GILROY
– Gov. Gray Davis on Monday signed into law two bills that place
the burdens of perchlorate accountability and replacing
perchlorate-contaminated water more squarely on polluters – like
the Olin flare company, responsible for contaminating more than 400
wells from Morgan Hill south to Gilroy.
GILROY – Gov. Gray Davis on Monday signed into law two bills that place the burdens of perchlorate accountability and replacing perchlorate-contaminated water more squarely on polluters – like the Olin flare company, responsible for contaminating more than 400 wells from Morgan Hill south to Gilroy.
“These bills ensure that Californians will have clean sources of drinking water,” Davis said. “Through proactive notification, the state will establish a system of tracking perchlorate use and improve coordination between state and local agencies.”
“These bills are good tools for my southern Santa Clara County constituents affected by a major perchlorate spill,” said Assemblyman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz).
Meanwhile, Laird may soon push for a “district bill” to address perchlorate cleanup solely in the Santa Clara Valley Water District – perchlorate Olin discharged from 1955 to 1996 at its Morgan Hill site and which has seeped through the soil to contaminate wells as far south as Gilroy.
Perchlorate, sometimes nicknamed “powdered oxygen,” is a white powder used in the combustion of rocket fuel and explosives; Olin used it to make road flares. It can disrupt the thyroid gland’s ability to make essential hormones. It is most dangerous to fetuses, infants and children, in whom it can cause lowered IQ, mental retardation, hearing and speech loss and motor-skill deficits.
One of the new California laws – Senate Bill 1004, sponsored by Sen. Nell Soto (D-Colton) and recommended by advocacy group Environment California – will require two things:
• Water replacement – The bill emphasizes local water boards’ authority and responsibility to order known perchlorate polluters to replace contaminated well water: either by providing bottled water to well users, by cleaning up the wells, or both.
• Perchlorate reporting – Any facility that has stored perchlorate since 1950 must disclose this fact to the state, along with how, where and how much perchlorate was stored. Any discharge of 10 or more pounds of perchlorate must be reported to the state Office of Emergency Services and Regional Water Quality Control Board. The state Water Resources Control Board is to publish a public list of past and present perchlorate storage facilities by Jan. 1, 2006.
The other new law – the Perchlorate Contamination Prevention Act, sponsored by Assemblymember Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) – would establish the following:
• Best-management practices – By Dec. 31, 2005, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control must develop best-management practices for companies to follow in storing perchlorate in the future.
• Perchlorate database – A new statewide database would connect the California Environmental Protection Agency with local agencies.
Laird, at a Sept. 25 meeting of the Perchlorate Community Advisory Board in San Martin, suggested that a state bill solely addressing the Santa Clara Valley Water District might pass easily in the Legislature since other legislators might defer to his knowledge of the area.
Listeners suggested this might be a good way to force Olin to conduct cleanup measures it is resisting but which state officials recommend. By law, the state can order Olin to clean up the perchlorate but cannot tell them how to do so. While Olin’s perchlorate plume may not carry the highest concentration levels in California, Laird said it is known to have contaminated more wells than any other state perchlorate site.
The two new laws don’t so much deal with South County’s present perchlorate problem than with possible future ones.
“They don’t have any immediate effect on South County,” SCVWD spokesman Mike DiMarco said this morning. “(They) allow us to get a better read on other potential sources of perchlorate. … They could prevent a similar plume later.”
If legislation like SB 1004 had been in place years ago, South County people wouldn’t have been so surprised by Olin’s perchlorate plume, according to Environment California Clean Water Advocate Sujatha Jahagirdir.
“The idea is to avoid future cases like yours, where it just kind of comes out of the blue,” Jahagirdir said.
The water-replacement requirement is important, according to Jahagirdir, because some water boards had previously feared lawsuits by companies if they required them to replace contaminated water.Olin, for its part, has supplied bottled water to South County well owners – as many as 1,400, Olin claims – and has conducted ion-exchange treatment on well heads. It stopped supplying bottled water to the Santa Clara County courthouse and Sheriff’s office in San Martin within the past two weeks, telling them their well water had begun testing below the California “action level” of 4 parts per billion of perchlorate.
Olin’s ion-exchange treatments have had debatable results, according to citizens at the Perchlorate Community Advisory Board meeting.
“They haven’t done anything as far as I’m concerned,” Santa Clara County District 1 Supervisor Don Gage said at the meeting, to the agreement of several members of the PCAG board.
Researchers from Texas Tech University recently found perchlorate at potentially dangerous levels in human breast milk and supermarket cow’s milk in Lubbock, Texas, according to a Sept. 19 article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Earlier this year, the same researchers found perchlorate of potentially dangerous levels in California supermarket lettuce irrigated by the Colorado River.
Elsewhere in California, perchlorate contamination has been found in eastern Sacramento County, Simi Valley, San Gabriel Valley, the Rialto-Colton Basin and in the Colorado River, which supplies drinking and irrigation water to Southern California. As of December 2002, the EPA had identified 75 perchlorate releases in 22 states.
