MORGAN HILL
– The city, which has its hands full with water problems, is not
pleased with the Olin Corp.
MORGAN HILL – The city, which has its hands full with water problems, is not pleased with the Olin Corp.
On Wednesday, an attorney representing the city sent a letter of complaint to the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (CRWQCB) based in San Luis Obispo, stating its disillusionment with Olin’s promises and plans to manage and clean up water contaminated by the chemical perchlorate.
Several municipal wells in Morgan Hill, hundreds of private wells in Morgan Hill and San Martin and, most recently, Gilroy have been contaminated by a perchlorate leak into the underground aquifer, something for which Olin has repeatedly said it would be responsible. For 40 years, the chemical was used as a by-product in the manufacture of highway safety flares at Olin’s plant on Tennant and Railroad avenue.
Steven Hoch, of Hatch and Parent, the Los Angeles law firm handling relations between the city and the corporation, reiterated the scope of cleanup suggested by Olin and approved by the Regional Board in March.
Olin promised to assess the area’s geology as it pertains to water, discuss site investigation, assess aquifer properties, prepare and present maps and lab test results, update a site conceptual model and present alternatives for long-term, basinwide groundwater cleanup with schedules and alternatives.
Through Hoch, city officials said the Olin response on June 30 is not sufficient.
“In many ways … the report by Olin does not produce the requested information required by the RWQCB,” he wrote. The report is lacking in four areas:
• It says nothing of the site conceptual model – only mentions a “working hypothesis”
• It provides no alternatives or schedule for long-term, basin-wide groundwater cleanup
• The design of an on-site perchlorate removal system is accompanied by little information and “appears to be inadequate”
• The “working hypothesis prematurely dismisses the possibility of significant concentrations of perchlorate at depths greater than 200-feet below the ground surface.”
Adding salt to the city’s wounds, the Olin report, Hoch said, claims that the city’s newly installed (but not yet operational) treatment plant on the Tennant Avenue well (the first well in the area to be discovered with perchlorate levels and the first to be taken off-line) will hamper Olin’s clean-up activities.
The city installed the plant to help it through the summer period of high water demand. The plant was approved by the Regional Board and paid for with a loan from the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Three other city wells are currently off-line because of perchlorate pollution, a situation that caused water supplies to become dangerously low during a recent heatwave.
“Olin fails to include that treatment system in any of its plans,” Hoch said. The city had expected Olin to pay for that treatment plant.
The letter also noted that Olin’s investigation ignored the chemical in wells north of the Tennant site – it has claimed responsibility for those only south of the site since it is generally assumed that water in the aquifer flows south-southeast in that area. Where the chemical came from in those wells is not yet clear.
The Regional Board had asked Olin to study hydrogeology and groundwater flows in that area.
“Olin continues to ignore this basic need,” Hoch wrote.
The appearance of the chemical in some Gilroy area private wells was also ignored by Olin, the letter said. The company offered no suggestion of how to protect that city’s water supply nor its citizens from the Olin pollution.
Hoch concludes that the Olin response does not meet the needs of Morgan Hill or Gilroy, nor does it fulfill the Regional Board’s requirements. Olin has not completed the work it said it would by the appropriate deadlines nor has it offered any appropriate plan for protecting South Valley drinking water.
Olin, Hoch said, proposes a clean-up plan based on inadequately researched assumptions.
FOR INFORMATION
• Santa Clara Valley Water District: www.valleywater.org or 888-HEY-NOAH
• Regional Water Quality Control Board: www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb3/
• San Martin Neighborhood Alliance: www.smneighbor.org • Rancho Cordova perchlorate project: www.perchlorate.org • Environmental Working Group: www.ewg.org • City of Morgan Hill: www.morgan-hill.ca.gov
