Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 29, 2007
4. Water Quality
LOS OSOS:
Latest Los Osos lawsuit: residents vs. regional water board; Property owners who have already received threats of fines want the board to rescind the septic stop orders - San Luis Obispo Tribune
GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION:
Water wells threatened; DWP wants action as chemicals creep into reservoir - LA Daily News
LOS OSOS:
Latest Los Osos lawsuit: residents vs. regional water board; Property owners who have already received threats of fines want the board to rescind the septic stop orders
San Luis Obispo
By Sona Patel, staff writer
A group of Los Osos residents has sued regional water quality officials to try forcing them to rescind dozens of orders threatening property owners with fines if they don’t stop using their septic tanks by 2011.
Los Osos attorney Shaunna Sullivan filed the lawsuit Friday in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on behalf of the Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund. That’s a group that consists mainly of property owners who have been issued stop orders on their septic tanks from the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Also named as a plaintiff is the Los Osos Community Services District. The defense fund and the services district are helping to pay Sullivan’s legal costs.
The suit stems from so-called enforcement actions from the regional water board, which has been pressuring Los Osos for decades to build a sewer.
The town, which has more than 14,000 residents, operates entirely on septic systems.
The water board asserts that the septic tanks are polluting Los Osos’ groundwater and nearby
After several failed attempts at building a sewer — including a project that broke ground but then was halted after a recall of the services district board in 2005 — the water board began issuing stop orders.
It targeted 45 property owners randomly and ordered them to hook up to a sewer system by Jan. 1, 2011, and stop using their septic systems or face possible stiff fines. There could be a grace period if a sewer is under construction but not yet available by that deadline.
The defense fund appealed those orders to the state water board, which oversees the regional one. That appeal was denied, allowing the group until Friday to pursue litigation in Superior Court.
The county, meanwhile, has begun the process of planning and building a sewer in Los Osos — through legislation introduced by Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo.
Even as that project moves forward, the water board earlier this month was considering whether to issue stop orders to more than 4,400 additional property owners in Los Osos — essentially the whole town.
County officials wrote a letter to the board, though, asking that a decision on those orders be delayed until the county can make a presentation to the water board on the progress it has made on the sewer.
Water board officials agreed to hold off on future enforcement actions at least until meeting with county staff. Board members also told their staff to consider suspending the stop orders that already have been issued.
Reaction
However, Gail McPherson, a spokeswoman for the defense fund, said the group had “no other choice” but to sue.
Water board “staff can drop (stop orders) in the mail right now if they choose to, and the ones that are already in place are not being rescinded,” McPherson said. “We can’t afford to lose the possibility of an appeal based on a few things that were said (at the last water board meeting).”
Water board staff can issue the stop orders without the approval of their board. Recipients then have the option of appealing them to the board.
County supervisors who sent a letter to the water board earlier this month asking it to hold off on stop orders believe the new lawsuit won’t affect their relationship with the agency.
“I see this as something quite separate,” said Bruce Gibson, 2nd District supervisor whose area includes Los Osos. “If the group feels like they’ve been wronged, then they have the option to go to court.”
Details of the suit
The lawsuit gives nearly 30 reasons the water board should not be allowed to issue stop orders.
Chief among those is the group’s belief that the board has “failed to ‘stand down’ or take into consideration less onerous and punitive remedies as required by AB 2701,” Blakeslee’s bill that transferred the sewer project to the county.
However, the bill does not include any language that precludes the water board from threatening enforcement action against property owners as the county proceeds with the project.
Harvey Packard, the water board’s enforcement coordinator, declined to comment on the lawsuit until it could be reviewed by staff and the state Attorney General’s Office, which serves as the board’s legal counsel.
McPherson said she hopes the water board will work with the community without the threat of stop orders.
“We really hope for the best, and we’re going to do everything we can to support the water board in rescinding orders and vacating previous ones,” she said.
The legal defense fund is asking for attorney’s fees if they win the appeal. #
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/51265.html
GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION:
Water wells threatened; DWP wants action as chemicals creep into reservoir
LA Daily News – 5/27/07
By Kerry Cavanaugh, staff writer
More than four years after being warned that a creeping chemical plume was threatening Los Angeles' water supply, the DWP has shut down at least one drinking-water well because of contamination of the San Fernando Valley aquifer.
The North Hollywood well closure means that, for the first time,
But more troubling than the cost, Department of Water and Power officials say, is the possibility that the contamination will spread and ruin Los Angeles' only local water supply - the gigantic San Fernando Valley underground reservoir that can serve residents in an emergency.
