GILROY
– South Valley residents concerned about perchlorate in their
water will have a chance this Saturday to learn what the experts
know about the chemical, its effect on people, plants and animals
and how to get rid of it.
GILROY – South Valley residents concerned about perchlorate in their water will have a chance this Saturday to learn what the experts know about the chemical, its effect on people, plants and animals and how to get rid of it.
The forum, sponsored by the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, will be held at three sites on the main Gavilan College campus in Gilroy from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The meeting will be translated into Spanish via headsets available from the information booth at the west entrance to the campus.
Audience members will choose one of three areas – the student center, social science building or a large outdoor tent – to hear from three rotating panels, each addressing a different topic. The audience will not need to move.
Saturday’s public meeting is the second mounted by the regional board and the water district to inform the public and, if possible, calm fears of adverse effects on health and property values. The first meeting, on Feb. 14, came a month after it was reported that perchlorate would be an issue for the entire South Valley area.
The first meeting – contentious at times – drew more than 800 people who were promised another gathering when more facts were available. May 3 is that gathering.
Many of the same experts will appear Saturday and offer knowledge gained since the last meeting:
• Olin case investigation and cleanup will offer John Mijares, water resource control engineer for the regional board; Tom Mohr, engineer from Santa Clara Valley Water District; and Sylvia Hamilton, chair of the newly formed Perchlorate Citizens Advisory Group.
• Health and agricultural issues will be discussed by Dr. Martin Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County health officer; Greg Van Wassenhove, county agriculture commissioner; and Bob Siegfried of the SCVWD.
• Cleanup technologies will be presented by Kevin Mayer, national perchlorate coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Marc Lucca of the SCVWD; David Spath, state Dept. of Health Services has been invited but had not confirmed by press time.
During the meeting SCVWD engineers will also present six short-term water clean-up procedures that might be available soon, according to Mike DiMarco, spokesman for SCVWD.
“This will be good news for a lot of people,” DiMarco said. “It’s the type of thing people have been requesting ever since they heard about the perchlorate problem – something in the short term rather than waiting decades for ground water basin cleanup.”
DiMarco said more details would certainly be available on Saturday.
Perchlorate was first discovered to have contaminated South Valley wells in mid-January. A Morgan Hill municipal well across the street from the Olin site was closed in April 2002 after tests showed levels of the chemical above the four parts per billion. That is the amount detectable by most laboratories and the point at which the water supplier must notify its customers.
The perchlorate then traveled mostly southeast from a former Olin Corp. plant on Tennant and Railroad avenues in Morgan Hill, contaminating hundreds of wells in south Morgan Hill, San Martin and north Gilroy. More recently, the chemical has been found in Morgan Hill wells north of the Tennant Avenue site and three more city wells were closed.
Olin manufactured highway safety flares on the site from 1955 to 1995; perchlorate is used in that manufacture as it is in rocket fuel, air bags and some fertilizers. In undetermined amounts, perchlorate is known to interfere with thyroid activity in susceptible infants, children and adults. It has been accused of causing other serious health problems as well.
Olin has admitted some responsibility in the contamination and is helping the SCVWD test wells and provide free bottled water to many affected residents.
As of April 17, results on tests for 1,006 wells have been received. 617 show nondetectable amounts of the chemical (below 4 ppb); 369 show levels of between 4 and 9.9 ppb; 15 between 10 and 19.9; three between 20 and 39.9 and two between 40 and 100 ppb.
This week the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved spending up to $1 million to buy and install an ion-exchange perchlorate treatment facility that will be installed by July at the abandoned Tennant well. Since it is portable, the system can also be moved to a municipal water system in San Martin that serves several hundred houses and ranches and has detectable amounts of the chemical.
The newly formed San Martin Perchlorate Advisory Committee established by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, of which Sylvia Hamilton is chair, will meet at 10 a.m. Thursday at the San Martin Lion’s Club, 12515 Murphy Ave. This committee is designed to give the community a voice in the perchlorate cleanup process. For more information on the community advisory committee, call Harvey Packard of the state Regional Water Quality Control Board at (805) 542-4639.
Intérpretes de español/inglés estaran disponibles durante esta reunion.
Headsets for Spanish-speaking residents will be available at an information booth on a first-come basis. The booth is near the handicapped drop-off site at parking lot C behind the campus. The campus is located at 5055 Santa Teresa Blvd.
Details: More information and a map of Gavilan Community College campus parking and sites are available at www.valleywater.org.
