Olin Corp., the company that has acknowledged its now-closed
road flare factory in south Morgan Hill is the cause of a
perchlorate plume snaking through South County’s aquifers, has
disappointed South County residents yet again.
Olin Corp., the company that has acknowledged its now-closed road flare factory in south Morgan Hill is the cause of a perchlorate plume snaking through South County’s aquifers, has disappointed South County residents yet again.
For a company that promised to be a good neighbor and take its responsibility seriously (“We take our commitment as an environmentally responsible company and a good neighbor very seriously,” Rick McClure, an Olin Corp. project manager, said shortly after the perchlorate contamination was discovered), it’s hard to justify Olin’s recent attempts to curtail bottled water delivery to owners of contaminated wells.
After the California Department of Health Services established a perchlorate safety level of 6 parts per billion (up from 4 ppb), Olin speedily sought to discontinue bottled water delivery to approximately 600 well owners.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board quite rightly denied that request.
However, they are apparently powerless to force Olin to continue delivering bottled water to well owners whose wells are contaminated with less than 4 ppb of perchlorate. Olin has announced it will discontinue bottled water delivery to those well owners.
Given that there’s seasonal fluctuation in test results of perchlorate-contaminated wells, that there’s a 20 percent margin of error in perchlorate tests and that there’s widespread disagreement over what level of perchlorate is safe, of course Olin should continue delivering bottled water. And it ought to be delivered to any well owner with the smallest trace of perchlorate contamination.
In fact, Olin ought to be required to install perchlorate-removing filters on every contaminated well, municipal and private, but we’re not holding our breath for that to happen.
In the meantime, Olin officials ought to look up hypocrite in the dictionary: Saying you’ll be a good neighbor and then trying to weasel out of compensating the victims of your pollution fits the definition perfectly.
Clearly, South County residents can’t trust Olin’s empty promises to be environmentally responsible good neighbors. So they’ll have to trust us to keep an eagle eye on their every move and to hold them accountable for cleaning up the mess they’ve made of our aquifers.
