One well has yielded 63 pounds of perchlorate
MORGAN HILL
The way Morgan Hill city leaders see it, requiring Olin Corp. to treat more groundwater for perchlorate isn’t enough: the city also wants to be reimbursed for the hundreds of thousands of dollars it is spending to operate a well for that same purpose.
Last Friday, the seven members of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting in San Luis Obispo approved an order requiring Olin Corp. to pump perchlorate out of both Priority Zone A and B, as opposed to just Zone A, as an early order of the draft specified. The board’s vote enabled its executive officer to issue the order, which had not been done as of Monday, Morgan Hill City Manager Ed Tewes said.
Tewes said he would brief the city council at its next meeting, Dec. 19, about “what has happened and outline a series of options.”
On Monday, he said the city’s counsel, the Santa Barbara-based law firm Hatch & Parent, would submit legal briefs defending what he believes are the city’s right to be reimbursed for operating a well on Tennant Avenue. That well had been drilled in 1979 and shut down in 2002 before being reopened several years later to treat the city’s groundwater. In 2000, a potential buyer of Olin Corp.’s now-defunct road flare factory at 425 Tennant Ave. discovered a high concentration of perchlorate in the groundwater of the Llagas Subbasin, which extends for more than 10 miles south of Morgan Hill downtown to San Martin and ends within Gilroy city limits.
Since the Tennant well was reopened, it has screened 613 million gallons of raw water and yielded 63 pounds of perchlorate, a toxic salt that can affect the thyroid gland if consumed by human beings.