"It's a tragedy that we're not taking full advantage of our vast aquifer," said H. David Nahai, president of the board of Water and Power commissioners.
"At a time when the Sierra snowpack is miserably low and when we already have to buy a great deal of water ... to have a situation where we cannot take advantage of our own aquifer because of contamination that is not acceptable."
While reluctant to point fingers, DWP officials said they're frustrated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not act more quickly to treat the contamination.
In a strongly worded letter sent to the EPA in March, DWP General Manager Ronald Deaton complained about the slow progress and demanded immediate help.
"More than 20 years have passed and despite best intentions, efforts to deliver a remedial plan to protect a valued drinking water source for millions of
Nahai said the situation has become so serious that the DWP may have to conduct a multimillion-dollar cleanup itself and seek reimbursement later.
For years, the DWP has routinely shut down or restricted wells contaminated with high levels of industrial solvent - or diluted wells with lower levels - in order to provide customers with water that is safe to drink.
"If there's a well that's contaminated, we're going to turn that well off. We're not going to supply water that's not safe to our customers," said Jim McDaniel, DWP chief operating officer for the water system.
In recent months, the DWP has shut down one well in
And in dry years, like this one, the city can draw as much as 30 percent of its supply from the groundwater, saving on the cost of importing more water.
This year, however, the spreading contamination means the city will be able to draw only 10 percent of its supply from local groundwater.
That has raised the ire of some who note the DWP and water authorities have known for years about the contamination threat.
Melvin Blevins, who was watermaster for the Upper Los Angeles River Area, warned in 2003 that chromium 6 contamination posed a "clear and present danger" to local water supplies.
Blevins called on the EPA to pursue polluters and make them pay for the cleanup.
But Mark Mackowski, the current watermaster, said not enough has been done in the intervening four years.
"We identified an imminent problem and some of the predictions we made are occurring. Now we're expressing some level of frustration that we didn't get on this problem earlier, and we need to do some catch-up on chromium," he said.
EPA Superfund Section Chief Fred Schauffler said the agency shares city officials' concerns and is studying how to deal with the contamination.
The EPA already oversees a massive groundwater cleanup in the Valley that started in the 1980s, when chemicals dumped during the World War II-era munitions and aerospace industry boom began showing up in local water supplies.
In the late 1990s, agencies in
But the treatment plants built by the EPA to remove the previously detected chemicals are not designed to remove chromium 6.
That means when chromium levels rise, wells have to be shut down or upgraded with experimental and expensive treatment systems.
"But a potentially responsible party isn't going to write a check until it's shown beyond a reasonable doubt that they caused the problem," Mackowski said.
That's where enforcement comes in, and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has handled most of the cases so far.
The board has reviewed 4,000 businesses that may have used chromium, and it has issued cleanup orders against seven. Last month the board ordered Honeywell (formerly Allied-Signal) to clean up chromium contamination at its
The site is near a DWP well that was shut down after chromium 6 was discovered at 200 parts per billion - four times the drinking-water standard.
In addition to treating the pollution, Honeywell has to buy replacement water for the city.
But progress by the water board has been so slow that
And DWP officials wrote in a letter to the EPA that the enforcement actions are temporary measures.
"A long-term solution that addresses all the contamination, not only (chromium 6), must immediately be put in place by USEPA," Deaton wrote.
The watermaster and the DWP believe the EPA - as the 800-pound gorilla of enforcement - could do more.
But the EPA's Schauffler said they overestimate the federal agency's power.
"All of us, being state and agencies and the EPA, are working with a certain set of finite resources to deal with enforcement," he said.
He said agencies are limited by
The state was supposed to adopt a new standard for chromium 6 three years ago, but state officials said last week they are still studying the chemical's potential health risks.
"Our enforcement is based around a drinking-water standard," Schauffler said. The lack of a stronger standard, he said, "has constrained our ability to use enforcement actions."
Nevertheless, DWP officials have begun meeting with congressional leaders to put pressure on the EPA.
The threat to
The eastern
The DWP has budgeted $30 million for projects to capture storm water and infiltrate the ground with it. State water bond money is being sought for a $78 million project to enlarge Big Tujunga Dam to catch more winter-water runoff that now flows to the ocean.
At the same time, the contamination means the DWP has to cut back on the water it takes from the aquifer.
Some environmentalists say the EPA has never spent enough money on the Valley groundwater cleanup, in part because there hasn't been pressure from the DWP, which has easily imported most of its water.
"We pretty much take our local supply for granted and we're pretty smug in our assurance that we will always be able to take our water from someplace else," said Melanie Winter with The River Project.
"But that's not the reality anymore." #
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_5997595
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