SAN MARTIN
– Angry residents flooded a meeting hosted by the Santa Clara
Valley Water District Wednesday night demanding answers to
questions about the perchlorate poisoning fouling the water supply
in South Valley. But they didn’t get many answers.
SAN MARTIN – Angry residents flooded a meeting hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Water District Wednesday night demanding answers to questions about the perchlorate poisoning fouling the water supply in South Valley. But they didn’t get many answers.
Long lines of residents posed question after question to the assembled panel: How do perchlorates affect the human body? Is it OK to take a shower? How are pets and livestock affected? What about crops in the area?
More than 800 people filled San Martin/Gwinn school’s multi-purpose room and its perimeter and overflowed out all four doors, packing an auxiliary room.
The harsh fact that 90 of the 271 wells tested to date have levels of the chemical at four parts per billion the state-mandated “action level” heightened the tension.
The cleanup effort could take 30 to 40 years, residents learned, and so far, no decision has been made on how to remove the chemical residue from the underground water table. There are no estimates of cost.
Few found the information comforting, and the meeting stretched to three hours as long lines of San Martin, Gilroy and Morgan Hill area residents waited before microphones to question the experts.
“I don’t see a plan,” said Rudy Boynton, voicing the frustration shown by many in the crowd. “I don’t want to be pacified. I want something fixed.”
Officials were pushed to set a mid-April meeting where residents and officials could meet again in a larger room. Some accepted a challenge to “be part of the solution” by forming a committee to work with the water district in collecting and dispersing information to the community, likely under the auspices of the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance.
Moderator Susan Fitz, chief of public affairs for the SCVWD, opened the meeting with the question on many minds: “Why is Olin not here?” The answer, she said, was because the meeting was to bring information to residents, not to provide a forum for approaching the corporation that has accepted responsibility for the well contamination – and for its effects.
Perchlorates have leached into the underground aquifer – and into many private wells – from a former Olin Corp. plant on Tennant Avenue in Morgan Hill, extending at least seven miles south into an area north of the Gilroy city limits.
The original contamination boundaries of Tennant Avenue on the north, Center and Masten avenues on the east and south and Monterey Road on the west, have been expanded east, south and west (but not north).
The chemical was discovered last week in a well at the corner of Denio Avenue and Malo Court, a mile into Gilroy near Llagas Creek.
Mike DiMarco, spokesman for the SCVWD, said today that the creek is “clean.”
“The (perchlorate-contaminated water) is beneath the creek,” he said but could not say what influence the aquifer and the creek might have on each other.
Olin – and Standard Fusee Corp. – had manufactured safety flares on the site from 1955 to 1997.
The potential dangers of perchlorate were not known until the 1990s. Thus, Olin has not been accused of misdeeds by government agencies but is responsible, according to California state law.
Kevin Mayer, national perchlorate coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told those on hand the federal government had spent considerable money over the past five years trying to understand the chemical’s potential health effects and to discover treatment systems.
“There are still many, many things we don’t know,” he said.
How long will it take to clean this up?
“Years,” Mayer said. “Possibly 30 or 40.”
The state Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board based in San Luis Obispo is the lead regulatory agency on the perchlorate issue. Harvey Packard, its senior water resources engineer, told the crowd, “Our role is to make sure that Olin takes responsibility for the problem – which they are doing.” He said this was not the case elsewhere in the state where the polluters are unknown or have disappeared.
“We take our commitment as an environmentally responsible company and a good neighbor very seriously,” Rick McClure, an Olin Corp. project manager, said Monday.
Olin has agreed to expand the scope of testing and to continue to provide bottled water where perchlorate is found.
The board, Packard said, is working to identify all people with contaminated wells and to find alternative water sources. It also is working with Olin to investigate the original source area at Tennant and Railroad avenues and to do the long-term cleanup.
“This is the most difficult and time-consuming part,” said Packard, who added that perchlorate spreads rapidly and has been detected as many as 7.5 miles from the source.
“Olin has spread tarps over the site to prevent further leaching,” Packard said. “One solution is to pump ground water out to remove the perchlorate and to slow its spread.”
Several members of the public mentioned a recent quote by an Olin Corp. official who said if they got too many lawsuits, they would have to declare bankruptcy.
