[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 5/30/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

May 30, 2007

 

4. Water Quality

 

Editorial: H20 hypocrisy; L.A. needs to do more to protect our water supply

LA Daily News – 5/30/07

 

LOS Angeles is a city that, its smog notwithstanding, prides itself on its green sensibilities. Our mayor is out planting 1 million trees, fighting global warming is our war cry, and our beloved DWP has spent millions on "green power" schemes of dubious value.

 

So it's the height of hypocrisy that we have done so little to ensure the safety of our own water supply.

 

In recent months, the L.A. Department of Water and Power has had to shut down a well in North Hollywood and restrict pumping in a well field in Arleta because chromium 6 has contaminated the San Fernando Valley aquifer.

 

The aquifer, which is in danger of still further contamination, is one of the great - pardon the pun - relatively untapped resources in Los Angeles. An underground, natural storage system capable of holding enough water to supply L.A. for five years, the aquifer has never been used to its maximum capacity.

 

The DWP has budgeted $30 million to capture storm water and infiltrate the ground with it. And state water bond money is being sought for a $78 million project to enlarge Big Tujunga Dam to catch more winter-water runoff - water that currently flushes out into the ocean.

 

But the value of these efforts to make better use of the aquifer is undercut when the aquifer is rendered unusable due to contamination.

 

In most years, the aquifer provides only 15 percent to 30 percent of the city's water, while the rest is imported from the Sierra Nevada and Colorado River. But because of spreading contamination, the city will be able to draw only 10 percent of its supply from local groundwater this year.

 

This means that the DWP is going to need to import more water this year at the cost of $7.3 million to Los Angeles' ratepayers.

 

Worse than the financial cost, though, is the loss of a precious natural commodity - and government officials' failure to protect it.

 

For decades, it has been clear that industrial pollutants have posed a serious risk to L.A. groundwater. And four years ago the water master for the Upper Los Angeles River Area warned that chromium 6 contamination posed a "clear and present danger" to local water supplies.

 

Yet, throughout all this time, government at all levels has been unable to fully clean up contaminated areas or to safeguard the aquifer and the wells that draw from it. Instead, each agency points a finger at another - and claims everyone's problem belongs to someone else. Local government agencies want Washington to get involved. Federal officials say their hands are tied. The state has failed to tighten up chromium 6 standards.

 

That is, of course, the way government works - most of the time, anyway - so we're not surprised. But if ever there was an issue on which officials should be able to come together - and to work with speed - it ought to be on something as basic as clean water.

 

Plentiful access to water is what has enabled L.A. to thrive. And there is nothing more vital to our very survival than its protection.

 

Keeping water safe and clean isn't some worthless task to be kicked from one bureaucracy to another, but a critical need our local officials must treat as a vital priority.  #

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_6016189

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