Morgan Hill insists corporation polluted city’s wells
Tony Burchyns Staff Writer
Morgan Hill – City officials are fed up with Olin Corporation, the company that polluted groundwater in and around Morgan Hill. So they are taking their case to the state, where water officials will hear arguments that the company’s cleanup feasibility study misses the mark. It fails to identify how much pollution the company has allegedly caused to the South County water basin and how much contaminated water appears to be seeping into Morgan Hill’s municipal wells, city officials said.
The latter argument has been made by Morgan Hill city officials for more than three years, ever since perchlorate was first detected in one of the city’s public wells after widespread pollution by Olin had been reported. The potentially harmful chemical – the Olin plant reportedly used 150,000 pounds of it annually for decades to make road flares – has now been detected at four city wells, resulting in ratepayers spending more than $900,000 since 2003 to clean it up. While those costs cannot be recovered from Olin, the city has hinted at future litigation.
All in all, officials say, the city has spent $3 million outfitting wells with filters and hiring consultants and attorneys to make the case that perchlorate contamination in Morgan Hill stems from Olin.
Still, the state’s water board has held back in pinning blame on Olin for perchlorate detected northeast of its former Tennant Avenue site, stating there could be other sources of the pollution – based on theories most groundwater flows south in the valley – including runoff from bleach used to clean equipment at mushroom farms.
It’s an argument City Manager Ed Tewes, now freshly informed by new data from the city’s consulting engineers, simply doesn’t buy. For three years he’s attended water board meetings arguing the city’s 37,000 water customers deserve more consideration in the ongoing Olin debacle.
On Sept. 7, Tewes will go before the state water board once more when it convenes in Monterey. Joined by Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy, he will amplify the city’s urgent request to be included among the areas – they’re all south of Tennant Avenue – designated for cleanup by the state water authorities.
“We believe there is one basin, there is one major source of perchlorate, and that (Olin) should be held responsible for cleaning it up,” Tewes said in what amounted to a rehearsal of his presentation Wednesday at the Morgan Hill City Council meeting.
In a letter to Regional Water Quality Control Board Executive Director Roger Briggs dated Aug. 17, Tewes outlined a three-prong argument: that there is evidence that Morgan Hill wells have been contaminated with perchlorate; that there is hydraulic “communication” between city wells and the Olin site; and that there is northeasterly flow in the deepest aquifers. The evidence backing these claims, according to Tewes’ letter, comes from the very data collected by Olin under instruction from the state board.
Olin spokesman Rick McClure did not return phone calls seeking comment before press time.
Thea Tryon, an engineer at the Regional Water Quality Control Board, said Olin has been “proactive” in suggesting further data should be gathered in the area east of the Olin site and north of Tennant Avenue. In July, the water board concurred and ordered Olin to continue monitoring wells in that area to confirm any upward trends in perchlorate concentrations found earlier. Based on those results, water officials stated in their written order they will determine whether additional evaluations are necessary.
Morgan Hill Director of Public Works Jim Ashcraft said there is no need to wait to see that traces of Olin’s perchlorate is being sucked into Morgan Hill’s water system.
“We’ve been yelling at the regional board those things exist,” Ashcraft said, referring to the pervious monitoring results.
Rosemary Kamei, District 1 representative for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, will also attend the water board meeting Sept. 7 to speak on behalf of the Perchlorate Work Group. The group consists of representatives from Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Santa Clara County and the water district.
Kamei said she plans to roundly criticize Olin’s cleanup feasibility study submitted June 30 to state water officials. The document does not identify a “background” level of perchlorate for the South County water table, nor does it propose a clear cleanup solution. Instead, Olin suggests more monitoring of the water table is needed before taking any action.
“I call it the ‘unfeasibility report,’ ” Kamei said. “They have this wait-and-hope philosophy that is not acceptable.”
Olin argues that because the state’s public health goal is 6 ppb perchlorate for drinking water, and widespread testing shows the concentration of perchlorate to have dropped below that level in most areas of the designated cleanup zone, it should not have to continue cleaning groundwater. The company used this rationale in June to cancel state-mandated delivery of bottled water to San Martin residents whose private wells plunge into the perchlorate plume. Other tests on alternative sources of perchlorate in the valley are pending. Olin representatives think determining the level of contamination before the factory started operating in 1955 will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
“State law requires polluters to clean up their mess,” Kamei said. “Olin has taken a stand to do nothing. We have opportunities to apply for grants to compliment the clean-up they would be doing, but we can’t plan anything until they have their strategy to clean it up.”