“Olin is solvent and viable,” Packard said.
But later, when asked where owners of contaminated wells could go if Olin did go out of business, Packard said “nowhere.”
Perchlorate and people
Health was what most people said they came to hear about.
Martin Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County health officer, said the county health department was concerned.
“Perchlorate goes rapidly into the bloodstream,” he said. “But it doesn’t stay long. Within 72 hours, 95 percent (of the chemical) is gone into the urine” and leaves the body. “It is not stored in the tissues or in the bones. Once exposure has stopped it goes away.”
Perchlorate competes with the body’s iodide, Fenstersheib said, and iodide helps the thyroid to function.
“Perchlorate will affect the body if there is not enough iodide in the diet or if the levels of perchlorate are so high as to overwhelm the iodide.”
The American diet is rich in nutrition, Fenstersheib said. Iodide is found in iodized salt, meat, seafood and enriched bread.
The developing fetus and infants are most susceptible, he said, but every newborn is immediately tested for thyroid levels and has been for decades, so any imbalance is treated. Still, Fenstersheib said, pregnant women and small children should drink bottled water.
On crops and animals
The information on perchlorate’s effects on plants and animals is sketchier, said Greg Van Wassenhove, Santa Clara County Agricultural commissioner.
“My mission is to protect agriculture in the area,” he said. “We are trying to gather information but there are very few answers. As I get it, I’ll deliver it to you.”
He confirmed reports that leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, concentrate levels of perchlorate up to 50 times the amount in the water but said he didn’t know about tomatoes, for example. Fruit, he believed, was far less susceptible.
Van Wassenhove relayed that a leading UC Davis veterinarian said that animals tend not to live long enough to accumulate enough perchlorate to cause health problems.
Still, many residents told of animals with suspicious ailments, cancer or thyroid problems, over the years.
“We just don’t know enough yet,” the commissioner said.
Questions for the doctor
Is it OK to take showers? What about small children taking long baths? Is it safe to breathe vapors from our perchlorate-tainted hot tub? Does the chemical collect on dishes when washed in the water?
Fenstersheib said the body does not absorb perchlorate through the skin so taking baths “should” be safe. Hot tubs should be safe and the accumulation on dishes is negligible.
Even though Congressional representatives Zoe Lofgren and Richard Pombo and State Assemblyman John Laird had sent staff members to talk with residents, several in the crowd questioned why the elected officials were not there themselves. One resident pointed out a noticeable absence.
“Where is Don Gage?” asked Georgianna Froom. “He should be here.”
Rachael Gibson, the land-use aide in Gage’s office, said the District 1 county supervisor considered that the county was well-represented at the meeting.
“All the appropriate parties were represented there last night,” she said today. “And the county, as a whole, wasn’t absent.”
Water district board members Sig Sanchez and Rosemary Kamei were in the audience.
Larry Ladd, a “perchlorate activist” from Rancho Cordova in Sacramento County told the audience he has worked on the issue every day since 1996. Ladd lives near a former Aerojet General plant that is accused of polluting groundwater in the area. Perchlorate also is a byproduct of rocket fuel.
“You are the first group of people whose water purveyor (the SCVWD) was brave enough to tell you,” about the problem, he said. He encouraged people to visit www.perchlorate.org for a broad collection of information on the subject.
In fact, several speakers praised the water district for its response.
Property values
Attorney Richard Alexander of Alexander, Hawes & Audet in San Jose told the crowd his firm would be filing a class action suit against Olin next week. He and his representatives passed out letters and cards to the public and put one on every vehicle in the parking lot.
“You don’t want this to be a superfund site,” he said, “because of its effect on your property values.” Alexander suggested an “emergency response site” instead.
Mayer said it was a bit late for an emergency cleanup because the perchlorate had dispersed so far from the original site.
About halfway through the questions, residents stopped giving their names. Even so, one speaker cast a chill over the crowd by reporting that he had been about to sell his house at what would have been the highest price ever for the area. The prospective buyer requested a report on the property’s water – from the West San Martin Water Works – and found levels of between 3 and 4 ppb of perchlorate – below the action level but still present. The buyer backed out.
