SAN MARTIN
– The company that tainted South County wells with perchlorate
has submitted a new plan for removing the toxic chemical from soil
and groundwater at its defunct Morgan Hill factory.
The major shift in Olin Corporation’s cleanup plan was announced
Thursday at a meeting of the San Martin perchlorate advisory group,
which also endorsed a proposal by agricultural activists for better
and broader crop testing.
SAN MARTIN – The company that tainted South County wells with perchlorate has submitted a new plan for removing the toxic chemical from soil and groundwater at its defunct Morgan Hill factory.
The major shift in Olin Corporation’s cleanup plan was announced Thursday at a meeting of the San Martin perchlorate advisory group, which also endorsed a proposal by agricultural activists for better and broader crop testing.
Santa Clara County ag officials worry that results from some existing tests, which are only 50 percent reliable, may trigger a market reaction that could crush local agriculture within 18 months.
If state water officials approve Olin Corporation’s cleanup plan, the nearly 10-mile contamination plume will be cut off at its source.
Olin wants to build an intricate 225- by 450-square-foot leaching system, instead of a more straightforward cleanup method such as excavation, to flush perchlorate from soil and groundwater at the Tennant Road factory.
Harvey Packard, an engineer with the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board, said Olin consultants no longer believe removing soil is the best way to purify the site since learning this month that the contamination area’s “footprint” is larger, and more contaminated, than once anticipated.
Olin’s latest data shows that one-fourth of the site is contaminated, with soil samples registering a high of 13,000 parts per billion of perchlorate.
“We’re talking about hundreds upon hundreds of diesel trucks needed to move the dirt off the property,” Packard said. “And then once it’s removed, it has to go somewhere else. You’re just moving the problem from one place to another when you excavate.”
Packard said the plan has been submitted in concept only and needs to be followed with more specific designs. It could be one to two months before the water quality board has enough information to approve the proposal.
The perchlorate advisory group unanimously endorsed a proposal to lobby elected representatives for “accurate” and “reliable” agriculture testing.
Members of the ag community in Santa Clara worry that until scientifically valid tests for perchlorate levels are done on a broad range of crops, public speculation will be harmful to agriculture producers, farm employees and rural communities.
Farm Bureau Executive Director Jenny Midtgaard Derry and County Agricultural Commissioner Greg Van Wassenhove presented a five-point resolution of ag community’s requests.
The resolution calls for elected officials to:
• Accelerate the process to complete studies on perchlorate ingestion, through water and food, on human health.
• Establish accurate and reliable methods for testing agricultural commodities for perchlorate residue.
• Establish health standards for perchlorate.
• Conduct regular testing based on those health standards.
• Scientifically review test data before releasing it to the public.
The resolution comes just days before a San Martin resident Bob Cerruti, whose well is contaminated with perchlorate, releases results from his home-based tomato plant study. Many people worry that negative results from tests like Cerruti’s will make Santa Clara County agriculture less desirable, even though crops outside the region are perchlorate-tainted, too.
“We are not a San Joaquin Valley that’s owned by huge conglomerates,” said Jeannie Lopez, an employee at Uesugi Farms in Gilroy. “We are families that own farms. We already have growers around the United States and Canada asking if we are watering crops with perchlorate.”
Derry said an accurate testing method is crucial since laboratories that are doing work on home-based tests are only guaranteeing a 50 percent accuracy rate at some detection levels.
“That’s like me saying I’m going to test you for cancer and there’s a 50-50 chance the result will be right,” Derry said.
Another portion of Thursday’s advisory meeting focused on perchlorate studies done by a branch of the state’s Environmental Protection Agency.
The state is trying to determine the level at which perchlorate ingestion harms the human body so it can set a public health goal. This goal would be used by officials to set regulations.
David Ting presented the data, which is being peer reviewed within the University of California and is months away from being finalized. Ting’s studies recommend goals for perchlorate levels be set at between 2 and 6 ppb.
As for Olin’s leaching system, construction would take roughly two months, pushing the operating date to December. Packard said the leaching system would need about a year to flush perchlorate from the site.
The news received a lukewarm reception Thursday night.
San Martin resident and community activist Sylvia Hamilton said Olin needs to accelerate its plans to clean up the rest of the contaminated area.
“There’s still no plan to clean up our sites,” Hamilton said.
