acre foot to screen, but the low salt content of the water at Mallard Slough is part of what makes the area attractive. Seawater contains roughly 36 parts per million of dissolved salt compared to just 10 to 13 parts per million for the brackish water at the proposed location. The slough is a wetland area near the mouths of two of California’s most important rivers: the Sacramento and the San Joaquin.

“That obviously reduces how much we would have to desalinate it,” said Nelsy Rodriguez, an EBMUD spokeswoman.

From the slough, windmills twirl in the distance near Pittsburg. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

Oct. 1 marked the beginning of the annual water year for state agencies, a time of intense review and forecasting. Eight agencies have moved forward to form the Bay Area Regional Reliability Partnership Development to investigate various types of water reliability projects, but decisions will still be made district by district. Moreover, while desalination is currently an approved option, the actual construction of a plant could be as far off as 2020. The fate of the project lies in the hands of the general managers of each of the eight water agencies now involved, according to Rodriguez.

“We hope by the beginning of the fiscal year, there will be [a timeline] for the project,” she said. “Each of the agencies is looking internally at the need for water reliability based on the drought.”

Funding also remains a gray area. Desalination is not included in Proposition 1, the $7-billion water bond on November’s ballot. Instead, individual agencies would need to look into ways to cobble the investment together before breaking ground.

“They might all have to contribute,” CCWD’s Quimby said. “That would be something we would have to consider down the road.”

Environmental impact is also a major issue facing desalination plants, especially in the sensitive delta habitat, said Heather Cooley, Water Program director at the Pacific Institute, a research center based in Oakland.

“There were some impacts on delta smelt and that’s a particular concern in that area,” she said, referring to a plant’s intake flow, which can suck up and kill marine life. “Looking at the technology, there are also issues associated with the discharge of brine.”

Passing costs to households is another issue, Cooley said. “For those struggling to pay bills, even a small increase could be a burden.”

The Secal Pittsburg Power Plant looms large to the east of the proposed desalination plant site at Mallard’s Slough. (Photo by Ted Andersen)

But as the October sun continues to beat down on Northern California, there is no rain in sight. For 100 years the utility has gotten its water from the Mokelumne River, in the Sierras. But the river has been heavily taxed during the past three years, which has contributed to EBMUD temporarily tapping the Sacramento River in May for the first time in 40 years.

Normally Shasta and Folsom reservoirs would be available for developing projects to meet growing water needs, but according to California Department of Water Resources data, Lake Shasta is currently at 25 percent of capacity with Folsom Lake at 35 percent. Every major reservoir in the state is below its historic level.

“California is perpetually in drought. It’s a drought climate,” Rodriguez said. “We are always looking for options to increase our water supply.”

Publish on Oct. 8, 2014 by Richmond Confidential

https://richmondconfidential.org/2014/10/08/as-drought-worsens-water-agencies-eye-desalination-to-quench-bay-areas-thirst/