Sacramento County blamed American River’s pollution on homeless people. But was it true?
Sacramento County is once again embroiled in a hypocritical trap of its own making. An environmental group is suing the region’s largest government for allegedly dumping sewer waste into local waterways — even as the county has blamed its unsheltered population for rising E. coli levels along the American River.
While county officials have been supposedly wracked by concern for the health and safety of visitors to the American River and the residents of the multiple homeless camps along its banks, the California Coastkeeper Alliance is accusing the county and the Sacramento Area Sewer District of violating the Clean Water Act by dumping waste into the the American and Sacramento rivers and area creeks.
What a mess.
County representatives declined to comment on the claim. Meanwhile, a county-sponsored project to track the source of the American River E. coli contamination has released its first findings. They show most of the bacteria in the lower American River comes not from human waste but from dog and bird excrement.
The county is in the midst of ushering hundreds of unsheltered people away from the river and onto an asphalt parking lot inside a flood zone — and even going so far as to reframe it as a victory. But what will the supervisors’ excuse be when the homeless encampments have been razed and popular swimming holes remain infected by sewage or some other source?
For years, homeless rights activists fought for portable bathrooms along the American River Parkway, but city and county officials argued that they would only be vandalized or used for illegal activities. Thankfully, common sense won out, and the county installed 49 portable toilets and 56 hand-washing stations near the camps last year.
Still, the high E. coli levels in the American River persisted, and officials argued that the only way to clean up the river was to clean up the camps. (At least now we know why the bathrooms didn’t help.)
Starting last year, county officials began gathering samples at various points along the river and testing the bacteria they collected in the hope of identifying where the infection was coming from.
Well, now we have our answer. And yet unsanitary conditions remain the county’s main rationale for removing the river encampments.
It seems as though the county’s right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, but both hands are pointing fingers at the one group of people who have no power.
The Board of Supervisors’ latest project to address this, under legislation authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, would give priority to parkway residents to move into a sanctioned site on one of Cal Expo’s overflow parking lots. Lot Z is approximately nine acres, and the site would include mental health, substance abuse and rehousing services. But the project is far from ready, said Supervisor Phil Serna, who is helping to spearhead the effort along with fellow Supervisor Rich Desmond and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.
The site still needs approval from the city, the county government and the owners of Cal Expo. County officials won’t say yet if the parking lot will contain buildings or merely allow for tents and portable toilets.
Rangers estimate that as many as 2,000 people could be living along the river, and yet the sanctioned camping site would ideally host only 200 to 300, Serna said. Where the money will come from for this project is yet another obstacle.
It’s little better than the hope of an idea, depending on what Cal Expo’s board of directors has to say about it. If they don’t give the plan the go-ahead, it will be set back once again. Yet Serna, Desmond and Steinberg hope it will someday provide a solution for some of the American River Parkway’s residents.
“This is the most complicated local policy challenge we have,” Serna said. “This is an opportunity to not just check a box; it has to be conceived and deployed and implemented as something that is a desirable alternative to the existing camps.”
Cal Expo could prove to be a good first step in helping those living along the parkway. But that’s only if the authorized campsite opens, and only if those currently living along the American River Parkway can be persuaded to go, and only if those people can use the services offered without sacrificing the perceived benefits of their current lifestyle.
That’s a lot of “ifs,” and local officials can no longer point to the threat and rallying cry of contamination without pointing a dirty finger back at themselves.
Particularly if the county and sewer district are found guilty of dumping human waste into local watersheds, they will owe a lot more than tents in a flood-prone parking lot to the people they’ve blamed and ignored for years.
This story was originally published November 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
