SAN MARTIN
– The lead agency on the handling and cleanup of South County’s
new perchlorate contamination problem is looking to form an
advisory committee to help oversee its work and relay information
to the public.
The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is
holding an initial meeting in San Martin Thursday with government,
business and community representatives to discuss the idea of a
community group further and possibly begin establishing guidelines
for membership and other parameters.
SAN MARTIN – The lead agency on the handling and cleanup of South County’s new perchlorate contamination problem is looking to form an advisory committee to help oversee its work and relay information to the public.
The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is holding an initial meeting in San Martin Thursday with government, business and community representatives to discuss the idea of a community group further and possibly begin establishing guidelines for membership and other parameters.
The agency has considered organizing such a group for a while after both regulatory agencies and members of the community expressed interest in one, said Harvey Packard, a senior water resources control engineer with the board.
“The intent as I see it is to have a group that can gather community concerns and relay them to me,” Packard said Tuesday. “We can hear what the community thinks about what the regional board is doing, what the board should be doing differently or better, and concerns in general.
“It’s also a venue or an avenue I can use to get information out to the community on what we’re doing and what Olin is doing.”
Public officials, business representatives and citizens groups such as the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance are among those anticipated to attend Thursday’s meeting at the San Martin Lions Club, 12415 Murphy Ave. Some were tapped because they expressed interest in the idea of a committee in the past, and some were recommended by board staff, Packard said.
“It’s groups like the city of Morgan Hill and city of Gilroy, county health (department), groups that represent farming and real estate interests, community groups …” he said. “We’re trying to get a cross-section of all of the different viewpoints.”
The agenda will include discussion about the format the group wants to take, frequency of meetings, its size and membership, Packard said.
“I’m going to leave it up to the group as much as I can to determine the content, the format and the membership,” he said.
Based in San Luis Obispo, the nine-member water board is charged with protecting all waters, including groundwater, surface and marine waters.
Its 378-mile-long jurisdiction spreads from Cochrane Avenue in Morgan Hill south to Santa Barbara County and also includes San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. Members hail from communities such as Salinas, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Luis; there are currently none from Santa Clara County.
Sylvia Hamilton, president of the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance, said she was “very, very pleased” at the prospect of a committee.
“I’ve been talking to (Packard) on a regular basis since the beginning of all this and have told him my feelings that we need to have a way where everyone knows what everyone is doing, and that the community needs a vehicle to be able to share their ideas,” Hamilton said Wednesday. “I think it’s very important that people in the community not be kept in the dark, and that they know what’s going on on a regular basis.”
While there is tremendous interest and passion around the perchlorate issue, Packard said the committee will need to have a “workable” number of people to help it be effective. Meetings will be open to the public but officials hope they don’t draw massive amounts of people.
A community information meeting held earlier this year at San Martin-Gwinn School drew an overflow crowd of hundreds of emotional people.
“It’s nice to hear from everybody like we did at the last meeting, but it’s hard to get much done at a meeting like that other than listen to people,” Packard said. “That has its place too, but we’ll do more of those (meetings).”
Another informational meeting for the general public is scheduled for May 3 at Gavilan College.
The overall cleanup effort has been estimated by government officials to last for decades. Olin Corp. delivered two reports on potential groundwater treatment and soil remediation alternatives to the board last week, although it did not select a method for treating water because company officials said they did not have enough information.
A report on that issue is expected by June 30.
The board will be looking for community input on all of Olin’s soil and groundwater cleanup proposals, Packard said.
The committee’s life span will probably last “quite a while,” he said.
“There are a lot of issues we’ll need community input on,” he said.
Since mid-January, Olin and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, under supervision by the regional water board, have been testing wells to see how far the chemical has traveled from its origins at Tennant and Railroad avenues in Morgan Hill.
Contamination has been found in well water in the north Gilroy area and in a monitoring well a quarter-mile from one of the city’s municipal wells. In Morgan Hill, several municipal wells have been closed.
Olin and Standard Fusee Corp. manufactured highway safety flares on a Tennant Avenue site in Morgan Hill between 1955 and 1996. Officials say perchlorate was washed from mixing equipment and dumped into a holding pond on the site, and subsequently leached into the aquifer.
For more information on the committee or to express interest in joining the committee, call Packard at (805) 542-4639.
