SAN MARTIN
– An Olin Corp. plan to clean perchlorate-tainted soil with a
combination of ethanol and bacteria received a lukewarm reception
Friday from South County’s premier percholorate-watchdog
organization.
The San Martin Community Advisory Group wants Olin to haul away
more than 1,000 truckloads of dirt from the now-defunct Tennant
Avenue factory in Morgan Hill.
SAN MARTIN – An Olin Corp. plan to clean perchlorate-tainted soil with a combination of ethanol and bacteria received a lukewarm reception Friday from South County’s premier percholorate-watchdog organization.
The San Martin Community Advisory Group wants Olin to haul away more than 1,000 truckloads of dirt from the now-defunct Tennant Avenue factory in Morgan Hill. The group is asking the state’s water quality board to make Olin prove that onsite bacteria and ethanol treatment would be at least as effective as moving the soil offsite.
Olin is the company that contaminated nearly 500 South County wells with perchlorate. The firm wants to employ a cheaper and less work-intensive method of soil cleanup by mixing ethanol and bacteria into the factory site’s soil.
The bacteria digests the ethanol and perchlorate to produce harmless chlorite.
“It seems they should remove at least the dirtiest of the soil,” Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy said Friday, at the San Martin Community Advisory Group’s monthly meeting.
Members of the advisory group agreed. They unanimously decided to send a recommendation to the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board asking the agency to make Olin prove their soil treatment would be effective and timely.
David Athey, an engineer with the Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the process could take roughly two years before the soil would be renewed.
Eric Gobler, another Regional Water Quality Control engineer, said he would “commit to” asking Olin for the rationale behind its latest cleanup plan. However, he did not say he would advocate either for soil removal or ethanol-bacteria treatment.
During the same session, the Community Advisory Group was told it would have to wait until April to know much more about Olin’s plan to treat contaminated private wells offsite which stretch from Morgan Hill to Gilroy.
In April, Olin will complete a study that will determine the best way to treat individual wells. The study will look at wells with contamination levels between 4 and 40 parts per billion.
“An April completion date is pretty ambitious on Olin’s part,” Athey said.
Athey said treatment methods would likely differ for the hundreds of contaminated wells. In some cases, wells could be treated individually, while elsewhere wells could be treated in clusters at one central location.
The news comes on the heels of a string of treatment plant installations in San Martin and Morgan Hill. Olin installed ion exchange systems on three public wells in South County between October and December. The wells deliver drinking water to hundreds of South County residents.
Athey said Olin would outline its study for the treatment systems for private wells by Friday.
South County residents have been pressing for a water treatment plan for nearly a year when news of the contamination broke. However, there are concerns ion exchange systems used on municipal wells would be inconveniences and eyesores on private lots.
Residents want to have some say over what type of treatment solution Olin ultimately provides. Their voice will have to be heeded by the Regional Water Quality Control Board which under water code law must approve a contaminators cleanup plan.
“The community did not cause the problem,” said Sylvia Hamilton, chairwoman for the Community Advisory Group. “I want quality of life to be considered in (the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s) decision.”
Currently, residents with contaminated wells have been receiving bottled water at Olin’s expense.
Realtors at Friday’s session put a silver lining on the perchlorate issue which has become a grey cloud for property owners in the South Valley.
“We have not seen a drastic drop in (housing) prices in the San Martin area,” Coldwell Banker Realtor Shanna Boigon said.
“I agree. … I don’t see prices being affected,” Prudential Realtor Matthew Crawford said.
Boigon and Crawford also said that property owners with contaminated wells could refinance their mortgages with little or no trouble these days.
Homeowners wanting to take advantage of the low interest rates over the past year had reported being turned away by lenders. But according to the Realtors at Friday’s session, that prejudice has left the marketplace.
“If you know someone who can’t get refinanced, then I think they’re just going to the wrong lender,” Crawford said.
In other perchlorate-related news:
• The county announced that its Perchlorate Medical Advisory Group will no longer meet regularly due to budget constraints. Meetings will be held as needed.
• The Morgan Hill Library will become a repository for digital and hard copy documents related to South County perchlorate issues. For more information, call 779-3196.
