Environmentalists hunt wildlife-killing nurdles

Environmental regulators walked gingerly along the San Leandro shoreline Friday, keeping a sharp eye out for the elusive wildlife killer known as the "nurdle."

"I've got one," said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, after scooping one out of a worker's net. There, in his palm, was a tiny white pellet.

Nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic that are melted down and used in the production of plastic bags, bubble wrap, packaging and wrapping material. They may sound cuddly and nonthreatening, but they are believed to be responsible for the sickness and death of thousands of fish and birds in the region that have mistaken them for food.

The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, State Water Resources Control Board and the EPA have targeted four San Leandro plastic manufacturers in a first-in-the-nation effort to halt the rampant spillage of the pellets, hundreds of thousands of which have washed into storm drains that flow into San Francisco Bay.

"It's a very big problem," Blumenfeld said during Friday's first mandated nurdle cleanup operation at Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro. "We're looking at the practices of companies that have a great deal of these nurdles and we're making sure they are contained."

Three plastic bag manufacturing companies and one automobile bumper manufacturer have been ordered to develop procedures to prevent future spillage of pellets. The companies also have to conduct cleanup operations during high tides at nearby Oyster Bay, where the local storm drains empty out. The wetland around Oyster Bay, where workers were using pool skimmers Friday to capture the nurdles, is prime habitat for the endangered California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.

As mitigation for the pellets that were already spilled and can't be recovered, the companies have to clean up litter on the shoreline between Sept. 1 and Feb. 1 for the next two years.

Ironically, one of the bag manufacturers produced a plastic sack with the phrase "Don't Trash California Bags."

Regulators have known about the problem ever since a giant floating patch of plastic - including nurdles and other debris - twice the size of Texas was found in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the North Pacific Gyre.

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